Larisa's Story
We didn’t know Aiden was going to die. There were no indications anything was wrong. It was a perfectly healthy pregnancy. All of the tests showed that everything was perfect, and at twenty weeks when we had genetic testing done just as a precaution to prepare ourselves, everything came out perfectly. I lost him when he was twenty-four weeks old.
Aiden means light, so we call him our little light. Whenever I hear the song “This little light of mine,” I always think of him. The ultrasound we keep in his memory box is the last picture ever taken of him before he had died, and we also have a little box that holds his ashes. I remember googling “baby urns” and just being shocked that they even existed. It seemed too terrible to be true.
But we found a place to help us and even work with us to add an engraving to Aiden’s urn, and when we brought him home with us, I put it in his crib because I didn’t know where else to put it.
That was something they don’t prepare you for, you know? What do you do with these things after? How do you go home without a baby, just their ashes? How do you grieve for something that’s not there? I think it’s so important for women going through a miscarriage or stillbirth to have something to take home with them. The hospital gave me a little bear, which I have at home, they gave me Aiden’s little hat that they had put him in when he was born . . .
I didn’t end up holding him. I wasn’t ready to be a mother, and even less a mother to him. But if I could do it over again, I would do it differently. But the doctors told me when I had to make that decision that he had been dead for more than a week, and they were concerned that his skin might start to fall off or there could have been other complications. And in my mind, after having heard that my baby had died and knowing that I had been carrying him for a week not knowing this, I just felt like the worst mother ever. And I just couldn’t bring myself to hold him thinking that he might have suffered . . . in my mind, I didn’t want the visual that I would have of him looking like he had suffered to be my only memory of him. I had to survive afterwards, and part of that decision was protecting myself, so that I could continue on with my life.
I think that a lot of people don’t understand that this baby that I never got the chance to meet, that I didn’t even get to hold, was so deeply loved. Even though he wasn’t here to talk to, and there aren’t memories that I have of him, I still grieve for him every day. Even family members don’t know what to say. But in the end, no one will ever feel this loss the way that I do, not even my husband.
So I was lucky that I was able to carry him and have time with him and be his mother during that short time . . .
We didn’t have a traditional funeral; we just had a small gathering at my house. Luckily, we had a family friend to guide us through our loss—a woman who had had a stillbirth years before, and she was able to explain all of the expenses that we might encounter. For example, it was $2,000 for the cremation and the services at a funeral home, and I just don’t know how people who don’t have money and are dealing with this devastating loss are able to find that kind of money. Luckily for us, she volunteered her time to us, so in the end we paid close to nothing. But even more than that, she would sit with me and talk to me as we were processing what had happened, and I remember her telling me, “This loss is life-long. You will never get your child back, you will always feel this loss. But life will go on and you will be happy again someday. This does not define you. It’s a part of who you are, but it’s not everything. You will never forget your child.” That really resonated with me, because one thing you feel when you lose a child that young, or if you have a miscarriage or stillbirth, you’re so afraid that people will forget. And you’re afraid that you’re going to forget too, because you never got to meet them. Even though it was hard to hear that for the rest of my life I was going to miss my child, there was so much good in that too, because that means that you won’t forget them. Missing a child means never forgetting that child.
My husband is a fixer, and he wanted to do everything he could to make this better for me. To help me get out of bed, to try to help me go to work, just to help in any way he could. He really wanted to make me feel better. He held my hand as I gave birth to Aiden, and I’ll never forget his face as he cried. That night we found out that Aiden was gone we just lay in bed and he held me, and I know how lucky I am that he was by my side for it all. But he still didn’t grieve the way I did.
I went back to work three days after we lost Aiden, because I just couldn’t imagine being by myself. I’m a teacher and I was so worried about what the students would say or how they would react, but luckily a coworker of mine had also had a stillbirth and she was able to prepare them before I returned to the classroom. She told them what to say and not to say anything other than that. It was the best thing for me—and wonderful to have a distraction, and my students had such open hearts and were so wonderful.
