Last Saturday, I had to attend a CPR and First Aid training, as a requirement for school. There was no getting out of it or putting it off; I had to do it if I want to work in the clinic next quarter. I cannot possibly express how much I did NOT want to do this, and not just because it was at 9 am on a fucking Saturday. Attending this training meant that I was going to be in a room with people from my school, most of whom last saw me at the end of fall quarter, 37 weeks pregnant, happily riding off into the sunset to spend winter break gestating away. Thanks to the rumor mill (which I made sure to move along at a breakneck speed in the wake of Nina's death), I was pretty sure they all knew that my baby died. But I couldn't be sure. I also just didn't like the idea of having to participate in something so banal. Having to do something so... normal.
The further I move through my grief and get on with my life, the further I move away from her, and it rips up my insides a bit. I don't know whether to be grateful for moving on and making it through the day without crying, or desperate to go back to those sharp, early days. It's a confusing, tumultuous, complicated experience being in limbo like this. I don't relate to the happy person I was before she died, I can't be the person I expected to be if she had lived. To be honest, I just really don't know how I'm supposed to be. I didn't have a contingency plan for this.
Before I had ever gotten pregnant, before this whole chapter of my life started, I was a pretty free wheeling girl. I liked to eat and drink and scream and be thrilled. When I started to contemplate becoming a mom, I actually got really excited about the prospect of reconciling the wildness in me with the nurturing mother in me. I thought I was gonna make a pretty rad mom. Me and my little one were going to unleash ourselves on the world and experience all of it. Then, with the miscarriages, my confidence started to fade a bit. I was so sad. I was in such a dark place. I wanted to be that person I had envisioned so badly, and with each loss, I became more and more fearful that it would never happen.
But Nina-Lou brought me back. Once I made it through that first trimester and still had her growing in there, I became filled with a hope and a happiness unlike anything I had ever felt. I was so sure of everything when I had her with me. I saw and understood the trajectory of my life, and I was so confident in who I was and where I was going. Waiting for her to be born was the happiest I have ever been. I found meaning and symbolism in everything. It was all meant to be.
Turns out that was all bullshit. But I digress.
The training on Saturday was just as boring and cheesy as these things always are. The class was taught largely by video, the production value therein leaving much to be desired. They did blow a lot of their budget on a pretty sweet dude on fire that they saved for the end. The rest was silly and giggle worthy.
Then we got to the infant CPR.
I didn't see it coming at all, which may have been for the best, because if I had had time to worry about it before hand, I probably wouldn't have come. Or had a panic attack in anticipation of it. I just hadn't even considered that we were going to be learning to save babies.
But there it was: a bag of babies.
With their arms and legs flopping, and their plastic faces all wearing the same sleeping expression. They looked dead. It was a fucking bag of dead babies.
As they were passed around the room, I started to internally panic. My heart raced and I felt dizzy. I wondered what people around me were thinking. Were they worried about me? Embarrassed for me? Equally horrified? Or were they just happily oblivious, failing to make any connection at all between me, my formerly swollen belly, and those lifeless dolls?
I told myself, over and over, it's just a doll, it's just a doll, it's not a real baby, it's not her. I felt tears welling up behind my eyes, and realized that my hands were visibly shaking, and I very seriously considered leaving the room. But then, the pragmatic part of my brain took over. Would I explain to the instructor why I was leaving? Would I come back for the rest of the training? Would they be able to give me my certification if I didn't save the dead baby doll? Would I get my money back? Would I be able to find another place to complete the training before the start of Spring quarter? And, of course, there was the public humiliation to consider. Did I really want to make a scene?
I took deep breaths. I talked myself down. I disassociated myself from the experience and went through it, emotionless. At one point, I looked down at the baby on whom I was performing chest compressions and thought, I wonder if this is about how big Nina-Louise would have been by now. It was so awful. It was the worst thing I could have possibly put myself through. But I didn't die. I didn't cry in front of everyone. It was painful and difficult and horrifying, but I managed.
Later, alone in my apartment, I screamed as loud as I could. I screamed and screamed and cried and pounded my fists on the coffee table until they hurt. I wanted to impale myself on something.
This is my life now. White knuckle through the painful bits then lie on the couch while my husband rubs my back silently and I sob into a pillow. It's fucking depressing and it makes me feel helpless.
I want to go back to the person I was before, but I can't. I want to clamber through a window into The World in which Nina Lives, but that ain't happening either. I would, at the very least, like to fast forward to the person I will be as the woman who has survived the death of her only child. But there is no fast forward, no rewind, no do overs. I just have to live through each day. Some days are ok. Some days I laugh and I see the beauty around me and I know that I am me and she is she and that we have different paths, and that I will someday be a mom to a different baby; one who lives. Other days are dark and exhausting and empty and really, really fucking hard. It's the thing that should be impossible but isn't. Somehow, I am making it through this; not because I'm strong or because I am finding closure or because I miss her any less. I am making it through simply by being alive and adapting. Human beings, it turns out, are good at suffering.
I never knew.
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