Recently I blogged about an article in the Calgary Herald that talked about a stillborn baby and the rights of the baby to dignity and compassion. I didn't get into the story of the baby's mother, mostly because I really don't know what happened there and anything I say will be speculation.
But this mother and her baby stayed in my mind... The other day I spoke with a great friend of mine, Toren's mom, about the mother of this baby. While Toren's mom had so much love and compassion for this mother, I was unsure and skeptical. Why was I feeling this way?
The mother delivered her stillborn baby at home and hid the baby's body on her balcony, wrapped in a plastic bag. How could anyone do that, I thought? There is no way she told the truth, I thought... Until I went back to that awful place I avoid and remembered what it was like to give birth to Amelia.
This conversation with Toren's mom reminded me of the shock, the fear, the unimaginable, indescribable place where time stops and life looses any meaning, a place where the ground falls from your feet and the ceiling spins so hard you can't breathe. This is the place where a mother finds her newborn baby dead. Where birth and death meet and she is in the middle of it all, in pain of labour, in pain of loss. A piece of her dies with her baby. How is she expected to be rational, to follow some rules and norms that make sense to others, yet nothing makes sense to her, when she just died with her baby, all while she still breathes...
On Stillness: Dignity & Compassion
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