Responsibilities, Learning etc...

As I may have previously mentioned, I started writing this as my way of coming to terms with what has happened. Recent events have made me think about how and why I am writing this.

These lines are not purely my point of view. Losing our baby is certainly not just my loss and, if anything, has affected Gayatri much, much more. We discuss my posts before they are published and while it allows us to talk about what happened, in quite a few cases we have found that these lines have echoed thoughts that both of us have felt independently.

Getting my emotions and thoughts out in this blog helps me look at what happened slightly more dispassionately and I also believe that it helps me deal with this at home, when people call and visit, in a less emotional way.

While at times I feel guilty that perhaps I am not crying about it enough (perhaps it hasn't hit me yet?), I still feel that there is no right way to feel or no correct answer to the question of how emotional I'm supposed to be right now.

Perhaps the one thing I have not taken into account is what the family might feel after reading this. After all, like I've written above, it isn't my loss alone. The loss of a baby isn't just devastating to her parents but also to her uncles, aunts and grandparents and I must admit that I haven't really considered whether any of our family would find reading this upsetting.

I suppose it comes down to the question of whether someone who is writing also has a responsibility to the readers or whether the sole responsibility is to tell the story as honestly as possible, especially if it is an autobiography.


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Over the past 2 weeks, we have heard different opinions from people about how to deal with what happened. Some people have told us to forget that it happened and move on. Others have told us that naming the baby helps us remember. I don't know if I'm quite ready for that yet. To me, it feels like she wasn't a part of us yet, though we will never forget her or what she looked like.

I think that we both have a responsibility to each other and to our baby, to never forget what has happened. Despite our first pregnancy having a rather tragic end, it has shaped us in ways that will make these days impossible to forget.

I would like to believe that I have become more sensitive to the needs of my wife and have become a more responsible person.
Gayatri, after a long time, feels comfortable asking others for help. Having managed her own life in IIT and in the US for 6 years, being pregnant allowed her to relax and let others finally do a few things for her.

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With the loss of our baby now being officially deemed an unexplained phenomenon, we cannot medically learn anything more about what happened.

Our learning therefore is that we believe we are now better people and better for the experience of this having happened. Our learning is that we are closer and have more love for each other now than we did before.

...And surely that isn't such a bad thing to take away from this all, is it?

Stasis

The term stasis (from Greek στάσις "standing still") may refer to:

A state of stability, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other. 

Stasis (political history), as defined by Thucydides as a set of symptoms indicating an internal disturbance in both individuals and states 

Stasis (biology), a period of little or no evolutionary change in a species in the punctuated equilibrium model of evolutionary biology 

Stasis (fiction) implies, especially in science-fiction, an artificial pause that stops all physical and chemical processes, including those of life; they resume as if uninterrupted as soon as the stasis is ended.

It has been a week filled with thoughts of "what-might-have-been".

I still remember our first day back home, a week before today, when Gayatri was afraid to go into the bedroom and afraid to lie down on the bed.

That is how it has been in a way. We've come back to a house that hasn't changed during the 5 days that we were in hospital and yet every single thing about it seems different. Everything around us is a reminder of what isn't...

We've a king-size bed that is empty in the middle, baby photo albums that aren't yet going to be filled, a framed poem which cannot yet be read to anyone, several packs of infant diapers, numerous boxes of wet wipes, a little stuffed penguin that has to wait awhile before being someone's companion, a cap knit by the grandmother that will need to be stored for later, an orange welcoming blanket that made its way back home to Chennai and a bag-full of clothes that I'm terrified that we'll incidentally come across on a day when we think we're over this.

Each one of those things could have been so different.

In a way, we feel like fish in a pond full of anglers who are ready to practice catch-and-release. Every phone call, every thing we see feels like a fish hook ready to yank us out of water for a little while, before releasing us back in. It is hard to speak to people outside of your family on the phone as you're not sure what they're about to say and at least in the beginning, I'm just hoping that the little fish escapes the hook-infested waters.

It is even harder to listen to people commiserate with you face to face.

"There must have been a good reason..."

"Everything happens for the best..."

"It shouldn't have happened like this..."

How does one respond to that? I do not know and frequently I say nothing. I don't know if that makes me seem indifferent but what can I say?

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Over the past week, we've received e-mails, messages, phone calls and visits from people we love. Even the shortest messages from among them has wished us love and strength and assured us our presence in their prayers.

Some of these wishes have brought us to tears, some have made us smile, some have given us strength but every single one of them has made us feel lucky that we have a wonderful family and that we have a lot of love.

Thank you.

Answering the "Why" question

4 days have passed but we still have questions, the foremost of which is Why this happened.

The even more worrying thought is if we could have prevented this or if something that we did caused this.

