little birdie, little bunny...

Self Portraits.

these are images from the first few days after getting home from the hospital.
empty womb.empty arms.aching heart...a river of tears.

the first image is one that i did not know my husband took while I was in labor. It is the only photograph of me in labor that was captured on film.





all images © Erin Newman Long 2007. all rights reserved

Also, please visit Meg's Blog...she has suffered the loss of her very much wanted baby girl, at 22 weeks. Meg and her husband need your love and support....

I'm Being Quiet.

I am here, living on each day...

A week or so ago I was asked to show a new body of work in an Alumni Art Show at one of the schools that I studied photography as an undergrad years ago. I quickly and happily accepted. I have had ideas for making some new work, but I just needed a nudge.

So, in between work, knitting, quality time with Matty and the animals I have begun to develop a new body of work.

I am exploring and experimenting with how to take a few of the images that I have of Birdie's face and transpose myself, Matt and then the 3 of us together. Right now I think that the work will be 3 separate images, and since I started thinking about this project I have many other ideas. So, this is going to be a work in progress, this is just the beginning.

Last night I worked on an image of Birdie, many, many layers of Birdie. Let me know what you think.

image © Erin Newman Long 2007. all rights reserved

I don't have a heading nor a title for this post. I have been taking a lot of time to think.

Thinking about the moment that I knew Birdie was gone and the future with her that we have lost. All the memories that we hoped to have, watching her grow and smile, giggle and sing!

Thinking about the heaviness of how much we have gone through emotionally and physically before Birdie died and since.

I am stunned, and sometimes in disbelief that Matt and I have come as far as we have. You know, it sounds so wierd to have to even say that! We have had to come to where we are because there is no other choice, no alternative!

A very close friend of our's whose first child died while she was in labor 4 years ago recently said something to me that resinatets within me when I sit very quiet and still, and think on the events that lead up to my quiet moments. She said:

"If someone had asked me if I would be able to handle the death of my baby, I would have told you NO! There is no way that I could handle that"

Those aren't her exact words, but very close.

If this question had been proposed to me, I would most deffinately told you NO FUCKING WAY could I handle the death of our child. No way would I come out of this without going in.sane. No way would I come through this grief journey with a sound mind.

Maybe getting to this place is our minds way of protecting us, not allowing us to stay in that very dark place forever. For some I don't think it is the case, if I was not of a sound mind to begin with maybe I would not be here, but still there wallowing in the dark, in the shadows of what was supposed to be.

It has been quiet here on Birdie's blog as to give lots of room to what would have been her 6 month celebration. I wanted to allow the words and thoughts surrounding her 6 months to resonate, to simmer, to live on.

Somehow I am doing ok. I will be honest when I tell you that I am living with a happy state of mind, and I don't know how this has come to be. Other than maybe it is because I have chosen to keep my memories of Birdie alive, and not shut them off or turn them away. I choose to stare at photographs of her, and breakdown and weep, I choose to think long and hard about her, I think about her birth all the time. She is always on my mind. I am still crying for her, I am still grieving.

However, the grief has begun to transform.

Perhaps the grief has transformed because we chose to give in to, and gave way of the darkness that we knew so well for so long. Or maybe it is the hope that we have for our future child. Perhaps it is simply the time we have allowed ourselves and each other to really grieve, to be raw with our emotions and accept all that came and still comes with them.

We have done a lot of hard grief work these last 6 months, and we have found some light...some solace.

The grief curtain continues to lift, and it will keep on lifting....and on the other side what will we find?

I don't thing the curtain to lift all the way, and I really don't want it too. I always want some of my grief to resonate, I always want to remember what we have experienced and how it felt. It is my connection to Birdie. My love, my grief and lots and lots of photographs. It is all so important, true undeniable reminders of where we were, and who we have become.

My heart is wide open to my grief, it is wide open to my deepest love for our daughter, and wide open to our future child.....and that child will know all about his or her sister, Birdie will not ever be a secret to hide. No! She is a treasure to behold.

Birdie, You Would Be 6 Months Old If You Had Stayed

Today is a day of deep reflection, a day of heartbreak and heartache. A day that could have been filled with such joy, but today I find only sorrow.

I am brought back to my questions, the many, many questions of WHY?

Why, did our little girl have to die? Why was it all of us that had to suffer this great loss of life, a small innocent and short lived life. I am also thinking about how it felt that I too was to pass on with her, and was then revived. How I shared such beautiful moments with Birdie as she was leaving me, her soul filling mine and saying I love you and goodbye. Goodbye Mama, I love you.

Remembering the days were able to spend with her in hospital, those most precious hours that we were able to be together, the 3 of us as a family. Those days are forever cherished, those memories forever precious and sacred.

I don't really want to believe that there is a "lesson" we are meant to learn, I think that to see Birdie's death as a lessen somehow demeans that she ever existed. I think that the reason or reasons for her death came down to a few things, plainly there were mistakes made that night/early morning when her heart rate suddenly dropped.

The nurse at the Birth Center did NOT page both the OB on call and the CNM on call. No, she made a choice to ONLY page the CNM on call. She made that choice, why we will never know. She made a stupid choice that may have caused Birdie to die. Then there was all that time after we got to the hospital birth center....all that time...all that FUCKING TIME! The OB not being paged until we were already in the hospital birth center, and then the 30+ minutes that it took her to get to me waiting in the OR. Simply, too much time passed for Birdie who was not ok. She was in distress and she had no chance.

Even though I write these things about the mistakes made, and there being too much time, none of it matters! None of this matters a fucking ounce of anything. It matters none, because Birdie is dead!

What will our choices lead up to next time? I have been reading more and more about VBAC's and statistics about them, and hospital births and blah blah blah! It seems like any choice we make is a risk, hospitals DO MAKE MISTAKES and women and babies DO DIE IN HOSPITAL! So, what is the right choice for next time? What is the right choice for us, and for baby? How can we ever feel truly comfortable when homebirth failed us and hospital failed us and our baby daughter? How will we ever feel safe now? We have no safe place to birth now, do we? I have no trust in any choices before us. How can I trust in anything?

As time has moved forward, we continue to say yes to our grief, we take it in and ride it's waves. It is only in the last few months we can say that while our grief is still great and in the forefront, it is a little faded. We are functioning, we are living each day with a little less pain. "The curtain has lifted a little, and it is letting in light."

I think that we have both found our paths, our paths of how we live with Birdie wrapped into the layers of our being. How we embrace her within ourselves, within our being. Birdie has been so delicately woven into the tissues that cause our hearts to continue to beat, that cause our lives to continue. Birdie is living on inside of me, and inside of DH. She lives on so strongly. She is now the reason that I get out of bed everyday, sit down to work, go to the gym, eat healthy foods....I do everything for her because that is all I can do for her. All I can do is live my life feeling love for her, and loving her the only way I know how to, the only way I can. I daydream about her, I stare at her photographs and wonder what she would be doing right now. What little baby things would she be able to do, would she be smiling at me? Would she be grasping my finger, or pulling my hair? Would she be cooing away as she nursed at my breast?

All I can do is wonder where her spirit roams, and know that she is a beautiful spirit that brings light to other peoples hearts.

Birdie is the purest symbol of love that I have ever been graced with the honor of knowing. She will forever be pure, perfect, innocent, gentle and kind.

Birdie we love you so much, more and more with each sun that sets. You were and always will be our little bird. You are living on inside of us, you are living on inside of everyone that has been been graced by your pure beauty.

We love you ever so much darling little Birdie...
You are and always will be in our hearts and part of our life together.

With greatest and deepest love, Mama & Papa