Swag bags and grief
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This guest post is by Meg, who will be joining Glow In the Woods as a regular contributor. We are so honoured to have you write with us, Meg.
My name is Megan but everyone other than my parents calls me Meg. On April 12, 2021, after a relatively uneventful pregnancy, our daughter James died two weeks before her due date. I had a concealed placental abruption and she was stillborn. Since that time, my husband Rob, six-year-old son Finn and I have been trying to navigate this loss. Some days are impossible, and some are manageable. Most are somewhere in between. While I was still in the hospital after James’ death and birth (the order of which I will never stop trying to make sense of) one of the labor and delivery nurses told me about Glow in the Woods. It was a place that she found support in the days following her own loss. Reading the words of those who had also walked this path made me feel less alone and gave me a sense of comfort and community. It is a place where I don’t have to be anywhere other than where I am right in this moment in my grief. It is a place where I hope that my words might bring a bit of peace to another grieving parent. It is a place where I honor James.
The waiting room at the fertility clinic had two doors. Sometimes while sitting there before my latest ultrasound, follicle count, blood draw, egg retrieval, or some other flavor of reproductive torture, I would wonder why some women exited out of the second door holding a bag. These tote bags had the name of the clinic emblazoned on the side and the women carrying them looked victorious, warriors returning from battle. What was in those bags and where was mine?
After what seemed like endless months, years of treatment cycles (I lost count), I finally found out. I was 10 weeks pregnant with my daughter, James. It was my first time having seen her tiny heart beating on the screen. This visit would be my last before “graduating” to a regular OB. I got off of the exam table, hugged my fertility doctor with gratitude and turned to leave when she stopped me and said, “Oh wait. I almost forgot to give you your bag.” The bag! I was getting the bag!!! Like a kid on Hanukah morning (shout out to my people), I tore it open. I quickly realized that this was not just some ordinary bag. This was the fertility equivalent of a swag bag. Inside were onesies with “Made in Oregon” printed on them, books about what to expect now that I was pregnant, lotions, candles, more onesies. My husband and I walked out of that second door, swag bag in hand, chests puffed out with pride. This was the reproductive Olympics and, ladies and gentleman, we had crushed it.
Being pregnant during a global pandemic has very few upsides with the one exception that I had ample time to think. I found myself reflecting on how my journey to becoming pregnant with my daughter had mirrored other challenges in my life. Growing up, my parents had imparted many important lessons: Treat others the way you would like to be treated, chew with your mouth closed, and if you work hard enough at something, you will succeed. This last one really stuck with me (for the record, I sometimes still chew with my mouth open). As I navigated adolescence, young adulthood, and middle age, I clung to that lesson; I persisted.
I thought back to the time in college when I needed to enroll in a graduate-level seminar with a waitlist two pages long. I emailed the professor every single day until he finally relented and let me in. This was during the time of dial-up internet, so this was no easy feat. He joked on the first day of class that the award for the most persistent (which I think was a euphemism for annoying) went to me. I thought of how after my husband and I decided to relocate to the Pacific Northwest before starting a family, I gave up a tenured professorship (which could either be seen as very brave or very stupid) and spent the next two years pursuing every possible job lead until finally finding an incredible position. But perhaps I spent the most time thinking about how after years of grueling treatments, I would soon be welcoming my baby girl. I had waited, persisted, tried and finally succeeded. Now this is not to say that I have never failed. I failed. A lot. But when it came to the things that mattered most to me, I usually found a way to achieve my goals.
Two weeks before my due date, that world, the one in which you can succeed if you just keep trying, just work hard enough, stopped. With no warning, the placenta, the very thing that allowed her to grow, to breathe, broke away and we lost her. My body failed me. Failed us. Failed her. Within the span of one hour everything I had known and believed in ceased to exist.
I stayed in the hospital for six days after losing James. The idea of going back to my life terrified me because nothing made sense anymore. I spent most of the time staring at the wall thinking that my parents had been wrong. I had done everything in my power to bring this baby safely into the world and it didn’t matter. I had failed anyway. Effort no longer counted. Nothing counted. This absolutely random, soul-crushing event just happened and I hadn’t been able to stop it. Perhaps even worse was that I had not seen it coming.
When I finally left the hospital, the nurse handed me a bag. It resembled the one I had earned so many months earlier at the fertility clinic, but this was a much sadder swag bag. In it were pamphlets for bereaved parents, funeral home brochures, and a teddy bear weighted with marbles to give us something to clutch in the absence of our daughter. This time I walked out the door, bag in hand, chest sunken, head bowed, my body utterly broken.
But maybe, just maybe, still a warrior.
Welcome, Meg, to Glow In the Woods, and welcome to you, too, dear reader, whoever you are, why-ever you need us. We are so sorry that you do need us, and so, so glad you found us. If you’d like, say hello in the comments, tell us who you are, if you want, and why you’re here, if you’re able, and know, whatever you can or can’t say right now, you are always welcome.