Pookie's Helpful Day

(Topic: Photo story, Weighted Bear)

Hi Friends!

The other day I had a low-motivation morning, and I realized I needed a little help getting going. My family was coming for dinner, too, so there were some errands and housework that needed to happen, plus setting the table, making things look nice, and then, of course, cooking something yummy.

But I was dragging a bit, so I decided to photograph Pookie "helping" me along the way. It really worked...

Pookabed

Nutritious sips of mama's breakfast drink

What Pook could resist a massage? He only got a quick turn, though. Mama got most of the time.

Being my copilot, purse holder, and list manager.

I'd been texting these pictures to hubby, because he enjoys Pookie's adventures. At this point he encourages the little bear into some highjinx: "What's in Mama's purse?" he texts.

Pookie found the paper straws in my purse. I don't mind him playing with those!

Look at that great adventuring hat we found for Pookie! Hubby had suggested a pith helmet, but those aren't as readily available :)

Oops! Out of peas! A quick grocery run for peas and a few other things.

It's a butter knife and he's under close supervision. He's a very careful Pook, don't worry!

At this point people started arriving. Yep, I got all the important things done - and it was a lovely evening. I'm so glad Pookie was there to help me get ready, though. He really helps when I have down days, and giving him "adventures" to send to daddy really helps too.



Yours,

Sarah

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Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

In Progress: Baby Dress

(Topic: Knitting)

Hi Friends!

Just a quick update today, about a "WIP" (Work In Progress). I'm currently knitting a baby/toddler dress. I'm not concerned with exact gauge, because I'll just use it whenever I end up with a child that fits in it!

I found the yarn at Joann's, but then it got discontinued by the store, so I only found the accent blue there... luckily, I can order directly from the manufacturer, and for about the same price! So I ordered several skeins of white, since that's what I want the dress to be. It's Fair Isle brand, Harbor style. Colorways are White and Vivid Blue. I really like the texture (silky!) but it's sometimes a bit slippery to work with.

Here's my so-far photo:

This photo is the bottom of the back of the dress. The back and the front are worked separately, and it's sleeveless. It's a Debbie Bliss pattern. I'm adding the striping myself; the original pattern calls for only one yarn color.

I think I'm on size 3 needles, and I always use circular needles: I find that circs have the weight of the work between your hands, whereas straights have the weight of the work pulling down on the outside ends of the needles on either side of your hands. I prefer circs for most things, personal preference!

Eventually there will be eyelets around the waist, too, and I've been asked whether the ribbon will be blue. I'll have to see: depends on where else I add blue, whether it will be a good accent or too much.

More updates on this later as I get more of it done!


Yours,

Sarah

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Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

(insomnia, grief, anxiety, NICU)

It's currently one a.m. and I can't sleep. This isn't uncommon, unfortunately. It IS frustrating. I know it's my own brain working against me, and that's frustrating too. And listening to hubby's breathing get deeper and softer is maddening - because I'm not falling asleep too.

Today my brain decided I needed to bake cookies, which is totally and completely deviant. I don't think you understand just how much I don't bake cookies. AND doing it by stealth! They are ready to go and in the fridge, because one thing I could not figure out was how to preheat the oven, without the "ready" beep waking up hubby. Who, I presume, is still sleeping, because he hasn't come to find me.

I know why I'm awake this time. I don't always. Usually it's a mystery to me, or I just sleep badly, or I dream vividly. Sometimes I can figure out an event or stressor that is making my anxiety (frequently present post loss...) jump into full gear, but often not.

Today it's that my knitting group - the one that donates blankets to the NICU - arranged for us to see and tour the facility. It was fascinating, and helpful to see where the blankets go and how they are used (since they are NOT part of sleeping safely. Think instead of things like shading the baby's incubator, tucking around them in a car seat, etc.).

But on another front, it was so hard for me, for many reasons.

One, they are babies. This is hard for me, because if there is one thing I long for, it's holding a baby. Any baby will do, but ideally mine and even more ideally it would be Charlie. Here were lots of tiny babies - and none of them to hold, and none of them mine.

So two is that they aren't my baby, and I'm SO jealous of anyone else getting to have babies when I don't have mine. Fascinatingly, this doesn't mean I'm not happy for my friends who get pregnant - I am very happy for them, but I'm also very jealous, so sometimes this means I just can't be in touch quite as closely for a while.