Honestly, it was the adults that made comments that were the most hurtful and confusing. Many people didn’t say anything. A small group sent a sympathy card and pitched in to give us some money because we had planned a trip to get away after the loss. It was a hard trip, even though a few weeks had passed . . . but a few weeks won’t heal you. It just takes a lot of time, and a lot of grieving. I was just going through the motions every day, and for months I was a zombie.
We got pregnant less than a year later—and it was the same exact timeline that we had had for Aiden, so I was just freaking out because I didn’t feel ready. It hadn’t even been a year yet. I knew that when we hit twenty-four weeks, I would be terrified that I would lose it again.
In the end, I was just so grateful that we did get pregnant that soon, because that was our rainbow baby, Lilly. And she healed my heart so much. It’s not like the grief goes away, but it opened up my heart to loving again, and it opened up my heart to seeing the world as beautiful again. I also did a lot of grief work during my second pregnancy. Seriously, if you google “how to work through your grief” I must have done absolutely every single thing I could find. But I gave myself over to that, because I truly feel that grief is love.
I grieved for my child because I loved my child.
Not everyone wants to grieve the same way, though. A good friend of mine actually had a miscarriage when I was pregnant for the third time. I remember getting the call from her when she was ten weeks along. Afterwards, she never really wanted to talk about it with me.
All you can really do for someone who’s dealing with a loss is to tell them, “I’m here for you.” But that’s all you can do. There’s no fixing it. There’s only listening, and I was so thankful for the people who listened.
Even people close to me who had come to the hospital when I gave birth to Aiden told me, “Don’t worry, you’re young and you’ll have more.” But you don’t want to hear that. You have no interest in replacing your babies. I know they didn’t mean that . . . but it’s still so painful to hear.
Other people told me, “Maybe there was something wrong with the baby so it’s best this way,” or, “God has plans, it’s part of God’s plan.” And I just don’t want to think that God killed my baby.
I’m sure that I’m not the first or last to hear things like that . . . I just feel that people don’t know what this is like unless they’ve actually experienced it themselves.
We were at the doctor’s office just for a routine checkup at twenty-four weeks, and that’s when we found out. They always check for the baby’s heartbeat at these appointments, and I just remember that it was taking such a long time for them to hear it. You could hear my heartbeat, but not the baby’s. The doctor just kept on repeating, “Oh, he’s just hiding on us,” but I knew something was wrong. They brought a bigger ultrasound machine into the room, and I remember the moment the wand touched my belly, the moment I saw Aiden on the screen, I just knew he was dead. I had seen him so many times before.
And I saw the doctor’s face and heard him tell us, “There’s no heartbeat.”
I just screamed, “Oh my god, how is that possible,” and I began to cry.
That’s when the doctor told me, “Don’t cry yet.” And I know why he didn’t want me to cry. He didn’t want me to cry because I still had to walk through the waiting room, past all of the other women who still had their babies.
He took us into the sonogram room and I couldn’t even look at the screen. The technician kept checking things, and checking things, and I have no idea what she was looking for, because it was so clear that he was dead. At that point, I wasn’t crying, because by then I was just in shock.
They gave us the option of going to the hospital that same night or going home and processing, before returning the next morning to be induced.
We went home. I just laid on my bed and cried. I could have sworn that I had felt him kicking just the night before.
Our neighbor was actually our nurse at the doctor’s office, and that same night she came to sit with me. I remember telling her that I didn’t know what to do, or what to expect the next morning. It was so early in the pregnancy that I hadn’t taken any birth classes. I was only six months along, and I felt so clueless.
She explained the process of being induced and told me that I could have had an epidural if I wanted. But I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have a C-section. I just wanted to be out for it.
Looking back, I’m sure it was the best thing for me to be awake and aware through the process, but at the time I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want to know what was happening.
