Honoring Brynn
I’m staring at the maternity ward ceiling, making a deal with God. The ultrasound tech asked me if I wanted to look at the screen. Nope. He was offering me evidence that my full-term baby girl had no heartbeat. My eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling. The deal I made was this: I would not leave my faith in God for this as long as I was not left alone for one second without celestial support.
I called Jimmy, my husband, and said the baby went away. Those were the words that I could muster. He called his parents to pick up Shane, our 3-year-old son, who was currently snuggled against me on the hospital gurney. “Is she blubbering?” I asked about his mother. In my shock, I could not deal with anyone else’s sadness—it made the situation too real.
We focused on getting through labor and tried to put all other thoughts out of our minds for the moment. I slept in a pitocin drip, and in the early morning, I called in the midwife to get things going. She broke my water, my labor progressed furiously and I gave birth within the hour, at 7:30 am on January 29, 2010.
Jimmy held our baby girl and named her Brynn. I said her middle name would be Tessa, a nickname for Teresa, the nickname for my great grandmother and my namesake. She was utterly beautiful to us, perfect and heavy, weighing 6 lbs. 14 oz., measuring 20 1/2 inches, taller than her brother had been. According to what we could see, and what we were told, there was no evidence of the cause of death. I couldn’t help but ask her what happened, one of the few sentences I would utter to her little body. What happened to you?
It had been a healthy pregnancy, my second, and I had felt confident for all 9 months of it. The concerns I had during the last weeks of pregnancy were quickly calmed when voiced to my midwife. The strange left-side contractions I felt 2 nights prior were dismissed as indigestion over the phone. I never felt Brynn move after those contractions, and I now realized that’s when she died.
We came home from the hospital without our baby. She had been kept in a refrigerator and picked up by the funeral home the day before. Jimmy and I would take turns playing with Shane while the other locked themselves in the upstairs bathroom, turned on the fan, and ran the shower for more white noise so we could wail as loudly as we needed to without scaring our toddler. My milk came in. I could not fathom how I’d move on without my baby to nurse. That was the lowest point for me.
I had intense dreams where nobody knew she was alive but us, and we had to keep her in a box so nobody would take her away because they didn’t understand the magic. I met my friend at a playground after holing up at home for weeks. While our kids played, I told her how I kept trying to figure out ways to bring my baby back. After she’d been dead a month. My friend looked at me with deep concern, probably wondering if she should alert a healthcare professional.
I called multiple mental health agencies myself, actually. On the phone I would say my baby died and I’d like a therapist. Most never called back. I finally found a grief therapist and I hated it. Unless you’ve been through as devastating a loss, you can’t really guide a person through the process. Sharing my gory, blood-soaked horror story with someone who responded with professionalism was more painful than keeping my thoughts to myself.
Returning to the outside world reopened wounds. I was keenly aware that my presence gutted people. Casual acquaintances in our neighborhood who had seen me pregnant, asking where’s the baby. I’d have to retell my tragic tale and watch their faces turn sad and pale. Then I felt like somehow I was supposed to comfort them. It was exhausting.
Socializing was exhausting because I felt I had to protect acquaintances from thinking about my dead baby, when she was all I wanted to think about. I hated hearing “Sorry for your loss.” Anyone who said “Everything happens for a reason,” to me is lucky their throat is still intact. Interacting with people, even close friends, was unbearably awkward for me, often made me feel more alone, and sometimes made me violently rageful.
The first time I took my son to his regular playgroup after my maternity/bereavement leave, a mom congratulated me as she could see I was no longer pregnant.
“No, the baby died.” I didn’t mince words because I didn’t want to leave any room for confusion. The problem with my sentence of choice is that it’s so shocking it seems like a really dark joke. I watched her jaw drop and her eyes look down. I started laughing at the absurdity of this moment. I was just trying to get through a 45-minute playgroup here.
That mom did not smile, speak, or look at me again. Our children collided and her daughter’s lip began to bleed. Fitting, I thought, now I can be the heartless, laughing mother of a stillborn and, by offspring, inflict bodily harm on your children as well.
I had to forgive the people in my life for not knowing how to respond to my unimaginable, devastating loss. Everyone grieves differently and is allowed to name for themselves what helps and what doesn’t. For whatever it’s worth, I appreciated cards, texts asking how I am, messages of love, food, and books. The books that I found the most helpful were “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination” by Elizabeth McCracken, “I Will Carry You” by Angie Smith, “Naming the Child” by Jenny Schroedel, “Closer to the Light” by Melvin Morse, and “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. These authors went to the depths with me and comforted me.
Three weeks after giving birth to Brynn, I started a blog (www.honoringbrynn.blogspot.com), to let people know how I was doing without having to respond to all the individual concerns and to protect myself from well-meaning people and their good intentions.
I didn’t have the energy to be anything other than authentically grieving, heartbroken, and crazy. It was too exhausting to pretend to be anything else. In “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Joan Didion talks about how 9 months after she loses her husband, she begins to feel fragile. How at this point, we see our continued cognitive deficits, anxieties, whatever creeps in at this point … our sadness, as self-pity. As “failure to manage the situation.” The blog freed me from the social pressure to appear as though I was “managing.”