Three is the weird feeling that instead of feeling jealous, I should be feeling sorry for the moms who have to go through a NICU experience - or something. I don't know exactly what I think I should be feeling. At the same time, intellectually, I know I'm allowed to feel any feeling, and that's ok. And part of me does empathize with how difficult I imagine it could be for some of those families. So my feelings are very tangled up.

And of course, over, under, and through that, I miss Charlie. I miss him so much I can't sleep, and I'm crying, and I'm chatting on Facebook and baring my heart to a friend, because sometimes telling somebody about how much, how very very much, I love my little boy, and how hard it is to be a mom without him here, is the only way I can let myself feel it enough to let the feeling exist and then, hopefully before too late at night, let it finish washing over me, so I can finally rest.

One, I want to hold the babies. Two, I don't want others to have what I can't have. Three, I don't know how I feel and I feel a lot of things. And fourth, most, and biggest, I love and miss my Charlie boy, my little bouncy tigger with the big feet who loved music so much, who I will never get to watch grow up and never hold again until my days are done.



It's been a really hard day. I learned a lot, and got some other things done, and had a nice dinner with hubby, but until I tried to sleep, I didn't realize how there were leftover feelings from this morning lurking in the back of my mind.

I hope and think, now that I have listened to the feelings and felt the feelings, that I'll go blow my nose and wash my face, and I think now I can sleep.

Please remember Charlie.

Yours,

Sarah

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Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

Why I Dye My Hair

(Topic: Hair-dying, grief)

Dear Friends

If you could have a super power, what would it be? Let's restrict it a little: If you could have any super power that is trivial and can't help fix the world...

I always thought it would be the best thing to have a hair super power, able to regrow my hair to any length, really quickly. That would let me color, cut, or do whatever I want with my hair, and then just cut off the part that was different and regrow from scratch to whatever length I wanted. This isn't a new idea, either. I've thought about this since before I was a teenager.

2009-ish?

Since I didn't have the super power, though, I never wanted to alter my hair much. I like it long, and I like it brown, generally speaking - I'm pretty happy with my wavy, curly hair most of the time! Once, and once only, did I do a red dye on top of my brown, while on an exchange year in Germany and exploring options. I let it fade out and go back to my natural color, and didn't try to extend it. I cut my hair short in college, and then back up to my shoulders twice, but somehow always ended up back where I'd started, with hair halfway down my back, brown and curly.

I like trying different eras' styles too. This is early 1900s style (I think the picture is from 2012-2014 or so)

What about Grecian-inspired?

Part of the reason I liked it was that I also really liked the Middle Ages, and dressing in medieval clothing. Having long, undyed hair meant I didn't have to do anything crazy to try to hide modern hair. Post college I started exploring Civil War era reenacting, and there, too, having naturally colored long hair was great.


And I essentially kept my hair like that for a long, long time.

Enter Charlie.

One of the first things I did after Charlie died was dye my hair. I desperately felt the need for a change, and was also feeling like (beyond just losing Charlie, and losing all our plans for his future and our future with him) I'd also lost myself. I'd been planning for 9 months for how I was going to be a mother, and that rug was yanked out from under me. Yes, I'm a mother, but redefined: all the initial plans of diapering and feeding and cuddling were gone. And it took me a long time to redefine that. I think dying my hair was a step towards figuring that out.

I had my best friend come and do it. She understood me, as well as anyone could, and was also one of the few people I would trust to do things to my long-untouched hair. We spend hours in my bathroom, bleaching, rinsing, dying, rinsing... I picked blue and green, MY favorite colors. In a way, it represents Charlie too (his middle name is Peacock, and these are peacock colors) but I picked them out for me.

At first, only the right side, a small section, and growing out from the top. And for a long time, blue and green were my go-to colors.

I kept it long, at first. Sometimes, though, that itch of redefinition would creep in, and my hair is mine and is safe to play with (it won't harm others), and it is also very evident - in mirrors, in selfies, in seeing my own hair. I cut bangs, and eventually also cut my hair to shoulder length. Then I played intermittently with other colors, too, though staying within that same section on the right side of my head I'd started with.

Still the same section, but tried tiger stripes for a while. Looking back, I actually really like this.

