Change

Every day I make an effort to have a nice time out there in the World.  I'm not aiming for the stars, not trying to seize every single moment with fervor and gusto, I'm just gunning for good.  Good is enough if you can do it on a daily basis.

I sleep later now, every day.  I need an hour or so of semi-wakefulness to gear up and get ready for the chill and sunlight and this relentless, active life. I guess I still can't believe, every morning, that this is the Universe I live in.

I take a shower and I love it.  As hot as I can stand it.  Sometimes I reflect on how lucky I am to even have a hot shower that I can stand in as long as I like.  Sometimes when it looks like a tough one in my heart or my head, I stand there a little longer.  I shouldn't because of the coming Water Wars, but sometimes I can't help it.

Guilt is gone.  I've banished it.  I do what I need to get by and I don't worry about perfection.  Except in the coffee I roast.  And in the driving.  They both need to be perfect but for completely different reasons.  Coffee because it feels good to do it right and it's my job, driving because anything less is disaster.  I am not down with any more disasters.

The day Silas was born was supposed to be the best day of my life and instead it was by far the biggest disaster I have ever experienced.  Nothing like that should ever happen again.  But obviously, since we're all here together, Should is a word we all know doesn't mean a damn thing.

So Should is out now, too.  Expectations are a fool's game, and I choose not to play anymore.  I declare that as if it is something that can be de-selected.  Mostly I try to do exactly what is right in front of me and I avoid worrying about what I think should happen next.  Maybe it is the not-thinking that keeps me up at night.

3am has become my thinking hour.  I know it is going to be 3:11am when I open my eyes.  For a while that brief, nightly insomnia upset me, but now I look at it as a special time, just for me.  Lu asleep next to me.  The cat is tucked tight between us, not even purring anymore.

Usually it's a song that wakes me up.  Whatever I happened to enjoy the most that day is usually the one that's still running through my brain.  The same refrain, whatever it is.  The song-worm, it infects me.  I don't even think about who Should be waking me.

If you break these moth's wing feelings, powdery dust on your fingers or undecided undefined undeterred yet undermind and then it's the steady, static hum of my soul trying to reconcile another day without my son.

It doesn't stop, I'm sorry to say.  Not so far.  Not 2 years after he was conceived.  Not a day goes by that somehow isn't all about him.

The ultimate reason for that is because in a way, I have become him.  Silas doesn't get to do this Earth so I've got to do each day for him, too.  My everyday experience has been utterly transformed, and I do not at all feel like the person I was before Silas was here.  Two years since we started this journey and our lives look exactly the same, but everything has changed, inside and out.  And like Julia said, it is still happening.

I live my life the way I do as an expression of how my parents raised me, of how I have come to know the World, of how Lu's love and presence have become intertwined with mine.  Today is our 5 year wedding anniversary and despite the sadness of these past years it still always feels right that we are together.

Living extra for Silas--any way I can think of--feels right, too.

His brief life has transformed me in ways I am only beginning to understand.  I suppose all parents go through this, but it is especially difficult for people like us because we can never hug them and thank them for everything they help us become.

All I can do is hold on to every day, every little treat and happiness.  I do what's right in front of me and watch and listen for the beauty that appears.  I keep going forward for Silas, for myself, for Lu, and for whatever it is that happens next.  I know what that Should be, but I can't worry about that anymore.  I can only face what Is and somehow deal with everything that Isn't.

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How have you changed?  Do you have expectations of how things should turn out?  Do you get the ear-worm of music?  What are your refrains?  Do you manage to have nice days, despite your loss and sadness?

Still

Just before the turn on the year Angie asked for one word. One word from each, to make a community poem, to kick off the year of still life 365, the art blog by and for the community. I didn't have my word until it was too late, until the submission deadline was past. I had two, actually, but they were connected and I even knew which I would pick if I had to pick just the one. But deadline was past, and so the choosing was academic. Except that my next thought was that surely both of my words must've made it in by someone else's hand, being so obvious and all.

