With You I'm Born Again

Come bring me your softness.
Comfort me through all this madness.
Lying safe within your arms, I'm born again.
Come give me your sweetness.
Now there's you, there is no weakness.
Lying safe within your arms, I'm born again.

--“With You I'm Born Again,” Billy Preston & Syreeta

Days 7 and 8 postpartum. I started filling out my maternity leave paperwork, but I’m so confused; how long is one entitled to take off work for a stillbirth, when there is no baby to “bond” with? 

My OB wanted to give me 4 weeks paid off work. I thought about having to come back right after I’ve managed to arrange Thi’s funeral. Of staring lifelessly at my computer screen. Of eating lunch alone where once I shared a meal with her growing secretly in my belly. It’s not enough time to mourn and mentally recover, so I pushed for 6 weeks off.

I think about birth, a different kind. My son turns two tomorrow. These last few weeks, I haven’t thought much about him growing, changing, aging. I relive a hospital stay during a better time, giving birth to a fullterm, live baby who turned a healthy red with his first newborn cries, who kicked and thrashed and flailed his limbs to earn an Apgar score of 9. My emotions are at war—joy for the one that made it, sorrow for the one that didn’t, ineffable love for them both.

Luc, on his birth day

When I Get Where I’m Going

So much pain and so much darkness
In this world we stumble through
All these questions I can't answer
So much work to do

--“When I Get Where I’m Going,” Brad Paisley

I sat in the small office of St. Francis Assisi’s Memorial Garden Manager. Her name is Frances, with an “e.” Not Francis, like the patron saint of animals after which the church was named. The memorial garden on the side of the large Catholic church was one of the places we toured in our search for a final resting place for Thi. There were rectangular urn samples on display in the office, along with brochures for grief management and support groups. Frances asked me a question, roughly along the lines of how she could help us. The room was silent, and I needed to answer her. 

“I had a stillborn baby,” I started out. 

It was the first time I had to admit that to another person sitting in front of me, a stranger and not family. The words felt foreign on my tongue, like a language I stumbled through, tripping over the syllables since I could not yet speak it well. Frances expressed her condolences and sympathetically pulled out paperwork with niches still available, along with the costs. As with California real estate, the price for a niche had dramatically increased over the last few years. She then took us on a tour of the memorial garden, explaining the different niche tiers for internment, and how it’d work if a family were to share a niche. I noticed random, insignificant things along the tour: rain water pooling on the walkway; the barrenness of the grape vines and flora surrounding the garden on this winter morning; the way the sun slanted on the walls of names as I squinted to read the inscriptions. I still couldn’t believe that life took me here, having to make decisions for my baby’s resting place. She was supposed to have buried me, not this way around—this unnatural joke of the universe in reverse.                     

I think back to meeting Thi for the first time on ultrasound. Tung had been out of town for a business trip, and I went alone into my OB’s clinic. At work, I found quiet time to secretly stare at the pictures I captured of her, enamored with my perfectly peanut-shaped little bean.

I remembered how different this pregnancy was from Luc’s—whether age-related or because having two somewhat close together was taking a toll on my body, I felt more "wear and tear" this time around with general fatigue and nausea. And yet there were familiar elements to pregnancy that did not make me question the strength and health of my baby. The delicious smell of bread wafting from bakeries that called to me. Junky cravings of chips, cheese Hot Pockets, and ramen. New cravings that put me off with Luc, like chocolate and coffee, the latter of which I struggled not to consume. And the spicy! Luc couldn't stand spicy and gave me terrible heartburn after I ate the slightest spicy thing, but with Thi, I was craving it. Weird how things could be the same, but so different...

I remembered how it felt like to live in bliss. Here I thought my race against time was over, that after my battle with infertility before Luc, life finally cut me a break and sent me my coveted little girl instantly when we started trying again. I made it all the way into half of a fullterm pregnancy after enduring a rough first trimester. But then I failed, with nothing to show for but withered dreams and a cold granite slab of a niche on which to etch my baby’s date of birth and death.

A Mother's Prayer

I pray you'll be my eyes
And watch her where she goes
And help her to be wise
Help me to let go

--“A Mother's Prayer,” Celine Dion

Day 6 postpartum. We have postpartum cultural rituals to follow after a baby’s birth so that the mother can quickly heal. Diet is an important part of recovery: eating fresh, hot meals and staying away from leftovers and certain foods. But there are little-known, hardly-discussed rituals that involve a lot of salt. 

One postpartum care method involves roasting rock salt hot enough to pop in the pan, then placing the salt between a layer of aluminum foil, putting the foil atop cardboard on your floor, covering the foil with a towel, and lying on the entire heap belly-down. This is supposed to shrink your uterus back to size and flush out any stagnant blood.

Another postpartum care method involves cooking the rock salt in water in a tall pot, then placing that under a stool with a hole cut in it, pot lid slightly ajar so that salt steam drifts up, and sitting on the holed stool with your pants off. This is supposed to cleanse any wounds in your nether parts, like a bidet sauna.

If you are reading this with a lifted eyebrow, you were much like me when my mother-in-law came into my house and prepared these things for me to try after my first baby was born. She also taught me to cook up sticky rice, which has long heat-retention properties, wrapping fistfuls into a towel, and massaging the breasts to move stagnant milk and prevent clots. The logical part of my brain questions the rituals’ worth and necessity since obviously generations of women who don’t know to do this end up healing just fine. But for today, I slip back, without protest, to these weird but familiar methods of postpartum care. I will the salt to heal me as it’s supposed to do, to cleanse away remaining wounds and hurt, like salty tears shed to rid the heart of pain.