When I watch a Birth Story reality show on TV I always hope the baby will die.
There. I've said it.
Then, in the grocery store - We all say that, when we look at pregnant people, the pain that we feel is pain for our loss and has nothing to do with the baby. We don't want their baby to die, we just are sad that our baby did.
Sometimes, not always, I do hope for that baby to die.
I am going to make a half-assed attempt at defending myself:
- When I am watching TV, I don't really relate to the people there. They are sweet, with lovely little lives, and POP! they have a new baby. It is a false environment that does not lead me to empathize with them in any way.
- If we are talking Celebrity Baby, then I think of what it would do for families of stillborn babies if we had a Brooke Shields. Someone who carried their baby to term, had a perfect pregnancy and perfect care, and still had the baby die. Someone who the media would listen to and who would become active in educating the public about stillbirth. (though I would never want Tom Cruise or B.Spears as a stillbirth spokesperson...)
- I am jealous.
- I want people to know what I am dealing with every day, and the only way for them to truly know is to live it.
- If more people had babies die, then maybe it wouldn't be such a scary thing for me to talk about my dead baby.
- I don't know why I feel this emotion, I just feel it.
I am sorry that I am such a small person. What kind of horrible human being hopes for another human being to die? And I guess that when I dig underneath all of the jealousy and pain, and think about what it would really be like for the person I am envious of to lose their baby, I probably might not really mean it.
Not much else to say here. I hope I grow out of this smallness as my life goes along. Don't know if I will. This is the ugly, ugly, side of my grief. Which is why this blog is annonymous. So I can say the ugly things without personal retaliation and looks of incredulity and horror.
So, thanks for reading. Nice to know you...now off you go and find someone without such a small little soul.
7 comments:
Oh, hun ((((((big hugs))))))))
You will 'grow' out of it, it takes time and work. And sometimes, it comes back when you least expect it. Heh, that's what the Catholic church has confession for. But blogs work too i guess!
By the way, there have been celebrities who have endured stillbirth/neonatal death. Madeline Albright, Keanu Reeves (whose girlfriend, mother of the baby, died a year or so later in a car accident, high on some cocktail of drugs). Maybe even Oprah if you believe the rumors. But i think noone has wanted to open up their grief to public scrutiny, and i think i understand that too. There was a football star who recently did talk publically about losing his son.
I remember a month or so after losing Nicolas, i was walking down the street gripping about this very subject -- why did it happen to me, and not to anyone famous? And Keanu Reeves' face, on a poster for the Matrix something, hit me like a ton of bricks -- and i remembered. Yes, he had a stillborn daughter, Ava was her name...
And watching 'Baby Story' or the like is just a recipie for emotional disaster if you ask me...ahem...
You are not horrible! I used to lie to my therapist and say that I didn't wish all the babies my pregnant friends and coworkers were having would die. Then I started saying that I wanted the babies to "go away" and not exist in my realm. But really, sometimes, I feel like I wouldn't care if they died. I'm not very capable of empathy in the real world at times.
Oh- and I now hate, but am drawn to, the shows on "crisis pregnancies" on discovery health.... they show pregnancies with tons of complications, and yet there are very few dead babies! Give me a break! Why can't they show that babies die! And not all that infrequently.
So, sorry to take over your comments section, but you are normal, unfortunately. And you are even still a good person.
I feel that way too :) I'm glad that other people are feeling/have felt that...I thought that I was nuts, or just evil.
Three years later, I still feel the same way. I try to pretend that I don't really feel that way, but its just not the case. I hate myself for being so bitter. I hate myself for being so jealous. And I hate that you have to feel the same way. Sending you lots and lots of hugs. You are NOT alone.
I felt exactly the same way for a long long time. Of course, you can't admit that to people in your real life because they would be suitably horrified (as we probably would be if we never suffered the death of a baby). But we have and we understand and would never judge you for having those thoughts. How could we not think like that after our babies died?? I think what you are feeling is normal and you are certainly not alone. We in "dead baby blogland" have all been there at some point in our grief. Big (((hugs))) to you.
You are not a horrible person for feeling this way. In fact, I applaud you for putting your feelings into words and sharing them with us. I think most of us who have lost their babies have felt this way at some point.
With my pg dhac friends, I dont *wish* for something to happen to their baby, but part of me thinks that if something *did* go wrong, at least they would understand my reality and hopefully stop being so completely insensitive to me.
big (((hugs))) to you.
You're not alone. I've also wished these things, particularly where celebs are concerned, as it would add so much visibility to our "voice." I don't think "A Baby Story" would ever run a show about a family whose baby died, although they have shown a few episodes about couples whose previous babies died, and now they are onto their subsequent child(ren). I do hate the way they brush over it though, like "everything's okay, now, they have a baby!"
I've had these thoughts about friends, too, though I don't think I truly wish anything bad would happen to them. (Okay, I admit that sometimes I just wish that they'd have a little "scare" to shake them up a bit!) I mainly just wish more people would understand what my pain feels like. Anyway, I'm so glad we have each other. No one will judge us here.
P.S. It is true about Oprah. I've heard her speak about it herself. She had a baby when she was very young, who either died at birth or shortly thereafter. I don't know if it was a boy or girl, and I don't know if she did either. She was so young that she may not have fully internalized what happened to her, as you can see by how infrequently she refers to it now, and I don't think she considers herself a parent in the way that most of us do. The biggest celeb I am aware of who had a late term loss that was well covered in the media, and who has spoken publicly about it is Annie Lennox (Eurythmics), whose son was stillborn in the late 80s.
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