The poem came out beautiful and stunning, and heartbreaking. Just like you would hope it would. However, and this was a bit of a shock to me, my first choice word? It wasn't there.

The word was still. I meant it in terms of time, as in ongoing, continuous, in progress. Although, of course, the other meaning, the one the describes state of being, defined as "calm, motionless, quiet," didn't escape me either. I kinda liked the double meaning.

I miss him, still. I am not the same, still. It hurts, still. I am sad, still, at times. Of some things, I am less forgiving, still. Of others things-- more, now. I love him, always.

The week building up to A's third anniversary days was busy. And mostly normal. That was ok, comforting even. I thought, at times, that the busy was preventing me from getting ready in some sense I didn't fully understand myself and couldn't really articulate. At other times, though, I've thought that the busy was protecting me from really looking at what it was we were moving towards.

Three years gone. In its approach, it felt to me like an anniversary significant in a whole new way. It's not the first, the towering marker at end of that first overwhelming year, last of the firsts when you don't begin to know what to expect. It's not the second, the first after the first, when maybe you are starting to recognize the outlines of the thing. The third felt, if this makes sense, like the first of many. Like maybe I should have this figured out by now. And for most of the weekend it seemed like maybe I did. Until last night.

What took hold of me as I climed into bed last night wasn't gentle. It wasn't the missing, to which I cop freely any day of the week. It wasn't the sadness-- I know sadness and this wasn't it. No, the thing that made me cry the full-bodied cry like I haven't in long-long time, the thing that made me howl, the realization that felt physically like what I imagine getting kicked in the chest by a horse might feel, was unexpected and it was brutal. I realized, suddenly and inescapably, that I don't just love A, and I don't just miss him.

I realized that I want him, still.

It's not that I thought of him as unwanted until then. He was certainly wanted. It's just that in a universe governed by laws of physics continuing to want him now doesn't do one a whole lot of good. And it's not that I was suppressing this wanting, at least not in any way that I was aware of. I just didn't know that the wanting was in the picture, you know, still.

The realization did nothing to my perception of reality, by the way. That internalized understanding of the futility of my wanting is exactly what made me wail with impotent sorrow. Time is still unidirectional. And A is still gone, and always will be.

I knew exactly what I wanted to say, and it still took me the whole damn day to write this post. Processing, integrating, thinking, feeling. I woke up this morning feeling tender, like I went a couple of rounds with something much bigger than me. I guess I did.

How long has it been for you? What, if anything, has been surprising so far? If you've been at this for a while, how have the anniversaries treated you?  

the inescapability of karma, maybe

Angie is a writer, poet, and painter. With the stillbirth of her second daughter Lucia, Angie began writing about mothering and grief at Still Life with Circles. She shares a piece of art, music or writing from a bereaved parent or family member every day at the year-long creative project still life 365, and paints and illustrates mizuko jizo and other aspects of babyloss, pregnancy and parenting.

For a couple of months after my daughter was stillborn at 38 weeks, my husband and I saw a grief therapist recommended by the hospital and our midwives' group. She served a purpose, mainly by helping us answer the thousands of questions we suddenly had:

How do we tell everyone that our daughter died?

What do we do with the nursery?

Is it okay to tell people that we would prefer not to receive flowers?

How do I eat breakfast in the diner where they fussed about my pregnancy?

How do we talk to each other about something other than her death?

After a few months, when those mundane moments of terror in the market passed, our therapy sessions became unproductive. She would ask how my husband felt and he would say, "Hungry."

She would ask me how I felt and I would tell her about Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed, compassion, Buddhism, and suffering. Her eyes would glaze over and she then she would tell me I was avoiding my true feelings by intellectualizing.

