Making the Connections

We have had a wonderful summer with the boy. I am back at work now, and our lives are accelerating back towards warp speed. In between, we try to get to the farm. We have had Alden to the house three times now, and plan to be up frequently this fall. He is a happy baby, and he really loves the farm - he sleeps better, smiles wider, and seems more peaceful. He's probably just picking up vibes from his Mom and Dad.

Our relationship with our grief and with Baker has really changed, and I don't yet have the tools at hand to describe the difference. We are experiencing another turn of the Earth without Baker, but this time we are joined by his pudgy little brother who has soothed us.

I think about Baker all the time, still, and wonder what Alden's relationship to his missing brother will be. I wish they could be together in the flesh, but I know that can never be.

More even than Baker's grave, I think the farm will be Alden's link to his brother. The farm represents a time in our lives, and a need unmet, and a hope for the future. We have already started weaving Alden into that narrative.

In the spring, my siblings wanted to give us a bush or a tree to commemorate Baker's birthday at the farm. Others had done that for us, and two tree saplings are planted hopefully along the edge of the woods.

I encouraged my family to let some time pass for us to lay out a blueberry patch that over time would grow and thrive and extract nutrients from the soil to nourish our bodies and souls.

This past weekend, with Baker's little brother looking on, sleeping, crying, grunting, smiling, I laid out the two beds of the patch, and prepared the site. Baker's blueberry patch will be planted in the spring, perhaps with aunts and uncles and cousins there with shovels and gloves. This place, and this food, will be one of the connections for Alden.

Sweet relief

Thank you all for the well wishes. We are adjusting at home with Baker's little brother. I was scheduled for a repeat C-section on July 6, but started having mild contractions a few days before. We went to the hospital to make sure everything was OK (it was), and we made the decision to deliver then at 38 weeks. I was scared and shaking uncontrollably during surgery prep, but then Alden started yelling as soon as his little golden head poked out-such sweet relief for his anxious parents. 7 pounds 12 ounces, 21 inches long. He was checked out on a warmer next to my head, then swaddled and placed on my chest while I was sewn up. He stared at us with bright blue eyes and stuck his tongue out. We all went to recovery together, and he rode on my chest to the maternity floor. He never left my sight until his bath nearly 24 hrs after his birth. It was exactly how I hoped this birth experience would go.

The relative ease of my pregnancy with Alden and his birth-in the sense that it was another normal, healthy fullterm pregnancy-makes me realize what a waste it was to lose Baker. He could so easily be here-he should be here-if not for what was likely an unknown, unseen kink in the cord. Similar pregnancies, similar babies, but completely different outcomes.

Now, existing alongside the weight of Baker's loss, is a palpable joy. Our home is often loud with our grunting boy. We piece together enough sleep to get by. We happily diaper and nurse and take stroller walks. We are honoring Baker and raising Alden and finding ways to include both boys in our family.

Role Reversal

The weight of the baby in my arms has relieved the weight on my shoulders and the anchor on my heart.

He is wonderful, as all tiny babies are. We love him to the point that our hearts are bursting and painful at being overfilled. At the same time, he is an immediate squirming reminder of the magnitude of our loss with Baker.

He has Baker's chin and Baker's nose - both his mother's - but otherwise he is his own boy, in all his towheaded glory.

Dalene and I remember for many months following Baker's death the jealously and sadness and anger (in a very weird way) that we had towards all of the pregnant women and little babies that we saw as we traveled around. It seemed at times as though they were stalking us; taunting us. Now that's us. We are the parents with the irrepressible smiles on our blissful babymoon. I fear that we are now the tormentors of the lost.

I think that we babylost parents need to invent a symbol or claim a color or a bracelet or something that lets others in the "club" know that we are one of them. Instead of feeling upset when a babylost mama or daddy saw us with Alden, she or he might see us as a sign that rainbow babies do come, and that they are sweet, sweet balm for wounded souls.

We watch him breathe, but have not yet been neurotic. I give him kisses, but I have not physically smothered him with my squeezes, as I feared I would. He is the manifestation of the complete opposite of the parental soul-murder that was Baker's death.

We are bequeathing Baker's hand-me-downs to Alden, and that has been healing. Little t-shirts and gear, washcloths and diapers - all being handed on to the little brother. All wrong and completely right all at the same time.

We appreciate so much all of the good wishes from across the country and around the globe as our litle babe arrived.

Born on the Fourth of July

Alden Baker arrived delightfully screaming in the wee hours of Saturday morning. 7 pounds, 12 ounces, 21 inches long. Blonde locks.

Our Rainbow Baby with a firework exclamation point.

Big brother Baker Christian was smiling down.

Second Firsts

Our dear friends from around the country, like they did last year, last time, are showering us with gifts in preparation for the arrival of our baby. Of course we have nearly everything we need already. We have had it for a year and need to dust some of it off.

