Learning to Breathe

I stop breathing sometimes. Perhaps I'm trying to hold back the wave of pain rising in my chest and throat and prickling my nose. I feel rather lost - as if I am bobbing about in a vast ocean of grief, waiting for my feet to touch the ground again. Life around me goes on. People go to work, girls plan a girls only night, the coming of spring is anticipated, babies are born... I try to keep busy, try to occupy my thoughts so that the waves of grief don't wash over me and fill my lungs. Inevitably though, there's a point in the day when I don't risist and I go to that barren place in my heart. It's a place that's filled with memories of how my daughter's skin felt - her soft velvety head, the way she smelled so sweet. It's a place where I remember how she moved in me, tapping against my abdominal wall to let me know she was excited to come out and meet me face to face. It's the place where I remember saying goodbye to her and watching her being wheeled out of my hospital room and down the pale hallway.
They say that time is the best healer. Yes time...time in which this heartache must ache hard. There's no quick fix for this one. It's the path I am on and there is no detour. It's relearning how to live - learning to breathe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVlnHT8OkQQ

Shaely Rose - forever in my heart

The last photo I snapped of myself with my baby girl alive inside me was only a day before her little heart stopped beating. In it, I'm happy - the epitomy of a glowing expectant mother. My blue top stretches over my bulging belly, threatening to ride up and expose my nipple-like belly botton. I was seven and half weeks away from meeting my little one and had never been more happy. I lived in on a beautiful island, was surrounded by good people, a loving husband, a house that we had recently moved into all to ourselves and a thriving plumbing business. Life was good.

I started feeling poorly around 11 that Tuesday morning. By around 3, I resigned myself to the couch with a blanket and my phone. The contractions didn't start til 5 but there was no gradual build-up like I had heard and read about. They began at two and a half to three and a half minutes apart. Being my first, I wasn't sure if this really could be labour. After calling my mom and my midwife for advice, I realized that I needed to get to the hospital. I called Jesse home from the dance lessons we were scheduled to teach that night and we hurried to catch the last ferry out. As we pulled up, it was just leaving the dock. I was in immense pain by this time and we went for plan b. Plan b ended up involving me being helicoptered off the island, prevailing against a wind storm that had kicked up. The paramedics told us that they couldn't risk taking Jesse with us and that he'd have to catch the next boat out in the morning.

The next few hours are hazy in my memory. I remember the doctors saying they couldn't find a heartbeat. I don't know if I knew deep down inside, but all I could think at the time was that their equipment must be broken or my baby was hiding behind my liver or something. They told me they had to perform a c-section to get her out as soon as possible. I cried as they wheeled me to OR. In my delirium of pain and drugs, I didn't really understand anything other than this was not how I had planned it. Neither was the outcome of the surgery when I woke up in the early hours of March 2nd.

"Where's my baby?" I asked. Nobody responded. I could see my mom, my midwife and a bunch of people in blue. I asked again and then a third time. Finally my midwife started to attempt to form words for me - words that I didn't comprehend. Then the doctor told me what I can only see now as a nightmare.

She had not been born breathing. They had worked on her and tried everything they could...

"Can I see her?" They brought her to me. She was surprising a good size for her age. I could see right away that she had my nose and Jesse's ears. Her little mouth hung open - no air passing through. Her chest did not rise and fall like I always imagined it would. She was still and growing cold as it had been over an hour since they had delivered her. Despite the obvious, I was confused. She couldn't actually be gone. If I held her to my chest, she'd feel my warmth and start breathing on her own. It must have been the tubes coming out of her mouth and nose that left me thinking she was being assisted in pumping her heart. I coaxed her to come back. I asked God to make her breath again. My thoughts then flashed to my husband, my Jesse who was still at home. I called him, waking him from an uneasy sleep.

"She's not breathing, Jesse. You have to pray that God brings her back."

Together we prayed, believing that our God could and would bring her back. It wasn't until about five hours later that I finally realized that He wasn't going to. She was in Heaven and I was left holding her bruised, precious little body.

It has been four weeks and two days since that nightmare of a day. And the nightmare continues. I wake up every morning, feeling broken and void. I wonder about all the "what ifs," about how I should still be pregnant, about how I want so much to hold my little Shaely Rose and nurse her but I never will. I miss her so much - miss her moving in me, miss that I won't ever get to watch her grow-up...I grieve for the life that I left behind, when I knew nothing of the pain there is in having your child die before you.