"Perhaps individual therapy might be more beneficial for us," I mentioned to my husband as we left her office one snowy Tuesday. I had some bigger questions. This therapist wanted to educate us about our grief, not philosophize about the nature of the universe. I felt nostalgic for a time in which I never lived where a stinky Socrates sat in the town center, just waiting for someone to pose a question about fate, death and the gods. I needed an oracle, an unemployed philosophy PhD. Or maybe even a lama.

photo by MC-Leprosy

I began seeing my Buddhist therapist again. I saw him many years earlier, when I was a single woman bitching about my non-committal ex-boyfriend, insomnia, and my career. I have dabbled in Buddhism for fifteen years. And by dabble, of course, I mean reading Buddhist teachings and writing, but not finding a regular sangha, or community.

Sure, I meditated, occasionally visited a Buddhist monastery for group meditation and teachings, but I never sought an actual teacher who challenged me. Zen. Tibetan. Shambhalan. It didn’t really matter. I sometimes just wanted to feel people around me who could sit quietly together. Intellectually, Buddhism just makes sense to me. Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by our attachments to worldly pleasures and illusions of happiness. One needs to be accountable for his or her actions in every aspect of your life. Compassion, meditation, letting go of attachments and kindness can change suffering. Totally get it. Of course, there were times when I would get fascinated by some obscure text and teaching, but mostly I lived by the basic tenets, except the no wine thing. Alcohol always found a place in my Buddhism.

When I thought I should seek therapy, I sought a Buddhist therapist. I didn’t want therapy devoid of my spiritualism. I sought a more holistic solution to my angst and emotional ennui. The Buddhist therapist became sort of a de facto teacher for a lone wolf like myself. He guided me in meditation. He gave me some incredibly deep insights that mirrored my own beliefs. I learned more from him in the eight month period than I could have imagined. My therapist suggested that perhaps I was a Pratyekabuddha, or a bodhisattva who develops realizations without the guidance of a guru. He encouraged me repeatedly to seek a teacher. He pointed out, "Of course, you know, the challenges of that path are always arrogance and misguidance."

Of course, I have always been arrogant and misguided.

It made sense for me to visit the Buddhist therapist again after my daughter died and I was flailing. After I had met with him for a few sessions, we had begun reincorporating the Four Reminders into our sessions, which had been a bit revelatory to me in my earlier therapy.

1  ::  the preciousness of human birth (It is a gift you are here)

2  ::  the truth of impermanence (You are gonna die)

3  ::  the reality of suffering (Life’s gonna hurt)

4  ::  the inescapability of karma (You better do it right, or you are doing it again.)

He mentioned the last one again. "Karma," he said, "is how our actions affect our suffering."

"Oh, I have been meaning to talk to you about that," I said. And I had. I’d been thinking about how different religions deal with suffering. Majoring in Religion at university, I became fascinated with theodicy, which is the theological problem of reconciling evil and suffering in the world with the existence of a just and good God. But, in Buddhism, suffering is a whole different animal. Buddhists mostly take out God, but leave the suffering. Suffering is the nucleus around which Buddhist thought orbits. Still, something never sat right with me and karma. I want to believe that if someone commits a horrible sin against man or humanity, he or she will suffer eventually. 

But what if you are suddenly the one suffering?

"Uh, yeah, with something like stillbirth or the death of your baby without any reason, I wanted to know, uh, you know, I mean, when I think about karma, with this kind of suffering, the bad-things-happen-to-good-people-type suffering, uh, this is awkward, but what I wanted to know is: do Buddhists think it is my own fault that my daughter died?"

"Of course not," he said, after a pause. "At least not in the way that you are talking about. Traditional Buddhists feel that in our past lives we were all kinds of people: thieves, mothers, butchers, farmers, murderers, liars, nuns, doctors, children, and animals. A monk once told me that if we piled the bones of all the lives we have lived, it would reach through three universes. You may be going through your loss as a result of past karma from a life hundreds of years ago."

I hated that answer.

