Yeah, but did you donate?

7.15.14

    On Tuesday, I was able to go talk at another grief education seminar in McKinney. This time, instead of it just being the labor and delivery and postpartum nurses, it was a mixture of nurses from all the different floors. This included an ER nurse and even one of the lactation consultants.
     I started the same way I had at the last session: I shared Kaitlyn's story, Hope Boxes, and then opened it up for questions.
     The first question came from one of the male nurses and asked if I could talk about the differences between how Alex and I grieved Kaitlyn (on some level, I thought this was hilarious because when did I become an expert?).
      I told him that men and women are so incredibly different in their grief, and one of the best pieces of advice I got at the very beginning was to never try to force Alex's grief to look like mine. Alex can't grieve Kaitlyn the way that I need to because he never carried her. But I can't grieve the way a father does because I did carry her. I told them about Alex having a "Kaitlyn box" and unless he is mentally in the "Kaitlyn box", we don't necessarily talk about his feelings about her. It's not wrong or unhealthy, it's just the way he grieves verses the way I grieve.
      The second question came from one of the lactation consultants.
      "Did you think about donating your milk afterwards?" she asked innocently.
       I had to pause for a minute because of how irritated this question still makes me. I did have one person as me about a month after Kaitlyn had passed if I had thought about donating my milk, but by that time my milk had dried up.
       "So, no, I never thought about it because it honestly never occurred to me," I started slowly. Then I finally sighed, "And honestly, I would strongly caution you against asking a mom to donate her milk. There are some moms out there that can and will do it, but I would hazard to guess that the majority of moms won't like the idea. One of my friends asked me about donating, and honestly the first thing that came to mind is that I got pissed. I thought, 'No, I'm just too selfish to care about somebody else's baby when I can't even feed my own baby.'"
         I stopped talking and let that hang in the air for a minute. Then the nurse replied, "Thank you. I would have never thought of it like that."
         "That's one of the reasons I'm here- I want you guys to ask me the difficult questions because I feel like it helps you guys get a different perspective without having to approach a mom fresh off of a loss to get the answers." I reassured her.
          The final question came from a nurse on the back row. I had shared with the group that I was pregnant with our second, and that's where this question came from.
          "Are you scared about this pregnancy?" she asked.
           It was probably the first time anyone had asked me so bluntly.
           "Well," I sighed, taking my time in answering. "I'm a Christian, and as such I believe in a God that's involved. I know that He has a plan for this child just like He had a plan for Kaitlyn. I put my trust in knowing that He is in control and that His plan for me is good. But it's a daily surrender in reminding myself that I'm not in control and there's nothing I would do differently with this pregnancy than I did with Kaitlyn."
           I have to confess, that was probably the coolest part of getting to share Kaitlyn's story. I love that I was able to so publicly tell people why I was able to stand there and share her story. I know that someone in that room needed to hear that, and I pray that it touched someone deeply.