Still

“I’m expecting,” I told my four-year-old daughter as we trudged into the leafy woods around our home. It was a cold September day, and in her hands she held two dozen seed packets of bluebells to scatter into the rich soil beneath the trees.

 “In the spring,” I promised, “there will be small periwinkle clouds here and there. But if we’re patient, the clouds will grow and grow to cover the whole forest floor.”

 “Like a carpet?” she asked.

 “I’m expecting,” I answered breezily, as though I had no attachment to the outcome. As though expectations did not come with the possibility of disappointment.

 My five-month belly was just starting to strain against my overalls. I carry small, and this baby, my second, was my secret baby. For some reason, my husband and I preferred keeping this one between the two of us. When it was time to tell people, I physically couldn’t. I struggled to get the words out—even to family and my own parents.

 One day, a friend pointed to my belly and asked, “Is that new?”

 “No,” I finally admitted. “It’s seven months in the making!”

 I showed up ninety minutes late to my own baby shower. I couldn’t explain why.

 The bluebells we planted that September never came and neither did the baby, who arrived stillborn at thirty-nine weeks; just one week before her due date.

 The last thing I remember about my baby girl is the swift and purposeful kick she gave her sister whose hand was resting on my belly as she said goodnight. Like the seeds in the woods, my baby turned and buried herself somewhere deep in my soul.

Friends and family who had just received a Christmas card announcing our pregnancy woke one January morning to my email which began gently: It seems strangely fitting that with a pregnancy so quiet and peaceful, it was with equal silence and grace that some time on the night of January the ninth our baby girl quietly slipped away. Her heart simply and mysteriously stopped beating.

With Sebastian at my side, I gave birth to Annabelle Franziska on January 10—1:39 p.m. at our local hospital. She weighed 6 lb., 9 oz. and was just as beautiful as her big sister on the day she was born. With a full head of dark hair, long eyelashes, and red lips, Annabelle was our Sleeping Beauty.

Sebastian and I spent a few quiet hours comforted by her warm body; gazing at her beautiful little face. Like all parents, we counted her fingers and toes and admired her tiny ears and little nose. She was perfect, and perfectly at peace. 

Despite their best efforts, doctors have been unable to tell us why our once strong and vigorous baby simply decided that this was neither the time nor the place for her. What is more frustrating for them is that Sebastian and I have no burning need to know why it happened. We choose instead to let her small body rest in peace.

Here’s what I didn’t tell them.

I didn’t tell them how many times doctors asked for permission to perform an autopsy and how many times we had to say no.

I didn’t tell them that it took months for me to figure out that nurses wrapped my baby girl in heated blankets so her warmth would bring us comfort. With poking and prodding, they distracted me while changing her blankets—keeping her warm and supple for hours while we said our hellos and goodbyes to her still and silent body. More than two hours after her birth, when my parents poked their heads in at my hospital door, I cried out happily, “Mommy, she’s still warm! Take her. Hold her. See?”

I didn’t tell them that we took pictures with our daughter during those precious hours, or that one of my favorite pictures of my husband is among them. In it, he is holding Annabelle wrapped in a blanket with a plush white teddy bear he has lovingly placed beneath the folds and against her chest “to keep her warm. To keep her company.” He is looking down at her, his brow furrowed, a grimace on his face as he holds back tears, but you can see his pain. I know we have never loved each other more than in that moment. 

I didn’t tell them that after I left the hospital my milk came in so I stuffed cold cabbage leaves in my bra to ease the engorgement and soak up my weeping breasts.

I didn’t tell them the number of times I checked the rearview mirror, looking for a car seat and baby in the backseat.

I didn’t tell them that for months, I lived in a parallel universe imagining what I should be doing at that exact moment if my baby had lived.

Every week, I paid a therapist to tell me I was a little better than the week before. I told her I didn’t know the color of Annabelle’s eyes. I told her that I keep my daughter’s ashes on my nightstand, but I don’t know where she is. I told her that I worry my daughter is cold, hungry, and scared. My therapist looked at me in silence and finally said, “It’s hard for you. You’re a mother and your child is dead.” As if I needed reminding that my child was dead.

My husband took us to Disney World for eight days, so we wouldn’t forget how to laugh. Every night we watched fireworks light up the sky while “When You Wish Upon a Star” was piped loudly into the air: “Makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires, will come to you.”