I wanted to spit on the floor and demand my money back. In no uncertain terms, I told him so. Then he clarified that the complexities of the idea of karma makes it difficult to explain, but Buddhists do not traditionally blame the victim for their own suffering. You could study karma for years and not quite get it. The Buddha taught not to take his words literally. He said to use this teaching to develop my own understanding of the universe. He asked me what I thought. What does karma mean to you now, as the mother of a dead baby?

I think the world is chaotic and random and often cruel. The death of my child had nothing to do with me—nothing I did, nothing my husband did, nothing my daughter did. She just died.

Thinking that Lucia’s death is my karma, or heaven forbid, her karma, or the karma of my entire tribe is of no comfort to me. Without a physical reason why Lucy died, it is hard not to search for a metaphysical one instead. It is hard not to speculate on why the Volcano Gods are angered, or what action in my youth caused my daughter to die now. And yet, I reject that. The guilt of that interpretation would eat me from the inside out until I am nothing but a withered shell of a parent.

To me karma means something much different than tit for tat. Spiritually, I have to figure out my own reason to move forward. What I do have control over is what I do with my experience of chaos and suffering in the world. This life, right now, is my choice. This is my karma. What am I going to do with this experience of loss?

Compassion. Fear. Love. Understanding. Grief. Sadness. Comfort. Kindness. Anger. Patience. Misplaced emotion. Mourning. Selfishness. Selflessness. If I toss each one, carefully peeled and scrubbed, into a blender and drink this past year down, I hope to emerge healthier. I hope this bitter juice helps me emerge more of those things I believe makes the world a place less wrought with suffering. I control that part of me, the patient loving compassionate part, the part that experiences other people's suffering and responds with love. Since Lucy died, I am frequently impatient. I am frequently unloving and unlovable. I sometimes give into anger and pettiness. But I try to use those experiences to forgive. Myself. First for the emotion, and then for the death of my daughter.

I have to forgive myself everyday.

As I walked away from that session, the therapist said one last thing just as I left his room.

"Maybe Lucy fulfilled her karma by living her life just as she lived it. Maybe she simply needed the love and comfort of your womb for those months. Maybe she was supposed to teach you about love."

Maybe.

Did you seek out a counsellor, therapist, or spiritual mentor after the loss of your baby? Why, or why not? What phrases, concepts, or exercises learned in therapy have contributed to your healing? What moments felt at odds with what you needed to heal? Do you remember a session that felt like hard work for you? Why, and where did it bring you?

Well, How Did I Get Here?

I know for many (most?) of you, the decision to have another baby after the death of the same is as innate and natural and "Well, DUH" as drinking a glass of water or breathing. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that for many it's hardly a "decision" at all, but a compelling force or internal drive. Or something.

And not that it's easy for anyone to go back down that road, but for some, like me and a few others in my shoes who have more than just "Well, that was just a fluke of (really fucking abysmal) luck, really" it's not quite so easy to jump back into the saddle. It is, in fact, a decision. Maybe you have some grim odds to contend with on the next go-round, or a few more rounds of reproductive nonsense ahead of you, or perhaps you're just scared out of your mind. Or maybe some ugly combination of those circumstances. In any case, rather unlike, say, Elizabeth McCracken who averred from her hospital bed -- freshly blown apart by the death of her son -- that she would (!) indeed have another baby, I loudly proclaimed from the NICU: "Hell to the No."

So it's rather sheepishly that I stand here before you, three years later, 23+ weeks pregnant. What happened?!

Someone here asked me recently how I did it, how I made this decision, what my thought process was, or how I otherwise found my way from A to B, and I thought it would be useful to dissect my route in case anyone else out there had to face similar circumstances. And yet I sit here with my hands levitating above the keyboard and burping up the trail of breadcrumbs I've unfortunately consumed instead of leaving for the next traveller, because quite frankly, I honestly don't know how I got here. I'll set my water glass down, now.

I can in fact point to a few issues that -- when refocused through my new sporty Grief Goggles -- altered a bit and allowed me to sit somewhat comfortably where I am now as opposed to where I was almost three years ago now.

