Life After Stillbirth: Year 9

Trigger Warning: If you have found this post because you have suffered a stillbirth yourself and are new in your grief journey, this blog post may be too harsh for your heart at this time. It is okay to be in different spectrums of grief. In no way is it meant to negate your pain or personal experience. This is my account of life after loss nearly a decade later. It is only my truth.

It has been years since I have hit publish on a blog post. This is not to say that I haven't written posts. I just could not bring myself to click the orange button that reads "publish". I struggled with whether my words needed to be heard or not. My last post has been read 6,000 times. It is a raw and true word straight from my heart; I hope it found those that needed to hear it. Forgiveness is more than okay in grief; It is absolutely necessary. 

Since that post, my heart has not felt that my words held a space in the world of infant loss. Anger no longer plagued me and tears no longer filled my entire days. I questioned if I was actually sane. How could a Mother grieving her infant live a life full of joy? But it's true... my days are joyous and I am at a place in life I could not have imagined 9 years ago.

In the nearly last decade since our loss I have been told, "I don't know how you do it. I just couldn't go on.", more times than I can count. As if I chose this life or spun a wheel and was okay with the worst thing ever happening to me being laying our infant to rest.  Loss is so deeply hard. But hard is not the same as bad. And if you have a moment, I'd like to share the complexity of life after loss. How beauty has truly come from our ashes.

Our beautiful Peyton Grace would be "9" this week. Sometimes I daydream that she is reading aloud to me, or that we're baking bread together. But most often I find myself thanking God for the gifts her life and death brought to my own life. My life is not empty of her, but full of her. 

I was raised in an agnostic and atheist home. I had never read the Word or even held a thought that God truly existed. It was a fable I chose not to interact with. That is until I labored and birthed Peyton. As I held her in my arms in the late hours of November 17th, 2012, a pastor named Jon came to my bedside. In my darkest hours he held my hand. He blessed Peyton. In the hours that Jon sat with me I felt quite literally held. I was not alone. He was with me.

Jon heard our story that November evening and he felt that the most important place for him to be in that time was with us. Because he made that choice, that one choice, he changed my life. Our daughter died. And then Christ found me. 

This is not to say that I was not angry, or that I did not want to end my own life after our loss. Because I was angry and I did not want to exist without our baby. That is a different part of our story, however. In earlier posts, the anger and sadness is so apparent. The first few years after our loss were hard. Definitely. I struggled with depression and post-partum depression, and even now I have anxiety that I sometimes have to take medication for. Our journey was not ideal, and even now, I have wounds that cannot heal; they simply exist as part of myself. 

Through the years however, I have seen with my own eyes how God worked through Peyton and used her life and death for goodness. 

I will not go into details here, as I have explained in earlier posts already, but after Peyton passed away the OB I had been seeing and the pathologist both refused to meet with me to go over the autopsy. This led me on a wild goose hunt to find someone knowledgable that could go over the autopsy with us. This led me to Dr. K. The first time I met Dr. K, I walked out of the room and told my husband, "I never want to see this woman again. I don't like her!" She told me difficult, yet true, things. Alas, Dr. K assisted us in getting pregnant with our oldest son. She later induced me at 34 weeks because of a placental abruption saving his life. Years later, she helped us have our 2nd son and then a daughter, both also premies and both also saved by Dr. K due to placental abruptions. Only because of Peyton did I come to know and love Dr. K.

God promises us that he will try us. God doesn't say that he won't allow us to go through hard things. He does not say that life will be easy. But he does promise to strengthen us. He does promise to shape our hearts. 

When I was pregnant with Peyton I was on the path to self destruction and sin. I was not a very good person. I cared solely about myself. Peyton is wrapped tightly in the arms of Jesus and I know her brief life was just the amount of time God planned for her. We do not get to choose how our own lives or our children's lives will be used - but I have come to know and understand that Peyton's life, saved my own. Because my daughter lived, I know Jesus. How amazing is that? In walking with the Lord, I have seen that many of the hard events in my life were not meant to cause me pain and anguish, but to turn me to the Lord and shape my heart in his image.

I am so grateful that I know Jesus because of my beautiful baby. My children know Jesus because of their big sister. I look at my life, and it's so apparent... Peyton is everywhere. 

Our Faith has been formed and continually strengthened because our daughter lived. I cannot begin to understand why this had to happen for the last nine years to play out the way they did - but I trust in Christ and also see how everything is interconnected. Our life today could not exist without our painful past. 

Saudade is the only word that comes close to explaining the feeling of life after loss. Peyton was absolutely beautiful. I see her in our oldest, Matthew. Their faces are the same. She is numbered among our family - our children count her among their siblings. Matthew, Ellis, and Abigail know her name, they know her face, and they know that her life led to their lives. Our children know that each one of them were always meant to exist in God's plan, in the very order he determined - Peyton, then Matthew, then Ellis, and lastly, Abigail. 

To our sweet Peyton Grace - Wishing you a heavenly 9th birthday. Half a breath, and I can see you again. In the parallel of a life that should be ours, but is not, you blow out the candles... love you our sweet P.