1 post tagged “lost twin”
This time last year, I was somewhere between awake and asleep, propped in a hospital bed, either holding my new son or listening to him breathing in his little glass bassinet beside my bed.
This time last year, I was glowing with new-mama-ness and already forgetting the nightmare that was labor and delivery.
This time last year, I had already taken my first post-delivery shower, put on "real" clothes (although they were pajamas), gotten my son to successfully breastfeed and been visited by many loving friends and family.
This time last year, I had already forgotten there might have been two babies in the room with me.
And so went this year as well. This weekend was a whirlwind of family and friends and Liam and presents and cake and fun. Oh, and the toys. Good grief, don't forget the toys.
But it didn't occur to me until today that I might have celebrated two first birthdays yesterday. There might have been two individual little cakes, two high chairs, two birthday outfits (and back-ups), twice the number of presents.
It's an odd thing to remember you forgot something so momentous was missing.
I don't think a lot about the lost twin. I speak even more rarely about it. Sometimes I feel like that makes me a cold person. However, I am a practical person. At the most practical level, I realize one child has been (for lack of a more clever word) easier than two. I realize that I lost the twin at a time when many fetuses miscarry because of developmental or genetic-anomaly reasons I won't pretend to understand. But then, I remember that I saw that baby's heart beat. Merely 7 and a half weeks old and smaller than my big toenail, I saw two little beans on an ultrasound, with two little heartbeats. I HEARD them both, a little round of pit-pats in a room suddenly silent while Philly and I held our breath.
Lately, I have been drawn to stories of lost children. I don't know why. In one way, it makes me realize how lucky I am to have the one healthy child who is angelically sleeping in the next room this very moment. In another way, it makes me that much more aware of his mortality. Though I never lost a child halfway through pregnancy or at birth or at three or at 23, it makes me even more aware that I did lose a baby that was once very much alive inside me, ever so small and for ever so short a time.
When we found out only one twin had survived, I was crushed. I had spent 4 long weeks adjusting to the fact that I would have two newborns, at the same time, broke and in grad school, one surprise baby turned into two. Many people said what they felt was appropriate at the time: "it's for the best," "everything happens for a reason," "whatever happens was meant to happen." Some even said "it will be easier with one." None of those made me feel any better. The only conversations I had that helped were either with Philly or with my friend who had just suffered a miscarriage and was doomed to suffer another before a finally healthy and full-term pregnancy. Even if Philly was secretly relieved, he shared my pain and disappointment and loss. My poor miscarriaged friend and I spent one quiet evening drinking tea and railing against the platitudes we'd both heard. It made me feel better. I can't speak for her. At least twice, I heard "at least you still have ONE healthy baby to focus on." She didn't. I felt guilt and relief at the same time for the still-healthy baby.
I have never expressed so much about this at one time. There is literature aplenty on this lovely internet thingy to suggest my son's life may be effected by his lost twin; he may feel "lost" himself, incomplete, unable to maintain relationships and not understand why. Of course, I think that's all bullshit. But . . . but . . . but, what if it isn't? I don't feel like less of a mother because I lost one baby, but sometimes I wonder if that's not because I have one very ALIVE, healthy baby. Would I feel the loss of that baby more acutely if it had been a singleton pregnancy and it had miscarried? Of course. So, am I a bad person for missing that baby less since I have my son? Generally, I know all the answers to these questions. I can scientifically presume that there was something integrally wrong with the fetus I lost, otherwise it would have possibly matured to full term. I know the multitude of complications that could have befallen me and my pregnancy and my family if I had continued to carry a twin pregnancy. But I still can't help feeling like Liam's twin was a girl, and maybe she would've looked like her father.
And then there's the heartbreaking story of the family who lost their daughter at birth because she expelled and then inhaled too much meconium in the womb, during labor, before delivery. And I think how lucky I am because (my god) Liam was born covered in meconium, and they whisked him away to clear his lungs and give him oxygen, to hopefully raise his poor first APGAR score to that of a healthy baby's. And I realize just how close he was to real danger, and I don't know if I could have gone on if he hadn't been fine a mere half hour after birth.
