CONNECTICUT OPINION; 'HELLO, BABY, THIS IS DADDY'
By KENNETH R. FREESTON; Published: May 4, 1986, The New York Times
I FIRST found out that I would be a father early one summer morning when my wife's monthly ritual of taking a home pregnancy test showed that another life had started. There was one ring at the bottom of the glass container. Cheryl and I tried for a year and a half to conceive; I never imagined it would take so long. Two people, both in their 30's, worried about such things as age and childbirth. For a long while I thought something might be wrong. Now, I was going to be a father for the first time.
I felt emotions I could not identify or even talk about, as I watched life swell in Cheryl's stomach. There was a little person beginning life and I was beginning fatherhood. I read books, chapters, articles, anything that would give me information about what was actually happening week by week. I wanted to know as much as I could about this new little person.
One night Cheryl started the ''kick game,'' gently tapping on her belly and feeling a responding kick. When I felt that first kick against my own hand, I put my cheek to Cheryl's stomach and said, ''Hello baby, this is Daddy.'' Another kick. I had found a way to be a part of the daily growth of this baby. I told anyone who would listen that I talked to my child every night.
With the anticipation that all expectant parents feel, we planned for and dreamed about this baby's life. We prepared the baby's room, remembering from our own childhoods the safe haven always available in ''my room.'' Grandma's front- porch rocker would be perfect for nursing the baby. I took it out of the attic, stripped off the old paint and had a new seat made. I painted the room and Cheryl started to stencil a teddy-bear pattern around the four walls. Together we searched for the perfect crib, the ideal changing table and stroller, all the things that two people buy when the delivery date seems too far away to be real.
One night, at the start of the eighth month, baby Jennifer was still. Asleep, I thought. Days later Cheryl had regular contractions. We rushed to the hospital, expecting a premature birth, worrying about incubators, and praying the baby would survive the labor and delivery. We had not yet started the childbirth classes, but somehow that did not matter. The nurse attached a fetal heart monitor to the same place on Cheryl's belly where I put my cheek every night. Silence.
A sudden and undiagnosed onset of severe toxemia destroyed the placenta's ability to give nourishment. Jennifer's heart stopped.
No one actually said, ''Your baby is dead.'' They said only that they could not find a heartbeat.
In situations like these, the doctors said, it is best for the mother to deliver the fetus naturally. Cheryl's contractions continued through the night and she delivered the baby the next morning. It seems cruelly unfair that a mother has to endure childbirth to bear a heart that does not beat. For Cheryl, there would be no crying baby after the pain of labor and delivery. Just more silence. ''It was a little girl,'' the nurse said. Gone, for a moment, was the rage. I held baby Jennifer Cheryl in my arms, calmed by the wonder of birth. I knew she was dead, but somehow, all I felt was love for this little two-pound baby, perfect in every physiological sense, starved by a placenta that could no longer give her life. This was the only time we would have together as mother, father and daughter. Cheryl and I held each other, numbed by the truth we cradled.
There is no preparation for the loss of a child, even an unborn child. Instead of celebrating the joy and wonder of birth, we were thurst into the disorienting despair brought by death. Cheryl, as Jennifer's mother, feels a pain that only a mother can feel. Milk fills her breasts with no baby to suckle them. Her stomach is flat again, making the swelling seem distant and imagined. She weeps with feelings of failure and inadequacy. A father's pain is no less intense, just different.
In my life I have taught about death and dying, consoled friends who lost family members, and grieved over the deaths of a close friend and my mother. None of that helps me face Jennifer's death. All around me there are parents who bear children with ease. I fight back the envy and jealousy I feel seeing a newborn being held in a parent's loving arms. Catalogues for children's toys come in the mail and I cry. I wish for the time when I had never heard of toxemia. An emptiness aches inside all the time.
Expressions of grief, sorrow and support help for awhile. The clergy tells us that we each live three lives, one before birth, one on earth, and one after death, that God's love for us will sustain us and that God is with us in our pain and suffering. Friends visit, call and send notes. They tell us that words are inadequate, that their thoughts and prayers are with us and that they share our pain and loss. Everyone offers to do something, to help us in any way we want. Friends grieve, too. They know that Jennifer's death is an unexplainable mystery, unfair, and that only the passage of time will allow us to heal. They offer hope that we will someday be wonderful parents, consoling thoughts that Jennifer is now in a place of greater love and peace than can ever be found here and that Jennifer's death reminds them to cherish every moment with their own children.
We ask the doctors question after question. Was there anything we did to cause this? Would an earlier medical intervention have saved her life? Could she have survived as a two- pound baby? Why did it happen? Will it happen again? This endless questioning, like other activities, keeps us engaged with Jennifer, but it will end soon and we will face the loneliness of a half-painted nursery.
I am learning that healing is only delayed by feelings of anger, jealousy and denial. Grieving is a personal process and for me I will not be able to begin to heal until I allow myself to grieve. I search for questions that express my fears, knowing that answers do not exist for most of them. I talk about every feeling I can identify and I cry whenever I feel the tears approach. I lay at Cheryl's side for hours at a time.
There is truth to the beliefs that time heals and that distance brings perspective. Eventually I will be comforted by finishing the teddy bears on the nursery walls, stocking the bathroom with the newer home pregnancy test and waiting for another summer morning. In time Cheryl will play the kick game again, and I will say ''Hello baby, this is Daddy.'' The next child will be a second child, not a replacement, not a substitute, and I await the joy of holding that breathing, kicking, crying baby. And when I think of the future in this way, I am trapped by the familiarity of these hopes.