The primary contributor to this shift, you'll probably be sorry to hear, is simply the passage of Time. I remember when I first stumbled out my door to walk the dog in a haze of tears and blackness, one of my neighbors said something stupid like "It will feel better with time," and I wanted to punch her. (And oh my god, is she ever one of the sweetest women who said and did some simply lovely things for me a few days later.) But it turns out, it's one of those trite little sayings that I now agree with, I just think I should have the power to say and not a bystander.

Time does help. For starts, Time gave the doctors opportunity to fully and completely research what on earth happened, the results being: They have no fucking clue. But. They ran (and I found out last May continue to run) Maddy's samples through the Genome project multiple times, and presented her case at conferences, and with each day (month, year) that passes without a genetic hit, it looks more and more like the Ockham's Razor death rationale: undetected placental abruption and/or infection. Because the odds of a never-been-seen before autosomal recessive fuck up between two people from different ethnic backgrounds are apparently outstanding. And not to say our luck isn't piss poor, and those recurrent odds for the abruption/infection aren't daunting, but sure beats the hell out of 1:4.

But you know, the geneticist could still be right. And again, here's where Time has helped to an amazing degree: I have transformed from a pre-Maddy cautious optimist, to a post-Maddy pessimist, to a neo-post-Maddy realist. I no longer think in terms of odds, nor do I "hope" or "wish" or envision things. I now rely on the basic premise of probability, stripped of statistical odds: Either something will happen, or it won't. Either the baby will live, or it will die. I will get in a fatal accident on my way to buy groceries, or I won't. The chicken will catch fire under the broiler, or it won't. And I know for many such an oversimplification probably reeks of negativity and a 50/50 coin flip, but for me, in my circumstances, it has been remarkably freeing to simply let statistics go and deal with the end game. I used to mull over things like genetic testing risks for example, and now I simply throw my hands up: Either it will be fine, or it won't. (I did decide on genetic testing because I don't want any surprises this time around except for the big one at the end, but I certainly didn't sweat the odds of problems arising from said testing.)  And you know, if it isn't, I've been there. I've hence liberated myself from months of stress over minutia, and will simply wait until the end to find out what's going on. Thankfully, I'm a patient person.

Which leads me to Time and the fear factor: I was so completely afraid after Maddy died that I couldn't have sex let alone think about eventually bearing another child. And there was a time after I climbed online and realized all the other ways in which babies die when I wondered how we exist as a species, and how I could ever be talked into that again. I completely understand people who almost grow more fearful rather than comforted after reading other blogs -- just think, you could escape problem A and fall head first into problem B. There are those here who have lost babies more than once. Support groups can be sobering reminders that lightning indeed strikes twice.

But enough Time has passed that frankly I feel as if I now know all the ways in which babies can die (or at least the big group headings -- sometimes the subgroup can be a surprise). As I wrote to someone recently, I recognize all the bogeymen now. It's not that I feel immune to them, or don't think they won't pop up, it's that I no longer fear them, and they won't surprise me. I see them, lurking there around the corner, and in that way they've totally lost their power. Should one jump out, I'll say, "Oh, it's you," and know exactly who to contact for support. I've mentally walked my way to the end of almost every bad dream, and I'm strangely very comforted by that.

I want to put in an aside here that is too important for parenthesis: Some people here are dealing with the odds and the fear that not only will future babies be at risk, but their own lives as well. There are women reading here who (sometimes barely) averted death due to preeclampsia (and other complications), and the odds of recurrence of that particular problem go up steeply. I consider myself thankful that when I ponder my outcomes, I am alive at the end of each -- in fact, it was a huge factor in my ability to move forward. My worst case scenario has already been lived through, and I feel confident that I can and will make it through intact again should I have to. Others do not have this luxury of (at the very least) being able to envision themselves at the end of a process that goes horribly awry for the second time. And that is a whole other debate and discussion and risk taking endeavor that Time probably does nothing to ease. If you've had to make a subsequent decision that involves your life, I -- and I'm sure others -- welcome hearing from you in the comments.