The blog was a safe place for me to talk about my baby, who, in spite of dying in my womb and not having a birth certificate, was every bit a real girl to me.
Brynn was a super active baby. At her ultrasound we saw her doing forward rolls. We were in disbelief. My nickname for her was "Kicky." She seemed to be searching for the exit. “Buscando la Salida,” I used to say to her. I knew all along that I was in for a huge challenge with her. I had a sense that she was very strong-willed and independent. She was an unapologetic, fierce feminine force. She kicked me so hard that last week of her life, I could see the shape of her foot extending my belly.
We had our little bedtime routine, every night when I’d lay down next to Shane to sing him to sleep, she’d move along to the song.
She did not like meat of any kind. I could eat the most bitter vegetables all day long with her. I’d have an over-easy egg on a bed of dark greens with balsamic vinaigrette for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I drank gallons of lime-ade mixed with coconut milk. Some mornings I’d have a lime-coconut popsicle before breakfast. I craved grapefruits and Greek yogurt. She was a healthy eater.
I am so proud of my daughter and thoroughly enjoy sharing her. She is a legend to me. A feminine spirit so wild and free that no body could hold her. When I think of her I think of being unapologetically who I am. And cosmically connected. Writing about her healed me. I did not know then the profound impact my daughter would have on the world.
Readers began checking the blog routinely—I could feel their love for her. When I discovered she’d been buried in a T-shirt, friends and acquaintances donated their wedding dresses in Brynn’s name to an organization that sews infant burial gowns. I got to say what was helpful to me and what wasn’t and let people into my grief in a way that felt authentic and safe for me and resonated with readers. I learned to speak my truth and found the meaningful support that I longed for.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, scientists noticed something peculiar. Amidst all the devastation, Magnolia trees, which normally only flowered in Spring, were in full bloom in Autumn. Somehow, the trees were aware of the urgent need to germinate new trees in order to survive as a species or perhaps for some other secret, miraculous reason.
Like the Magnolias blossoming at the wrong time, it is more common for moms of stillborns to get pregnant again within the year. That fact didn’t make it feel any less miraculous that only 3 months after giving birth to my little Brynnie, I discovered that I was 6 weeks pregnant. I qualified as high-risk because of Brynn’s death, and I found an amazing team, a doctor and therapist who’d both been personally impacted by infant loss. These were my people.
Noah James was born alive on December 27, 2010. It felt like the whole world was waiting for him.
I continued to blog for the next 4 years, through my next pregnancy with Noah.The following year I blogged through my separation and divorce. I blogged about struggling as a single parent, dating after divorce, and eventually about the transformation of faith that Brynn had brought me through.
Brynn has many lessons for me and I’m grateful that death does not stop her. I learned that detaching emotionally does not decrease pain. It’s so common to try to mask pain with anger, antidepressants, and alcohol. I’ve learned that the best and fastest way to relieve pain is by just letting pain hurt. You do get breaks, and eventually, the sting subsides. I’m not going to lie, it HURT so freakin’ bad. So bad. So bad that I entered a place in my mind that you can only get to through immense pain. The door that opens remains open, granting wisdom, gratitude for all that’s left, and strangely, confidence.
When I was deep in grief, nothing else bothered me. I remember a friend relaying her extreme frustration dealing with Xfinity, and as I listened, I could remember getting that upset about things that weren’t dead babies but that time seemed like a faraway place. I had long been consumed with money worries. When Brynn died, money seemed like a ridiculous thing to care so much about. In grief, I was largely healed from generalized anxiety and people-pleasing tendencies. Brynn shook the tree. I lost some friendships and gained others that were better aligned with my transformation.
I am truly a happier person because of the perspective I’ve gained. I’m honestly grateful for the experience. Loving Brynn and experiencing the deepest sorrow both softened and bolstered me. I survived every mother’s greatest fear come true. And now I know I will survive it all until I don’t, and then it won’t matter. I still cry about losing her Earth-side. I’m freed from holding back my pain or my tears.
I started to write Brynn letters. One night I remember writing to her and I felt her enter the room. I thought I was probably going mad and just wanted it so bad that I made myself believe it. Until Brynn died, I was unsure that people could communicate with the dead. I thought mediumship might be a scam. When Brynn died, the top of my head opened in direct connection with heaven. I moved closer to heaven, and heaven moved closer to me. The pain was still excruciating at times, but I began to feel lighter as I connected with Brynn’s spirit with more confidence. I eventually took mediumship classes, where I learned to fine-tune the skill of communicating with people who have passed. I feel a kinship with the dead.
She is my daughter. I talk to her, and she talks to me, in ways only I know. As one of my favorite bereavement cards that I received says: I was her angel. Now she’s mine.
Little Lady, my love for you is as boundless as your spirit is. Thank you for choosing me to be your mom.
