Day 8 - Social Mathematics

I went back to work full time 4 months after Jack passed away. I needed and wanted to get out of the house. I wanted a place that “needed” me and they treated me like family immediately. I met tons of new people in the first weeks/months. With every interaction, I’d do the social math of “do they know about Jack?” That felt like my identity (it probably always will) and so it felt like all these people didn’t really know me - I had no stories to tell about my 5 month old and no new photos for my desk and no physical living human being to bring in and show off so Jack was a part of me that they didn’t know. A few people went to high school with Ike and probably knew about it from Facebook. But generally most people didn’t know. Sometimes a person would ask “do you have kids” or sometimes it would come up in other random ways. But no matter how it came up, explaining you “had” a kid usually captures everyone’s attention whether they were involved in the conversation or not. And it usually makes the person who asked “do you have kids?” wince a little.

Often I do social math in various situations. Like is it worth speaking up when someone is talking about UVA and say something that shows I’ve had experience there and then I’d have to explain why and the entire thing becomes about me - I’d do the math and decide it’s not worth it. Or at a new doctor, do I explain or does the dermatologist for example not really need to know? Or someone is talking about pumping, do I chime in or listen and observe. If they don’t know about Jack, is that moment a time I want to bring up Jack & commander the convo?

Bringing up the story of your child dying is a heavy thing. It isn’t a flippant comment you add to a convo - it opens a huge conversation and sometimes I don’t have the emotional energy for it.

I have to be careful how I answer questions too. I’ve accidentally said “ I had a baby last summer” and before I can get out anymore of my sentences, the other person responds with “congratulations!” And then you feel like a jerk for having to say “but…” and explain the rest. It’s wretched. And then I catch myself managing the other persons emotions (which I’m not responsible to do) as they try to reel back in their words.

That’s exhausting. Grief is exhausting. Social math of when and where and who you share with is exhausting. Give yourself grace if you’ve experienced deep hurt and you just can’t _____ some days (you fill in the blank). A wise person once told me, in grief the only thing that isn’t optional is breathing and I’ve held onto that for a while now.

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Day 1 - July 12th

I have desired to write about Jack and our child rearing experiences in general for a while and I frequently push it off and it just simply isn't a "right now" priority. Starting today, on what would have been Jack's 2nd Birthday, I am going to write daily (or try to) for the next 35 days in remembrance of the 35 days he lived on this earth. It will likely be unedited, imperfect, and intentionally raw - partially for the sake of time (I work, do school and we have a toddler in foster care ok?!) and partially because that is the theme of our story, imperfection (made perfect through Christ). Today, I want to talk about birth. More specifically, medically complex birth. I get asked often if I had to have a mandatory c-section - thankfully no I did not. But I also did not expect to go into labor at 35 weeks and 5 days either and I am certain that is the worse option here. We came home from a week at the lake with Ike's family and as we are getting into bed Ike s

Day 2 - The NICU

The NICU is a place you are extremely grateful for but you also dread its existence. You are so thankful that your fragile baby has around the clock expert care but you also hate that your baby has to be there without you. And then when you are there you feel awkward - you’re the mother but his caretaker is the nurse - you have to ask permission or for help to hold the baby (so many lines/drains so it’s not easy to pick them up). It’s also just heartbreaking to see the other babies that have been there for weeks or even months. Jack’s isolette/crib/bed was next to a baby born at 24 weeks (on April 8 actually) and it was July 12… he was still tiny with a young mom who we witnessed have hard conversations about her capacity to care for such a tiny fragile baby. The baby on the other side was born via c section because his organs were on the outside of his belly (omphalocele) and he cried and cried and cried. (We actually had a mom bring a baby with this same diagnosis to our house in Ug

Day 6 - ECMO

After all that surgery talk, this seems like an appropriate time to talk about ECMO. ECMO stands for extracorporal membrane oxygenation - basically an exterior heart and lungs. Only a few hospitals in Virginia have trained teams and adequate machines to run ECMO. We learned a lot about it because there had to be someone in Jacks room 24 hours a day to monitor/run the machine. Like for bathroom breaks or lunch breaks - they had another trained ECMO person come and sit in the room while they took a break. We met almost every ECMO worker (a few didn’t do peds) and we talked with them a ton. They were present for many hard conversations with doctors, surgeons, nurses, chaplains, etc. They did things like get us lunch when the free lunch carts rolled by, bring us honey from home, update us on medical rounds that we missed. They felt like a second family. We wrote down almost all the nurses and ECMO techs Jack had - we wrote down 15 names for ECMO and I know we missed a few (like the night

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