There is one point during my labor that will not stop haunting me, though I can see just how healthy Liam is everyday. At the worst point of contractions and pain: the contractions were on top of each other and I couldn't speak or do anything but writhe in pain, I had been begging for an epidural and after both refusal and silence, I was finally driven to try to move into the hands-and-knees position on the bed (I'd been told not to move around once already). Doing so disrupted the fetal heart monitor, which brought a nurse into our room. The shift had just changed, and she was a middle-aged woman who I hadn't seen before (in the 12 hours we'd already been in the damn labor room.) She admonished me nicely enough. "Honey, you can't move around. We need to be able to monitor the baby." I remember moaning something about how "it just hurt so much," and in the hands-and-knees position, it was more bearable. She made me lie back down and was readjusting the fetal heart monitor around my huge belly when it became clear there was no sound coming from the monitor. She readjusted again, and again, and again. And there was no sound. Because I was contracting on top of contracting, I couldn't feel any movement from Liam (babies usually don't move when they're being pressed on from all sides by your contracting uterus). I wasn't worried until I looked at her face. SHE was worried. And I just started to shake my head and murmur "no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." Poor Philly thought I was moaning about pain and tried to soothe me. But the nurse knew what I meant and suddenly tightened the monitor to constricting around my contracting uterus. And there it was, finally, the bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum of little Liam's little heart. She took a moment to make sure his heart-rate was normal, shook her head and said "There he is. I knew it was there," and then looked me straight in the eyes as mine filled with tears. Then a light from above shone down on her, and she said "Honey, why haven't you had an epidural yet? I'm calling your doctor and getting you your epidural. Now. I promise." As she left the room, I cried briefly, but more over the found heartbeat than the promise of pain relief. (I had my epidural administered within the hour. I will always remember that beloved nurse.)
After she left the room, I realized, and tried to tell Philly, that in that moment when she couldn't find the heartbeat, I thought I would die if she actually didn't. I truly felt that way. In those scared moments as she adjusted and readjusted the fetal heart monitor, I thought, "Here it is. If there is no heartbeat, mine will stop too, and that will be it." There was no room in my mind for my family or dear Philly or future babies or the future of our families. In that moment, I thought, if his heart has stopped, so will mine.
Needless to say, his heart was still beating and beating. It was my own fault for moving and also the fault of the cheap (! in my opinion) heart monitor that we lost his bum-bum for a few moments. But nonetheless, I think I became a mother at that precise moment. I had spent 8 long months (that I knew I was preggo) preparing and worrying and preparing and wondering what would come. But at the moment I thought I had lost him, I thought too of his lost twin, and, selfishly, knew that to lose both would be the end of me.
I am still scared everyday of what I know could happen to him at any moment. The world is a scary and unpredictable place. I know now that my heart would not stop beating if his did, but it would stop feeling for a very long time. I am not a religious person; I don't believe I can pray to God to keep my son safe. I believe that I have to keep him safe as much as I am humanly capable, and I believe that if something (god (ha) forbid) ever does cut short his glorious life, I will have the joy of what a life it was to help me survive. But enough of that talk. I did not mean to descend to such a depressing or forboding place. All of this is to say that I cherish every single moment of every single day with my beloved little monkey. And today, of all days, when he began his second year of life, I felt like we were embarking on a journey into a brave new world, and part of me, even if it was a day or a year too late, felt the fleeting loss of a second year of another life. I am more a mother today than I was yesterday, and more of one this minute than I was a minute ago. We've made it through one amazing year, our little family, and we've adored every minute, even the sleep-deprived, poop-explosion, spit-up-on-everything second of it. Happy Birthday, my love, Liam. Now, what do you want for your second birthday? Or, say, your 30th?
