What It Is To Wait After A Term Infant Loss and While Lactating

What It Is To Wait After A Term Infant Loss and While Lactating:
An open letter to those working with us in this adoption…

My husband and I have been longing to enlarge our family since 2004. In that year I did get pregnant easily, just as I had with my daughter, but I miscarried that already loved child early on in the pregnancy. It was a great loss, and we were happy when we felt ready to conceive again. At the turn of 2006 we conceived our son, who after 10 months of a very healthy pregnancy was killed during birth from a uterine rupture. Just after the cesarean surgery that attempted to save him, I began to bleed to death. I bled for nearly two hours before I implored the doctors to take my womb... and they did. So not only now did I have to drop to my knees with grief over my son, I also had to integrate somewhere into my being the fact that I would never be woman again in the manner of being able to hold life within. Very literally the only thing that kept me afloat during those times (aside from our living daughter) was hope.

We hoped and prayed that there was some way a child would still come into our lives, either by surrogacy or adoption. I threw all my baby supplies out the window (I really did; right onto the grass below), emptied my boy’s room, and waffled between despair and resolution that I would be doomed to a lifetime of unmet dreams (never having another baby) and a feeling of peace when the image of mothering a new child despite all this tragedy moved in.

And then along came J who introduced to us an opportunity to build our family and our love for another culture in a far away place that to us now seems not-so-far away, Rwanda. This child is already loved in so many mysterious ways stirring within me. I sit at night and chant his name (despite the fact that it could very well be a girl). I light a candle below Trace’s photo and ask for guidance on this journey to this baby and this country. Trace assures me everything is as it should be. Every two hours when I hook my sore, dripping breasts up to a hospital-grade pump and begin my 15 minutes of milk expression I visualize the baby suckling at the breast.

And none of this is easy. It sounds graceful, but really it is filled with faltering stumbling efforts to keep my chin up, my heart open and my resolve and courage high. A million times a day I sink. When I pump and picture a baby, I remember expecting Trace and picturing him… images of changing a diaper, giving him a massage, letting Ariah snuggle him to sleep, suckling at the breast, slinging him close to my body, his round curved, hunched over body conforming to my torso, swaying as I walk. Anyone who has slung a newborn knows this feeling in their cells. And then immediately my mind does a “Well, you visualized all of this with Trace and he died. This baby will not manifest either. You are doomed.”

Ugh. Dead in the water with fear.

And so it goes. Up and down, up and down… Terrified that it will never work or is all a joke, just like last time when everyone was excited and I had to come home from the hospital with my baby in a box. I could get to Rwanda and they could say no, and I could come home to all the excited people and have to say, “Just kidding. There’s no baby.” I know from my friends who have experienced infant loss that these feelings are totally normal. I know it from reading all the books pertaining to the subject. It is just very difficult to navigate a pregnancy or expectancy after the loss of a child; hard to have any faith in all the hope and faith. After all, we had that last time and it didn’t ensure anything.

And so now I walk this journey even differently from the woman who goes thru a subsequent pregnancy, because this is an international adoption and heck I haven’t ever even seen the faces of the people that are supposedly working on this other than J. The agency is in a different state, I have never seen the building, I have only ever talked to someone from there once, and it is impossible so far to get an answer to a call, difficult if possible to get a return call or email. I don’t really want to say it, but it can make me feel as if there may not really be an agency…. Maybe they are not legit? How would I know? I want to believe they are, believe me. What I would do for some hand holding—for someone at the agency to communicate with me on where things are, check in to see how everything is going with the process, with the waiting. Just a kind voice on the other end that reaches out, touches base, gives us an update and asks how we are. That would help to make things real for me. It would help to feel connected to the process and to trust that everything is legit and that the people we are working with and paying money to are indeed real humans.

I look at the diapers I got out when I thought that travel would be within a few weeks (we do cloth). There are diapers around the house, Ariah is using them for her baby dolls, and I am grumpier and grumpier by the minute. I got these out with Trace. He didn’t need them. I have one dead baby (not counting the miscarried one, and why shouldn’t I?) and an incinerated womb and maybe I really am doomed to a life with no future children. Maybe I will have to throw the diapers out the window again. I know this sounds dramatic, but it really is where my mind goes.

The pumping routine: Most women can get pregnant, carry a pregnancy to term, push the baby out and milk comes in. But I am not most women. I have to induce lactation since I cannot go thru the hormonal changes of a pregnancy, and so in November I began the process of doing this. I went on birth control and began a prescription medication to cause lactation. Then in January I began pumping with a double-sided hospital grade pump. Every. Two. Hours. In case you can’t quite understand what every two hours means, it means this: pump 6:45-7:00 am. Brush teeth, get dressed, let dog out, get medications ready, daughter wakes up. 8:45 am pump again. Get daughter breakfast, eat with her, clean up, wash all bottles for pump, store milk, pump again 10:45. 12: 45. 2:45. 4:45. 6:45 when your family has just sat down for dinner. 8:45 while I read a bedtime story to my daughter. Up in the night to pump too. In between those times of expressing milk to the rhythmic whir of the pump, I get to boil milk, store milk, take herbs to produce milk, wash bottles and pump parts. EVERY. TWO. HOURS. EVERY. DAY. for six weeks now. I do not know how much longer I can do this. In fact, if this is going to be more than a month of waiting (which if someone would talk to me I may very well find out that it will be) then I need to stop and start up again later. I just want the people working with me to take this into strong consideration. I know there is no way to know how long a thing will take, but communicating with me and having a dialogue would help immensely at this time. Right now I have to gather information that is our best guess in order to make a decision on what to do about pumping, about whether to stop and resume at another time. I cannot do this without communication.

The bottom line is that I am a mother who is ready to parent a child. There is a child in need of a mother and a family. I have lots of nutritious milk waiting to feed this baby. I need him/her at my breast just as (s)he need me to hold him gently and sing him his story.

Please take these things into consideration when working with me. I write this not as a criticism, but in hopes of helping you to do your jobs in a way that is gentle to families like ours. This is no easy place to be.

I am off to go pump.

Sincerely,

Jessica Holliman
Lactating mama to an angel baby