Back to my final breakthrough: Enough Time passed that considering another child became it's own debate, not one necessarily connected anymore to the discussions we had about having another prior to Maddy. This was both a blessing and a curse as it turned out. We had moved since the last decision was made, we have new social lives, Bella is older and our parenting has changed dramatically along with her needs.  Thus, it was easier (and sometimes actually fun) for three of us to move as a unit, and yet it was also easier to imagine going through a (probably) stressful/problematic pregnancy.  We had come to the place in our hellish aftermath where we felt like doing things again: traveling, eating out, relishing time for the three of us, for the two of us, for me. My grandmother died last summer, and I saw my mother and my aunt work and grieve together and realized I wanted to at least try to give that to Bella -- no one should have to to deal with a senile me by themselves. And in that way, in this jumbled mish-mash of plusses and negatives, I feel as though this child within me now -- should he live -- will be his own person, with his own identity. He was discussed and planned and brought at least this far for a separate set of reasons, through different rationales. He will always be connected to his older sister -- it's hard to say if I would have had a third, and yet it's hard to say I would have ever had another.

I am not kidding myself here -- this will work, or it won't. I cannot claim to be learning anything about myself five months in, nor am I undergoing emotional shifts in my missing because I am pregnant, but frankly that's not why I decided to try and get pregnant again. I did this simply because I wanted another child of our own genetic make-up, and we'll know if it was a good idea -- or not -- come mid-May.

Did you decide to have another child after your babyloss, or was it more of an instinctual feeling that really didn't warrant discussion or debate? If you did have a decision to make, what went into your decision? How much time passed? What were the mitigating factors? What if anything shifted inside of you (or happened externally) to make a subsequent pregnancy possible? Did any of you decide "Hell no," and remain in that place?

birthing a dying child

Janel Kragt Bakker is proud mother to Caritas, whose name means "self-giving love." Cara suffered from a debilitating brain tumor and massive hydrocephalus. She was born prematurely on October 16, 2009, and was removed from life support the following day after her condition was deemed untreatable. Janel, her husband Laryn, and their two-year-old daughter Alleia are learning how to live their "new normal" lives amidst their profound grief.

I discovered Janel quite by accident when she referenced my previous writing on a topic that continues to tangle and evade me: our perception of birth and how our notion of our bodies as vessels changes with loss. Janel wrote this piece to be featured in Catapult Magazine, a publication that explores Christian theology. Regardless of what beliefs we subscribe to, the philosophical prompts Janel offers are universal. She expands my hot-headed thinking with grace, and she was kind enough to allow us to share her reflections with you.

~ Kate

Immediately after a woman has birthed her baby, writes midwife Jan Verhaeghe,

Every cell in her body knows and shows her strength. At the end of hours of pain and emotions felt more intensely than at any other time in life, she is exultant. To know the exhilaration, euphoria, and power that comes with the exhaustion and pain of giving birth is truly empowering. After giving birth, a woman knows she can do anything, accomplish any goal.

~ "The Empowerment of Birth." New Life Journal. December 2003.

Verhaughe is certainly not alone is her assessment of the birthing experience. Giving birth has long been associated with creativity and conquest. And among many contemporaries, especially proponents of “natural birth,” the experience of giving birth is perceived as the zenith of women’s empowerment. I do not share this perception. On October 16, 2009, I gave birth to a dying child. The experience was one of absolute helplessness.

