Yesterday I saw a new Psychiatrist. The last one kind of pissed me off so I found a new one. After discussing my loss and describing my grief and resulting mood swings, he asked me a question that I still can't get out of my mind. He asked "What was your family life like as a child?" I asked "With respect to...specifically?" (I had no idea what this had to do with grief over the loss of my daughter.) He replied "Having a family, getting married. Was it ever discussed at home? Did your parents expect you to have a family?" I replied "Not really. It wasn't expected and it wasn't really discussed. I thought I didn't want children until about 5 years ago when I was 35." "Do you have a lot of guilt about that?" I replied "yes." He said "How much of that is driving this need to have a child?" WTF? Here's how I heard it: "Why did you wait so long to have your first child? What the fuck is wrong with you???"
Do I have a lot of guilt about waiting to have children until I was ready? I didn't get married until I was 36! At 37 we began trying to conceive and 18 months of infetility treatments later, I conceived. 9 months later, I lost my daughter just 12 days before her due date.
YES I FEEL GUILTY. I feel like shit. I've wasted my fertile years and worry that I'll never have a live child of my own. I always thought there would be time. I thought once we stopped using contraception, we'd get pregnant. I was stupid and naive. Yes, I feel guilty. Thanks for bringing that up for me to obsess over, again. I am 40 and still trying to conceive using my own, old eggs. I am desperate to have a live child. Desperate to have my daughter back, alive. Desperate to turn back the clock and make things right. I can't sleep at night worrying about the future.
I can't get those questions out of my head. He validated my fears and worries, my regrets. He gave them clout and made them significant again for me. It's back to square one for me.
3 comments:
((hugs))
I'm sorry.
Oh, ugh. I have to wonder. Sometimes I come across stories like this and think: what are we doing training caregivers to simply push buttons?! I would have asked him in return why he went immediately to guilt and was he feeling particularly guilty today? :) I like to push buttons back. :)
Anyway, seriously, I wanted to say that many bereaved parents we've met along the way have had similar experiences/thoughts. There is/was something that shifted from my mother/grandmother's generations to mine. In their generations you were pushed early and often and birth control was not readily available.
In my generation, there was permission to wait, education and living life was recommended, embraced, first. Birth control was at hand readily. And we all assumed that we'd just go off the pill and get pg when we wanted. That was freedom.
Anyway, that doesn't necessarily make me feel less regret, but it releases the guilt for me some -- sort of puts it into context -- you know, just leads me to conscious realization that I was making the best choice possible with the knowledge I had at the time. I just didn't know -- and I don't think medical research had long term results yet -- to know how altered my kind of body would be from the long term use of the pill. Still sucks, but give me context.
You also made me think about what does drive me -- mothers like us -- after death experiences? A mix of love and grief? Of course the answer is different for everyone. But I guess just for me personally, after the release of guilt and shame, the drive is a mix of love and grief; life and death; a realization of my own mortality and hence a desire to see my family reach into the generation beyond my own.
:) Well, you got me rambling! :)
just lots of miracles to you!
k-
I'm sorry, therapists and psychiatrists can be assholes. I was forced to go to a ton of them when I was younger and they pissed me off so bad I will NEVER go to one again. I have learned that most (if not all) therapists and psychiatrists choose that profession to work out there own issues. You did not wait too long to try for children. You waited until YOU were ready, and that is what you are supposed to do. That was the right thing to do. I don't know why God does this crap to us, teases us with our dream and then rips it out of our hands, but I KNOW that our babies are ok right now. They are all wriggeling and laughing in heaven. Email me if you are feeling up to it. **HUG**
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