When we arrived at the hospital, they assigned me to a shared room with another pregnant woman, who was smoking. She was smoking while pregnant, and she got to take her baby home. Luckily, they moved me shortly after, but even then I was still in the labor and delivery unit, so I could still hear the babies crying down the hall. I was there for twenty-four hours because they can only induce every four hours. A nurse told me that she had never seen someone need to be induced more than four times. In the end it was a sixteen hour process. I needed to have six pills.
My body did not want to let go of that baby. It just didn’t.
I was there an excruciatingly long time. In the end, I did have the epidural even though I fought and fought against it—but that’s what actually helped my body to relax enough to give birth. My muscles were so tense, and I just didn’t want to give him up, that the Pitocin allowed my muscles to relax. I delivered him just after they gave me the bolus. There wasn’t even a doctor with us. Just the two nurses.
Aiden was born at 8:38 a.m. on February 9th. He was 15.9 ounces and twelve inches long.
I remember just watching Gary’s face while I delivered Aiden. I couldn’t look anywhere else. He was on his knees holding my hand, and he was just sobbing. We had been together for nine years at that point, and I had never seen him like that.
I remember when we were making the choice to not see Aiden after I delivered him, my doctor told me while pushing us to see him, “I’m the doctor, don’t you think that I know what’s best for you?” That’s what he told us. Not, “Women who don’t hold their babies feel like their arms are heavier after,” or, “There is a significant increase in PTSD symptoms in women who don’t hold their babies.”
I wish he would have been kinder, and I wish that he had been able to help me understand the decision better. I disliked him so much, I remember with my next pregnancy trying to hold in Lilly until the next doctor’s shift so that he wouldn’t deliver her.
Later we found that Aiden had amniotic banding syndrome, and that’s why he died. They think it wrapped around his umbilical cord.
I blamed myself so much after I lost Aiden. I went through every crazy scenario in my head, trying to find how I had made this happen. For months. When I became pregnant with Lilly I changed everything. I bought different water bottles because it must have been the PCB that killed Aiden, I changed what I cooked on in case that had caused it, and I wondered, “What if it was that one time I walked into the dresser” …there were so many ways I blamed myself. But I think at some point, you move past that stage of grieving, because that’s not how I feel anymore. If there was something I could have done differently, I would have done it. But I feel like it also applies to motherhood in general. When your little girl falls down and cuts her face, you feel like you’re to blame and wonder, “Why didn’t I get different shoes for them?” We really tend to internalize these experiences as women.
I was so surprised by the outpouring of love from people who had also lost babies—because before we lost Aiden we had never heard about their experiences. So many people brought food and sent messages and cards. I feel like society has such a hard time with death, and especially the death of a child or a baby. We’ve made so many advancements with medicine in recent decades, that I think it’s still a shock when someone young dies. And to this day, when I mention Aiden to other people, they still don’t know what to say.
The best thing you can say to someone grieving a loss like this is just, “I love you, I’m here for you, I’m listening to you, tell me more. Tell me more about how you feel.” I know we can’t technically have memories of these children, but I remember that I wrote in a journal after losing Aiden, “We wonder what you would look like. I think you’d have my eyes and your father’s face.” That’s what both of my babies who are living look like… and I feel like I see Aiden in my children. That’s something I could tell someone.
On his birthday, we light candles and we sing happy birthday for him. I cry on my own, afterwards, but every year we try to make it a positive experience for our children, and it’s important for us to be able to honor him and be able to do this to remember him.
I feel like after loss you appreciate motherhood so much more. Even though there are hard days, you realize that, even when you feel overwhelmed, you’re so lucky, because you don’t get to do those hard things with one of your children. Being a parent is terrifying, but it’s so worth it, because I have my two beautiful children to love every day. There are no words to express how beautiful it is to be a mother, and I have to say I even feel lucky to be a bereaved mother, because I know some people don’t even get to be that.