Twenty-nine weeks into my pregnancy and two months after receiving the devastating news that Caritas Anne, our daughter in utero, suffered from a massive and likely fatal brain tumor, my body went into labor. Due to pregnancy complications caused by Cara’s condition, my labor could not be stopped. All night my uterus contracted and my cervix dilated. At the appropriate time, I began pushing. Cara’s head, swelled beyond the size of that of a full-term infant by spinal fluid and lesion, would not descend through the birth canal. After I was quickly wheeled into an operating room for a cesarean section, I stared at a partition while a team of health professionals wrested my ailing daughter from my body. She did not cry; she barely breathed. And there was nothing I could do to make things right. I couldn’t even touch my child. While another team of doctors worked to intubate and stabilize my daughter, I did what she could not do and the only thing I could do; I wailed.

As expectant parents dream up their their ideal “birth plans,” young mothers describe their birthing experiences around water coolers or playground equipment, and well-wishers congratulate new parents on Facebook walls, the birthing experience is often closely linked to merit. The fewer the interventions, the longer the unmedicated labor, the more (or less) dramatic the coping with labor pain, the bigger the baby, the higher the Apgar scores, and so on, the more heroic the birthing woman. Anyone who believes machismo is a strictly male phenomenon should listen to newly minted mothers swap their birthing stories. The natural birth movement in particular and the contemporary North American culture of parenthood in general deemphasize the unavoidable fact that no matter how much a woman takes care of her body, knows her body and trusts her body, the birthing experience may go horribly wrong.

As Kate Inglis, another mother of a baby who died, writes,

People anoint bodies in hospital beds with words like “fighter” and “miracle” and “goddess” because of the cultural urge to wrap up formative life events with neat little bows. But in doing so, they silently demote everyone else who dies. Or who screams for an epidural, or who falls apart at the incubator of a one-pound child.

We do not exist or fail to exist — or birth and "fail" to birth — because some are stamped with a rubber imprint of GOOD or STRONG or WORTHY and some are not.

~ The Passing-through of Necessary Spaces, Glow in the Woods.

The fact is that giving birth, like so many life experiences, is largely outside of our control. Giving birth is a powerful event, but the power is witnessed rather than manufactured by the mother, father, child or anyone else in the room. To give birth is to encounter beauty, mystery and transcendence, but to give birth is also to meet grave danger and to be laid bare before cosmic forces that we cannot control any more than we can understand.

portrait of surrender (not of the author), lovingly shared by mainemomma

Receptivity is a central motif in Mariology across Christian traditions. "Here I am, the servant of the Lord," says Mary in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke as the birth of Jesus is foretold. "Let it be with me according to your word." Mary’s openness to the mysterious movement of God is her chief virtue and ours. But opening ourselves to that which is beyond ourselves is dangerous business. The possibility of parenthood is no exception. When a couple open themselves to reproduction, they also open themselves to the relentless pain of being unable to conceive, unable to give birth. A pregnant woman opens herself to being cruelly betrayed by her own body, to standing by helplessly while her child is betrayed by his or her own body. Opening oneself to giving birth is opening oneself to suffering and death-to managing debilitating handicaps, to burying one’s child, to being overcome with sadness at the mere sight of another parent doting on a healthy newborn. Opening oneself to giving birth is opening oneself to hell.

Of course, opening oneself to giving birth is also opening oneself to beauty and transcendence. When I gave birth to our firstborn daughter two years ago, it was indeed an experience of elation and wonder. My husband and I were brought into the presence of God in a unique and profound way as we marveled at the miracle of new life. The veil was also somehow lifted, though in a different way, as I gave birth to Cara. We encountered a God who knows what it is like to watch one’s own child die. And we strongly sensed that God suffered with us and with our daughter.

Some Old Testament scholars define "lament" as the reaction to a belief-shattering experience. Even though I knew better, before I carried and birthed my daughter Cara I believed that if I did what was right, I could expect positive outcomes. This is my lament. Metaphysically speaking, I do not know why bad things happen. I do not know whether God wills them, merely allows them, cannot stop them or something else entirely. What I do know is that I am not fully the master of my own destiny and that one day I will again witness the birth of something beautiful.

~ Janel Kragt Bakker

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Reflecting on birth, what do you feel you know? What do you feel you'll never know? What is your lament?