In some small way the grief is lessened when I remember that I am already a father.
I FIRST found out that I would be a father early one summer morning when my wife's monthly ritual of taking a home pregnancy test showed that another life had started. There was one ring at the bottom of the glass container. Cheryl and I tried for a year and a half to conceive; I never imagined it would take so long. Two people, both in their 30's, worried about such things as age and childbirth. For a long while I thought something might be wrong. Now, I was going to be a father for the first time.
I felt emotions I could not identify or even talk about, as I watched life swell in Cheryl's stomach. There was a little person beginning life and I was beginning fatherhood. I read books, chapters, articles, anything that would give me information about what was actually happening week by week. I wanted to know as much as I could about this new little person.
One night Cheryl started the ''kick game,'' gently tapping on her belly and feeling a responding kick. When I felt that first kick against my own hand, I put my cheek to Cheryl's stomach and said, ''Hello baby, this is Daddy.'' Another kick. I had found a way to be a part of the daily growth of this baby. I told anyone who would listen that I talked to my child every night.
With the anticipation that all expectant parents feel, we planned for and dreamed about this baby's life. We prepared the baby's room, remembering from our own childhoods the safe haven always available in ''my room.'' Grandma's front- porch rocker would be perfect for nursing the baby. I took it out of the attic, stripped off the old paint and had a new seat made. I painted the room and Cheryl started to stencil a teddy-bear pattern around the four walls. Together we searched for the perfect crib, the ideal changing table and stroller, all the things that two people buy when the delivery date seems too far away to be real.
One night, at the start of the eighth month, baby Jennifer was still. Asleep, I thought. Days later Cheryl had regular contractions. We rushed to the hospital, expecting a premature birth, worrying about incubators, and praying the baby would survive the labor and delivery. We had not yet started the childbirth classes, but somehow that did not matter. The nurse attached a fetal heart monitor to the same place on Cheryl's belly where I put my cheek every night. Silence.
A sudden and undiagnosed onset of severe toxemia destroyed the placenta's ability to give nourishment. Jennifer's heart stopped.
No one actually said, ''Your baby is dead.'' They said only that they could not find a heartbeat.
In situations like these, the doctors said, it is best for the mother to deliver the fetus naturally. Cheryl's contractions continued through the night and she delivered the baby the next morning. It seems cruelly unfair that a mother has to endure childbirth to bear a heart that does not beat. For Cheryl, there would be no crying baby after the pain of labor and delivery. Just more silence. ''It was a little girl,'' the nurse said. Gone, for a moment, was the rage. I held baby Jennifer Cheryl in my arms, calmed by the wonder of birth. I knew she was dead, but somehow, all I felt was love for this little two-pound baby, perfect in every physiological sense, starved by a placenta that could no longer give her life. This was the only time we would have together as mother, father and daughter. Cheryl and I held each other, numbed by the truth we cradled.
There is no preparation for the loss of a child, even an unborn child. Instead of celebrating the joy and wonder of birth, we were thurst into the disorienting despair brought by death. Cheryl, as Jennifer's mother, feels a pain that only a mother can feel. Milk fills her breasts with no baby to suckle them. Her stomach is flat again, making the swelling seem distant and imagined. She weeps with feelings of failure and inadequacy. A father's pain is no less intense, just different.
In my life I have taught about death and dying, consoled friends who lost family members, and grieved over the deaths of a close friend and my mother. None of that helps me face Jennifer's death. All around me there are parents who bear children with ease. I fight back the envy and jealousy I feel seeing a newborn being held in a parent's loving arms. Catalogues for children's toys come in the mail and I cry. I wish for the time when I had never heard of toxemia. An emptiness aches inside all the time.
Expressions of grief, sorrow and support help for awhile. The clergy tells us that we each live three lives, one before birth, one on earth, and one after death, that God's love for us will sustain us and that God is with us in our pain and suffering. Friends visit, call and send notes. They tell us that words are inadequate, that their thoughts and prayers are with us and that they share our pain and loss. Everyone offers to do something, to help us in any way we want. Friends grieve, too. They know that Jennifer's death is an unexplainable mystery, unfair, and that only the passage of time will allow us to heal. They offer hope that we will someday be wonderful parents, consoling thoughts that Jennifer is now in a place of greater love and peace than can ever be found here and that Jennifer's death reminds them to cherish every moment with their own children.
We ask the doctors question after question. Was there anything we did to cause this? Would an earlier medical intervention have saved her life? Could she have survived as a two- pound baby? Why did it happen? Will it happen again? This endless questioning, like other activities, keeps us engaged with Jennifer, but it will end soon and we will face the loneliness of a half-painted nursery.
I am learning that healing is only delayed by feelings of anger, jealousy and denial. Grieving is a personal process and for me I will not be able to begin to heal until I allow myself to grieve. I search for questions that express my fears, knowing that answers do not exist for most of them. I talk about every feeling I can identify and I cry whenever I feel the tears approach. I lay at Cheryl's side for hours at a time.
There is truth to the beliefs that time heals and that distance brings perspective. Eventually I will be comforted by finishing the teddy bears on the nursery walls, stocking the bathroom with the newer home pregnancy test and waiting for another summer morning. In time Cheryl will play the kick game again, and I will say ''Hello baby, this is Daddy.'' The next child will be a second child, not a replacement, not a substitute, and I await the joy of holding that breathing, kicking, crying baby. And when I think of the future in this way, I am trapped by the familiarity of these hopes.
In some small way the grief is lessened when I remember that I am already a father.
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