Baby Names

Naming a baby is tricky because you have to think about derivations.  Sometimes a nickname is worse than the original, so before I got pregnant I thought about how to control that.  It was impossible to come up with a boy's name I liked, but I knew what I wanted to name my daughter if I had one.

My husband's mom comes from a town in the Mexican state Nayarit and I always liked the way it sounded.  I thought Naya for short would be perfect and my husband liked the idea because he lost touch with his mom when he was younger.  He took naming our baby after her as an homage and it made him feel good.  So we agreed if we had a girl, we would call her Nayarit.  

But once we received a poor prenatal diagnosis and the amnio showed that she was a she, I didn't know what to do.  My therapist said naming her would help with the grieving process if we decided to terminate the pregnancy, but my husband couldn't bare to name her after his mom because it was too sad for him.  I never asked why, but I wondered if Nahuatl's diagnosis represented the dysfunction between him and his mom.  And even though I didn't know for sure, I had to respect my husband's feelings.  A father grieves differently than a mother and I wanted to help him as much as I could.  But I wouldn't give my daughter any name just for the sake of moving on.  I wanted to put care into it.  So I went through traditional Aztec names and found the language Náhuatl is sometimes used. Though Náhuatl literally means "someone who makes an agreeable sound (someone who speaks my language)," some sites indicate Nahuatl depicts the migration of Mexican Indians by meaning four waters. And since I'm a sucker for meaning, we named our baby Nahuatl.  

Now that she is gone, I am compelled to do things for her.  I make sure she always has flowers (we decided her color is purple).  I kiss her everyday.  I look at my ultrasounds and touch her handprints/footprints frequently.  I rub the foot that was missing a toe.  I find ways to share her with people.  And I buy her a variety of memorial pendants.    

But a vendor has to replace one of the pendants from the necklace I received today because Nahuatl's name was misspelled.  And it's funny because I was upset at first.  I was initially horrified looking at it and couldn't understand why everything always goes wrong despite how hard I try to make life work. Nahuatl's chromosomes didn't separate right after doing everything I could to ensure a healthy pregnancy and now someone misspelled her name after leaving specific instructions at the check out. I spent all that time thinking about nicknames and choosing a new name we cared about, but at the end of the day Nahuatl was processed as Nahuati.

I sat with it for a while and I had to laugh.  A typographical error for a meiotic defect.  No matter how much I try to control events, I can't.  Some days this upsets me.  While mothers push baby strollers, I'm the one standing in line purchasing purple flowers.  But sometimes I can breath through it and find hope in acceptance.

Something to Hold Onto

I told my therapist the feeling of losing a baby won't go away.  It's always with me no matter what I'm doing. When I'm brushing my teeth, when I'm cleaning my house, when I'm on the bus, I'm always thinking about her. I wonder if she had a head full of hair like me.  If she looked more like my husband or had my grandfather's eyes.  I imagine myself kissing her little belly and I can see her wearing diapers with her long legs from my ultrasounds coming out of them.  And when I catch sight of my husband's hands, I think about how she had the same ones.  

But for some reason there are certain tasks I can get lost in.  I search for memorial pendants and patron saint medallions (though I am not religious).  I scour Etsy and Ebay looking for the right ones.  Meaningful necklaces with the perfect pendant or collection of pendants tied to babies and infants who were lost in pregnancy or after, as well as patron saints of children. If I focus my attention on searching for and buying these items, I feel better about life.  Even with a limited income I can't stop.  It gives me peace.      

And I can't help but think of the trailer to The Rabbit Hole when I do these things, a film about a couple who lost their child. In one of the scenes the mother asked if it (the pain) ever went away.  The person she was speaking with said no, but that it eventually becomes bearable.  I think that's what I am waiting for.  And that things like photoshopping Nahuatl's handprints and footprints for family and ordering prints of her ultrasounds so I can hang them up help me in the interim.  So even though I can't explain why buying a necklace makes me feel okay, it's something I can hold onto until life is bearable again.  

Funerals & Cremations

After the T21 diagnosis, I grew accustomed to sleeping things off.  When I wake, it takes me a while to remember the current environment and the temporary confusion helps me deal with some of my emotions.  But some days are more difficult than others and sleeping resolves nothing ... like today.

Today I had to pick up my daughter's remains from the funeral home where she was cremated.  It was awkward walking in.  I was aware of every stride.  How I was posed.  I didn't want to talk or breathe.  Even letting the director know who we were and why we were there was forced.  The words "I'm here to pick up my daughter" were awful.  They sounded foreign and they bruised my tongue.  Their finality and coldness triggers melancholy.  But that is what I had to say to move forward.  

When the director left so that he could retrieve Nahuatl, we were in front and I saw all the different sized urns showcased on the wall.  They were overwhelming.  But it wasn't until I looked upon the tiniest urn that I began to cry.  I kept thinking urns shouldn't be that small.  My anguish increased when the director returned with a tiny little bag that had a tiny little tin can inside.  Nahuatl used to fit inside me and now she lives in a tiny little can inside a tiny little bag.  

I'm good at compartmentalizing my feelings.  Finding a space and never thinking about them again.  And that's all I want to do with today.  But my therapist says that's not the way people heal.  That the grieving process lingers when compartmentalizing.  That's why I'm allowing myself to feel this.  Well ... partly why.   I trust my therapist and I want to be happy again, but I also want to think about Nahuatl without feeling empty.  I have no stories to tell of her.  Just that she was a hell of kicker for having four toes on one foot.  And that I pictured her bouncing her head up against my uterus whenever I sloshed her around when running for the bus.  But I have no real memories of her life like where she spent her 1st birthday.  No pictures of her first laugh, her first experience touching water, or the first time she fell asleep in my arms.  She lived inside me for 5 months.  So I don't have any life stories.  But I have the life I dreamed for her, holidays, outings, travels, and I want to be able to think about them without feeling robbed.  Thinking about her keeps her from disappearing.  And that is important to me because her presence is every part of my family as my husband and I are.  She is very much loved and was very much wanted.  So I am hoping that allowing myself to go through this grief and loss will somehow get me to accept what happened so that I can think about her without growing silent.