yes sir, that’s my baby!

I have been wavering lately between the giddily goofy and intensely profound aspects of my being. Unfortunately, my timing is a little askew, and I am normally silly when seriousness is called for and visa versa. That said, I will warn you. This post is very likely going to touch upon both, and possibly swing between them with unexpected abruptness. Yes, I know I don’t need the word sudden before the word abrupt since one implies the other; I just like it there.

Newspaper headlines and the horrific deed of a woman who cut out her friend’s unborn baby have inadvertently set me to thinking about stillbirth. When this story was first told to me on Sunday, I was told that the murderess had recently experienced a “full term miscarriage.” Reading the news bits, I think that may have been inaccurate information (or there was more than one story). Still, the topic was already in my mind.

First of all, the media’s insistence on calling a stillbirth a full-term miscarriage gets under the skin of most of us who have experienced stillbirth. Even if it is acknowledged for what it is, no one who hasn’t been through it seems able to understand it.

A stillborn child is a child who died. If I had, for some reason, been at the hospital and hooked to monitors when my placenta abrupted, an emergency c-section would likely have resulted in a healthy child. If the child had died one hour after being born instead of one hour before getting to the hospital to deliver him, people would look at that as losing a child instead of losing (as one card I received put it) my hopes and dreams for the future. I would have a death certificate and official recognition that the child existed. The thing is, I KNEW that child. When someone lives inside you for awhile, you get to know them. I can tell you from observing the six children I get to keep at home that they are just like they were when they lived in me. Am I angry at anyone for not understanding this? Not really; I don’t think so. Sometimes, though, I do get upset that it is kept a silent predator.

Even in those news stories, this woman’s child is referred to as a fetus. That fetus would have likely survived had it been cut out by a surgeon as opposed to a madwoman. It would then be called a baby. Maybe it is the impersonal touch of calling stillbirth “fetal demise” that upsets me so. Maybe it is the fact that people who have so much control over how things are presented to others don’t care enough about that kind of loss to report it for what it is. Sometimes, though, I think that is the way with every illness and medical issue until a few high-profile celebrities are afflicted.

Next, I think about a friend who has MS like symptoms from time to time, and I get so darn frustrated for her. Even with something as silly as my ankle, the hardest part is just not knowing. It is so easy to slip into a paralyzingly enormous puddle of fear because everything is the unknown. With my problematic ankle, I find that I haven’t even asked for prayer, because I so badly need to know WHY it is bothering me BEFORE it gets better. I have the completely pessimistic belief that the ankle is going to stop acting up just long enough for me to go to a doctor only to resume its misbehavior the second I leave. I cannot imagine going through that on the larger scale of MS and MS-like illnesses. I cannot imagine having to never know when it might throw you for a loop. Quite frankly, it stinks.

Then, I am forced to look at the control aspect of my thoughts. Apparently, I am just as much of a control-freak as anyone. I might relinquish control to others through much of daily life, but I tell myself that I am really in control because I decided to let go. I cannot trust God to carry me through difficulty if I don’t know what that difficulty is going to be. It is almost as if I want to be the voice which tells God whether I should be burdened with something or not. As if I had the organizational skills to manage the intermingled cause and effect of billions of free will choices.

Perhaps we should all put on tutus and dance happily through chocolate pudding. It might not solve any problems, but highlighting the absurd goes a long way sometimes.

Still, I have a deep faith in God and know that I am in His arms. I guess I just needed to ramble. Other than the pudding, it looks like the giddy side has gone on vacation. Please forgive the heaviness of this entry. I am sure I will re-read it and find many ways that I have expressed myself badly or segued in such a way as to infer a certain point when indeed I was not meaning that at all. If so, you will find me cowering under my fuzzy blanket with a flashlight, reading my book and listening to mercyme.