invisible holes

[psocoptera]

October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I don't know this for any immediate personal reason, and it seems entirely inadequate to say I wish nobody else did either. I don't think I even know where all the absences are, where babies should be, and yet I have the sense that they're there. I have a tiny little mind that does not hold onto anything for very long including major details of the lives of people I care about and so the idea of me successfully observing any kind of Remembrance Day is sort of pathetic but I would feel honored to get to hear anyone else's memories and see the outlines of those invisible holes.

I know some pregnant ladies would rather not hear about Bad Things That Can Happen but I find it obscurely comforting, even when thinking about The Worst Possible Things, to have some idea of how that happening might go. I mean, obviously, I don't think I have any idea of what it would be like, but I maybe have some sort of idea, from reading the sorts of blogs that are marking Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, of what some of the events might be, what some of the concrete details might look like.

I have sometimes freaked Josh out a little by mentioning that by the way, if there is bad news at the ultrasound it might play out like this, if such-and-such should happen we should try to do this: given that I (very literally) have inside information to which he has no access, was there some particular reason I was bringing these things up? Never anything specific: in the first trimester, I was mostly just trying to stay mindful of the odds, but then I made a conscious decision after our good twelve-week ultrasound to stop speaking in the conditional and say "when" instead of "if", and by now, I really don't feel any significant doubt that this meeple will be okay. ("Sufficiently small likelihoods are just the same as zero" sounds like one of those auto-brainwashing sorts of things that undermines itself even as you try to convince yourself of it, but, ::shrug::, I believe, and am happy to do so.)

But the thing is, I find it reassuring to know that for any given scenario, no matter how unlikely, I've at least thought about it and have some idea about what I might want to do, or at least what some of the considerations should be. In that sense "what would it be important to me to do if the meeple was stillborn" isn't that different from "what would I want to do if the meeple is intersex" - one is a horrible tragedy and one is an interesting situation but right now they're both more or less academic questions about my own hopes and needs as a parent. And I hate not having an answer to things - it really bothered me, for awhile, that I couldn't come up with any acceptable place that we could, in the Worst Possible World, scatter the meeple's ashes, until I finally did come up with a place. I can't really say a "good" place, but maybe the right place. And now at least there's this tiny foothold, in the great unmanageable unimaginable horror of the Worst Possible World, of something at least that I could do.

Some people might find that really morbid - there's a book I remember reading as a kid, A Summer To Die by Lois Lowry, in which a pregnant couple show the young protagonist the baby's nursery, and also the spot in the backyard where they would bury him, and the protagonist is horrified, and I think I was too. And, I don't know, she wrote it well and I sort of grudgingly conceded the point at the time but I think it would just read very differently now, not horrific. Because I'm already the meeple's parent, and even in losing it I would still be parenting it. And in any possible Bad Things, losing it or terminating it or having it taken away or needing to give it up or just facing the risk of those things, I would want to do the best for it, and for us, that I could.

Comments

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Since this is actually something I've thought about in the past (it is an interesting situation), do you mind telling me what you've thought about doing if the meeple is intersex? I think I've mainly thought about this in the terms of having vague fantasies of moving to the Bay Area, sending my child to one of those fascinating Bay Area schools that allow for non-standard gender expressions, and attempting to whatever degree possible to raise my imaginary intersex child without a gender up until that point when they personally decide they want one rather than in any realistic sense (I assume that these vague fantasies would be difficult to carry out in real life even in the Bay Area), but I'm still kind of curious as to what you've thought about potentially more realistically.

[(Anonymous)]

First, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. You've given me a lot to think about.

Two days ago we spent the afternoon at the NICU with friends who recently had an emergency C-section at 28 weeks. The prognosis is good, but it hammers home how seldom even success stories go as planned.

This post is the first I've heard of National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I want to scream at the person who came up with that concept. Every day is that day for those of us who have been through that loss. How dare they suggest that we need encouragement to remember, that we need reminders, that we could possibly forget, that the flower industry or the card industry or whatever fucking industry sees the end of our world as some sort of marketing opportunity. I can't even coherently finish the thought. Is there a Phantom Limb Remembrance Day? You Have a Rusty Stake Through Your Heart And We Were Just Concerned You Might Not Be Aware Enough Remembrance Day?

And I know, it's not about that. It's about connecting to other people, or feeling less alone, or fighting the incredible isolation and ostracization that accompanies that loss, or raising awareness among people who haven't experienced that loss, or any number of other perfectly reasonable goals. And it's about what we make of it, as you are doing, as I am doing, just like anything else in this world.

I can't make anything of our loss, though, because I don't want our loss to be about something. I don't want it to be a story people tell themselves about who we are, or who we could have been, because nothing in that story will be True. We don't pronounce the name of God, we don't even try, as a reminder that there are things beyond our understanding.

No ribbon for us, no story from us, no deeper understanding of us. Maybe in person, if I can stop crying. It's only been four years.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I am so very sorry for your loss. And crying, a little bit, about not wanting it to be about something. I... that seems like a very true and powerful way to remember, if I can say that.

I don't know who you are, but if we still know each other then, I don't know if fourteen years would be much different than four, which, yeah, is not very many. But I would be very honored maybe someday to hear something about who you lost, if whenever someday it is the time for telling.

I hope your friends have an uneventful NICU stay and a happy going home.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I'm sure we'd need to do lots more research, in the event, but my current thoughts:
- no surgery (unless it was really necessary so that it could pee or avoid infections or something)
- we'd pick a gender for it, based on whatever seemed most likely from its genes or hormones, and go with that until it indicated otherwise
- talk to it about how sometimes people are born as girls but when they grow up they feel more like boys, and vice versa, and that's cool
- talk to it a lot about how whether you're a boy or a girl you can wear whatever seasonally-appropriate clothes you want and play whatever you want and be friends with whoever you want, etc
- maybe avoid pushing gender-exclusive activities, so that they wouldn't be losing a major thing they loved if they did transition, although if my little girl really wanted to be in the Girl Scouts with her friends I'm sure I'd just go for it (actually I have no idea if the Girl Scouts are okay with intersex kids. the Boy Scouts I wouldn't let my kid join in any case...)
- respect whatever they told me about their gender identity, and support whatever they eventually chose as far as transitioning/never transitioning/transitioning multiple times and surgery/no surgery etc.

Of this six point plan, the last four are more or less things I think we'll do anyways; Josh and I are both a little dubious about gender-segregated activities for kids, and aren't fans of traditional gender roles, and will love our kid no matter who it figures out it is. We'd probably end up talking to an intersex kid a little earlier about trans stuff than we might otherwise, but I'm sure we'd be doing that sooner or later. There are kinds of infant cosmetic surgery I am much less opposed to than sex assignment surgery - I would almost certainly choose to have a cleft lip repaired, for instance - so I guess that is where my thoughts are most intersex-specific.

I think it would be really hard, socially, to raise a kid without a gender - I think they have to have one legally, and it's the first thing *everyone* wants to know, and I think I would worry that they would feel much more abnormal being someone without a gender than just a girl or boy with funky genitals. Lots of people have some physical difference or other; missing some basic social category just seems harder to work with, even if it's kind of cool as an idea.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the response!