One of my "favourite things"

So to continue on from my last post, what are some of the things that interest me and would like to write about? Sustainable living is very much at the top of my list. It's been a journey for me starting with my childhood. My mom set the example in recycling everything from the paper on cans to plastic bags. But sustainability has taken on a new meaning for me especially in the last four years or so. I realized that it meant more than taking out my blue box and putting it at the end of my driveway for the recycle guys to pick up. There was the issue of toxic emissions and not just from obvious things such as the cars we drive or the smokestacks of industrials complexes on Annacis Island. There was a bigger issue of consumption - our consumption of energy and the toxic fuels burned to supply us electricity, the consumption of the newest version of the ipod and the consumption of another toaster, another fan, another pair of shoes, all because they weren't made to last or recycled. What about the silent killers? The ones that release toxins even after production when they are nestled inside your house? I'm talking about things like your mattress, your carpet, your computer, all which can offgas small amounts of toxins that will hang around in the air you breath. This is especially a problem with our trendy airtight homes, sealed in plastic. What about the way we harness and utilize our energy? Resources can be depleted and depleted they will become unless we can come up with a way of recycling our energy use as well. And going back to consumption, depending on where you live, not all your recyclables are actually being recycled. In Canada, 73 per cent of waste produced by Canadians ends up in the landfills. That means that every disposable diaper that every mother straps to her baby's bottom, every piece of styrofoam from millions of boxes amongst other forms of packaging, every plastic wrapping from a candy to your meat to your cereal, every broken doll that wasn't worth regifting, it, times the millions, is sitting in an enormous pile of junk - releasing 25 per cent of Canada's methane emissions into our atmosphere and into our lungs. But what can you do? What alternatives are there that don't cause you to go bankrupt because they are organic or higher quality? At this point, not too much. But we are at a crucial time in our history. Now more than ever, we have more access to information via the Internet. We are learning where we have gone wrong and looking for ways to change our habits and our "carbon footprint" so to speak. But its not enough to just sit back and watch the a guy dump our blue box into the recycling truck. It's not even enough to buy the bottle of shampoo that is labeled "green." We have to demand for better options as consumers. We have to sacrifice our comfort and over abundance of luxery at our disposal and decide not to buy another pair of shoes because they aren't shiny like they were the days and weeks after we bought them. Most of all, we need to not wipe off our hands and rest assured that we have done our part by recycling our cans, milk jugs and paper. We need to question where and from how far did our "things" have to travel to get to us? How much fuel was burned to drive them to us? How much energy was used to produce them? Where will they end up after we're finished with them? And most importantly, how much environmental devastation was wreaked in order to make them? And to be expounded on more in another post, who is being jipped of a healthy and happy lifestyle to produce them so that you can buy it for a bargain?

Rusty

I went to university to become a journalist. Five and a half years later, here I am - graduated, living on a small island and about to become a mother. The funny thing is that, two years into my degree, I realized journalism wasn't for me. I mean, I still liked writing, but I was a die-hard out for the scoop, driven and determined to get published. So I decided to minor in public relations. One day when circumstances are more conducive, I plan to work for an organization with goals centering around making the world more sustainable rather than producing a product that will be break in three months and be thrown out. But for now, I want to keep up my writing if only for pleasure. Hence the blogging.

I'm feeling a little rusty - actually quite rusty. I haven't got my thoughts channeled in such a manner that allows me to go on a rant or in depth examination of one of the many subjects that captures my interest these days. The plan is to eventually get past this rusty stage and put to paper the topics that I have spent countless hours talking to people about and researching.

So what are some of these topics that I am so eager to share my thoughts and knowledge about? I'd like to share a bit about my background and the journey of my life the last couple years. But that's another post for another day.

Life of the Self-Employed

My husband and I recently started a plumbing business - him being the plumber and me being the bookkeeper etc. Jesse is quite good at what he does but when it comes to keeping track of anything, he hits a brick wall. I might go so far as to say, a steel wall. That's where I come in with my superiour organizational and comprehension skills - or so I thought.

Managing a business is a whole new ballpark for me. Even five and-a-half years of keeping on top of endless assignments at university didn't prepare me for this. So we need an official name - why are there so many sites to register with? Shouldn't there be one "official" one? We need insurance - do we stay with sole-propriatorship or go limited? There's HST now, guess we gotta get registered with that. Nope, not til we've made over $30,000. Ok, gotta keep track of all the finances - Quickbooks? Grumbles from Jesse -  he likes writing things down on paper. Did I mention scrap pieces of paper? Where is that number honey? Somewhere...he doesn't know. Ok, we need one place that he writes stuff down. And so the list goes on. Advertising, business number, business cards, client book, check and respond to emails, order materials, bill clients, and so forth.

We're finally starting to get a system going, after trial and error I might add. Living in a small community means that Jesse has to be extra mindful of earning a good reputation since word of mouth is the fastest (and cheapest) means of advertising around here. So far, he seems to be doing alright. He has work everyday, and lately, he has had a couple new customers call each day.

As for me, I monitor things back at home base. I recently finished my last semester of school and now have a BA in journalism with a concentration in public relations. Besides the fact that this isn't the most promising place as far as finding a career in my fields, it also just isn't the time. I'm having a baby in April!