The mind has a life of its own and though we're fairly logical, scientific people and it would seem silly to think that small, seemingly unrelated, insignificant things could have played a part in the events of Friday night, I can't help thinking about how Gayatri rolled against my knee one night in bed or that Gayatri missed taking her Iron and Calcium tablets for 2 days or that I refused to pay a transgendered person in Lalbagh.

Maybe we could have noticed changes in the baby's movement or patterns and maybe we could have been paying more attention. Maybe we could have read more baby books.

Maybe none of the above would have made a difference, but there they are - my biases and irrationality out in the open.

Perhaps for these thoughts to stop, we need to know what caused our baby to be still born. I don't need a guarantee that it won't happen again and don't need to know that it could have been prevented or even can be prevented for the next time around.

I just need to know so that the corner of my mind can stop attributing it to stupid, insignificant, incidental things.

Maybe this is why so many people are so religious... maybe it is because Science or its Practitioners don't have all the answers and even if they do, the answers are cold and emotionless and give you no place to hide, when that is all that you want to do. It is easier to turn to faith when Science fails you or if Science is about to tell you that you were at fault.

Though my family is traditional, not all of my family are very religious and this point feels like a little test of where it is that I place my faith.

Maybe it is just best to place my faith in people - those that I love and those that I know will love me, no matter what - and maybe that will help me through.

The slow journey back to 'Normal' begins

In the first week of July, Gayatri was to give birth to our first child.

Getting to the stage of being pregnant had taken us a while, several months of consultations, some treatment and numerous attempts.

People frequently asked me if I was nervous. Truth now be told, I'd never looked forward to anything more.

Your life will change forever, they said. "That's the idea", was what I always secretly said to myself.

Each regular checkup brought us a step closer - the first ultrasound, the first time the baby yawned, moved, the first time we saw the spine, the first thump of the baby's heart beat.

We picked out baby names - boys' and girls' - and tried not to go overboard shopping for the new Mommy and the baby.

We wanted a girl; the great-grandparents wanted a boy.

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Tuesday, May 29th, was our regular appointment that marked the start of the 9th month.

It was then that the Doctor noticed that the baby didn't seem to have grown in the last 2 weeks i.e. since our previous regular appointment.

An ultrasound showed that there was interrupted blood flow to the baby through the placenta.

We then knew that the baby was going to be premature.

The biggest risk with a pre-term baby is that its lungs haven't grown enough.

Steroid shots were given to Gayatri (one on Tuesday night and one on Wednesday morning) to boost lung growth of the baby. Gayatri was given Amino Acids drips.

Meanwhile an anxious mother and an anxious husband paced around her hospital room nervously through the night, hoping that things would improve by the next morning.

The next morning's scan showed that blood flow to the baby had improved from the previous night, though hadn't yet reached ideal levels.

According to procedure and to give the baby's lungs the best chance to grow and survive, we'd need to wait 48 hours from the last steroid shot, before doing a C-section.

The C-section was then scheduled for Friday evening.

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Friday evening arrived and the best description of the mood at the time is probably nervous optimism. The situation and blood flow hadn't regressed. The fetal heart rate was normal.

A team of nurses came in to prep Gayatri for surgery. It was 5pm and the fetal heart rate was still normal.

At 6:20pm nurses once again came in to wheel Gayatri into the delivery room. At that point, fetal heart rate couldn't be detected.

Doppler machines of different sizes were brought in and no fetal heartbeat was observed.

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Sometime between 5 and 6:20pm on 1st June 2012, Gayatri and I lost our baby.

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It takes courage to face up to facts when someone tells you that the baby that you've been waiting a year for isn't alive anymore.

To face that fact and then have to deliver that stillborn baby, through a normal delivery without painkillers and injections in her spine, is one of the most courageous acts that I have ever seen.

It requires strength that is beyond my comprehension; that beggars belief. It is why women, even the emotional ones, will always be stronger than men.

It is why holding her hands through that will be my moment of greatest pride.

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Our still-born baby was a girl.

I'd like to think that she would have been creative like her dad but more importantly strong and beautiful like her mom.

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I'm not sure what the reasons are for my writing this but I know what the reasons aren't.

It isn't because I want this to be shared so that someone else somewhere may be helped. What happened is far too recent and I have never been very selfless.

Perhaps I feel that it is necessary for me to get things off my chest for me to be able to start again.

The last 2 days have been filled with relentless thoughts and very little sleep. Some thoughts fly in and out and are forgotten, while others keep coming back and are perhaps significant, in a way that their recency will not let me see.

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Today feels better than yesterday but I'm kidding myself if I feel that life will soon be normal.

Our journey back to Normal is only just beginning and maybe, if we get there, these lines and posts will let me know the road that we took.