What’s troubling me is that all that lies before us is all going to be new. It feels like we are first time parents, albeit grizzled by the experiences we have had. I have no earthly idea what it will be like to be up every couple of hours at first when he’s first born. I have only a vague concept of just how many times I am going to be peed on. I haven’t changed a diaper since my nieces and nephews were small all those years ago. All of this is going to be new to us.

Yet these experiences – our first time experiences – should belong to Baker. He should have been the one that we got to learn with, and make mistakes with, and laugh and cry with as we figured out parenting. So now we have these same experiences – still as unseasoned with a newborn as we were last year, only having these firsts with our second son.

It is a strange feeling, almost verging on disloyalty to Baker, though I know that is nonsense. It feels good to be a little bit excited again, and to let go enough to embrace that anticipation of being at the top of a roller coaster ready to take that gut-busting plunge over the edge.

I feel like I am contemplating the Universe – it is beyond comprehension – but I think about this baby on the way, and he’s our second son, but he’ll be raised as though he’s the first child. He’ll be our “oldest living” child. This baby won’t have his big brother Baker talking to him and playing with him and pushing him down in the dirt – you know, forming his little brother personality. He is going to be a different boy than he would be had Baker lived.

But even though this baby won’t have his big brother’s in person influence, he is forever linked through circumstance to Baker. If Baker had lived, we would certainly not have gotten pregnant so soon, and this baby, but for Baker, would not exist.

And that’s when my brain goes “pop.”

This is one of Baker’s gifts to us – a completely special baby brother, formed in the cauldron of our grief, a joy for our broken hearts and a balm for our wounds.

Waiting and Hoping

This past week I have experienced delayed nesting. Since we were ready for Baker, we had little to do to get ready for this little one other than waiting and hoping. Waiting and hoping, it turns out, have kept us pretty busy. Waiting and hoping and distracting ourselves with an ancient barn of a house in a spot on a hill that is rapidly growing on me.

Last week the logjam broke - for whatever reason - and I found myself painting the inside of a cabinet at 10:30 at night (in Massachusetts). Earlier that night I had stripped wallpaper from the 1980's, the 1960's, and perhaps, from the 1940's, from the back of the cabinet, and replaced it with clean white paint.

Baker had interrupted our kitchen remodel last year - we got close enough - even painting a wall while Dalene was on the couch in labor. Since babies don't usually concern themselves with cabinet interiors, I let a few of them go unpainted.

We have washed 30 some odd diapers, and have rewashed clothes that were last laundered before our fateful day on April 3, 2008. They were, if anything, dusty and sad that they had never been worn by their intended occupant, but they seemed ready to be brand new hand-me-downs.

I made one last run up to the Farm on Friday night (with the car seat in the back...), one last check and lawn cutting before we are joined by the hoped-for baby on July 6. After scaring a few chipmunks out of the house and making sure everything was buttoned up, I went for a quick walk, constantly moving to keep the mosquitoes from carrying me off to their insect lair.

Walking through the field along the edge of the woods, I nearly stepped on a tiny spotted fawn, bedded down in the grass. As it darted off into the dark forest, I was struck by a feeling of life and renewal and I hope that it was a good sign that the boy in the womb will join us soon, eyes wide, chest rising and falling, living and growing so that he and I can explore those woods together, in a place that we are building in Baker's memory, for years to come.

34 Week Update

It finally feels like we are close to welcoming Baker's little brother into the world. The big day is July 13, which can't come soon enough. I'm not freaking out, but I am very impatient. Perhaps I'm in quiet denial? I am very aware of Mr. Tiny's movements and poke him if he's quiet. I'm being watched carefully with 2x/week non-stress tests. I had both tests last week at the hospital and was on the Labor & Delivery floor for the first time since Baker died. I asked my midwife to show me the recovery room, which is the only place where I ever held Baker in my arms-the place where I woke up and found Chris holding our firstborn, where we said hello and goodbye-and where I will be again after my repeat C/S. I was coming out of general anesthesia then and have no idea where I was. This time, there was a woman in the recovery room in the exact same place where my bed was. A dad was pacing outside, but I didn't hear or see the presumed baby. After Baker died, my midwives gave me the choice of recovering on the maternity ward or elsewhere. We chose elsewhere, and to this day, I have no clue where I was located-other than it was a giant room at the end of a hall on some floor with much older people recovering from various surgeries. It was tough being back (as evidenced by my elevated blood pressure), but I was glad to see it again before being there in July.

It turns out that Mr. Tiny is likely not so tiny. I've been consistently measuring a little bit ahead. An ultrasound 3 weeks ago estimated that he was almost 5 pounds, which was 92nd percentile for his gestation at the time. I have another ultrasound tomorrow with the peri to do a last check of fluid levels.

Chris spent the weekend at Lazy Cat Farm with his dad, closing up the eaves from the roof project and mowing the field in preparation for not being able to make the trip again for some time. I poked around the boys' room refreshing my memory about what we have in the nursery. The stroller and car seat made their way out of my ILs attic and back to our house. We were ready last April, and we're ready now.

Mr. Tiny, please come home with us.