In late spring, my daughter and I put away the crib and the baby clothes. We talked about the next time we might take them out. We wanted them fresh—for the next baby. She still had the questions which we felt too foolish to ask out loud, “Is Annabelle an angel? Did she have to learn to use her wings? Can she hear us? Will she come back?”

We simply let our four-year-old’s vivid imagination carry us to places more beautiful than we could imagine for ourselves. I learned that there are no answers to the questions we ask in our grief, but occasionally, small truths bubble up out of nowhere. The consolation they bring is so powerful it drowns out the unanswered questions.

I don’t remember when, but one day I realized my baby girl lived and died never knowing pain or hunger or loneliness, just the soft warmth of my body and the constant sound of my loving and ever-present heartbeat. She knew the curious sound of our voices and felt the gentle presence of our hands reassuring her in the dark. Suddenly, knowing that seemed enough.

In August, I broke the silence and sent out another email to friends and family, letting them know we were doing well, both physically and emotionally.

Learning to carry Annabelle with me has been a little like finding the North Star. The process is complicated and frustrating for a novice. First, you have to find the Big Dipper, and then count two stars from the end of the bowl. The North Star is almost in line with those two stars, it is bright, but not very bright, surrounded by dimmer stars. Once you have found the North Star a few times, it becomes easy to find. Eventually, safe in the knowledge that it, and she, is simply there—I find I don’t have to look for her so often.

Here’s what I didn’t say: “I’m expecting.”

I called this one my subsequent child. Christie Brooks had not yet coined the term “rainbow baby”—a comforting phrase that does not convey the silent fear with which I carried this small hope in my belly. I had an overwhelming sense that at any moment something terrible could happen. After all, Death knows the way to my front door, he’s been inside and sat at my kitchen table. He’s comfortable here and could return at any moment.

Angelina was born on April 14, 2007. She filled the ache in my arms and family. She expanded my heart, which made room for her, but she did not heal my grief.

Time also did not heal my wound but transformed it—into a scar I can look at lovingly. I have no memories of Annabelle, only specific and vivid emotions around her—a treasured kind of grief that matches the sharp slivers and shards of her brief life.

The children we have carried, those we have raised, and those we have lost, stay with us forever. Scientists have found that this is literally true: “During pregnancy, cells from the fetus cross the placenta and enter the mother's body, where they can become part of her tissues. … The cells have been shown to persist for decades, perhaps even for the rest of the mother’s life.”

Sometimes, small truths bubble up out of nowhere, and the blessings they bring are so beautiful they drown out the unanswered questions. My baby girl decided that this was neither the time nor place for her, so she buried herself somewhere deep in my soul. Suddenly, knowing this seemed enough.

 ***

 One summer, we planted four beautiful, white “Annabelle” hydrangeas, three along the side of the house. The fourth we planted with some of Annabelle’s ashes, next to the children’s sandbox and swing set. From there, we thought, she could always be near her sisters as they played, able to overhear their conversations and share their laughter.

But in the second year, there was a problem with the Annabelle planted by the playground. Despite her healthy size and dark green leaves, what this errant Annabelle would not do is grow a single globe of delicate white flowers like the ones she wore on the day she was planted. This rebellious Annabelle only produced lace-caps: a parasol of fine white lace with a smattering of open flowers around the edges.

This was not the Annabelle I had ordered. These were not the magnificent jaw-dropping blooms I had expected.

I spent days on the Internet, reading about Annabelles until I stumbled across a gardener’s blog titled Wild vs. True Annabelle.

“Often,” wrote the blogger, “I hear from gardeners whose Annabelle blooms do not fully develop. I believe these hydrangeas that are supposed to be “Annabelle” are really a wild type of arborescence. Some are quite beautiful in their own way, but they are usually not what the gardener had in mind.”

I sat back from the computer and took this in. It seems that gardens, like children, are intended to teach us something about living with disappointment. I have had my heart broken by both plants and children—seeds I’ve sown that never bloomed.

A Wild Annabelle, like mine, can be a disappointment, but still beautiful in its own way.

-Renée Shafer Lux

The author beneath her Wild Annabelle.

Renée Shafer Lux is a wife and mother of two living in suburban Connecticut. She worked as a journalist in New England and briefly in Asia where she was born and raised. Currently, she works as a freelance writer. “I write to escape the tyranny of unmade beds and dirty dishes and to hear the sound of my own voice. In my creative writing, I try to elevate the mundane and reveal the extraordinary in the everyday.” Instagram: reneejlux. Twitter: @RSLux.