 I still haven't gone any farther up my hair than where the initial dye job from 2 years ago was - or not much higher, anyway - but I've just expanded to the whole circumference! So the line of where the color starts is about 2 years of growth down from my part. I still use it to help settle that redefinition itch, though now it is more about enjoying the color and playing with my image, and less a crucial mental/emotional health reaction.

And on the plus side, that 2 years of growth means I can pretty easily hide all that color in a bonnet, if I do decide to attend a reenactment! ;)

My current look! The colors usually blend together, but in this picture you can kind of see the gray (looks fawn), yellow (looks orange), orange (looks red), hot pink, blue, and green.

Yours,

Sarah

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Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

Sontag Wrap

(Topic: Knitting, History)


Hi Friends!

Recently having finished a lot of baby stuff, I decided it was time to reach for some of my UFOs (UnFinished Objects) and get a few things done that have been lying around my project area for a while!

One of the projects I had half-done is called a "Sontag" (named after the opera singer who wore it) or a bosom friend (because of the way it wraps). It's an 1860s shawl/sweater, and there was a pattern published in Godey's Lady's Book (popular women's magazine of the day). Because we have an original source for it, many reenactors feel very comfortable making and wearing it!

image from Godey's, used from www.raggedsoldier.com/pictures/needle/bosom_friend.jpg

There are other original sources, too, such as photographs of women wearing different versions. I'm not going to post all sorts of pictures here, but if you google "knit sontag" you'll find some old photographs and other original patterns mixed in with pictures of people wearing the ones they have made recently.

In fact, one reenactor (Ragged Soldier) even published a modernized pattern, since some of the terminology differed, and since we tend to write patterns out differently now. She's not the only one who did, but hers is easy to find online on her blog (link above). I started out with her pattern, but when I picked it back up recently, I looked at the original again too, and used the original instructions and my knitting gut to finish it off.

The original pattern calls for scarlet wool; I went with two shades of brown. Only the dark part was done when it got lost in my bin of obscurity...

When I got to the edging, I had no guide for how many stitches to pick up per side, so this first attempt had too few and curled my work. Note the corner in the bottom of the picture: I'm not sure whether I accidentally added it or if it was indicated in the original, but it sure shouldn't be there! I had to creatively fix once I was done...

Here you can see the shape of it, more or less. The dark brown is the back, the light brown comes over the shoulders and crosses in front, then wraps around the waist to the back.

Border finished! There is still some waviness meaning I probably could have had fewer stitches in that middle section.

Starting to look more like a finished product! Here, I'm playing around with the "ermine" stitching from the original pattern. It looks messy to me at this point, so I get some input from friends.

One of them asked how many strands I was using, and that made the lightbulb go off! The top couple of stitches here have a double strand instead of single, and not only are they more visible, they are also more defined. I like it already.

Starting the ermine over, this time all double strand thickness.

A test photo, to be sure I still like how the ermine is progressing. Note the cord pulled to the left: that's an I-cord, and I made 2 as ties. They are attached at the back.

Above: testing fit. Note in the picture where I'm facing left that there is a floppy piece: that is the "corner" from my shaping. In the picture where I'm facing right, you can see a hint of the tuck I used to fold in the excess.

And the finished version, front and back! I'm not really happy with the fix I had to do to tuck that extra corners away, but other than that, I love this finished Sontag! Warm and snuggly, historical, and cute!

Yours,

Sarah

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Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

Charlie's Garden and a Pookie Visit

(Topic: Gravesite)

Dear Friends,

One of the ways I "cultivate" Charlie's memory (ha ha ha!) is by gardening around his grave stone. We are lucky to have him in an old and beautiful cemetery that is open to people gardening on the gravesites, as long as you stay roughly within their parameters and guidelines.

As long as the garden is within the dimensions, doesn't have majorly spiny bushes, or breakable things, it's within guidelines. I have many spring bulbs planted, and the yellow "greenery" is a decorative oregano, which provides most of the summer fill.

As you can see, amongst the plants are also garden decorations. Some of these are more long term, but others (such as the pinwheel) I change out seasonally. In the back left you can see a box in which is a notebook for visitors to leave notes for Charlie if they are so inclined. There are also a few tigers hidden in the oregano that live there - it's their jungle!

On a recent visit I found a puzzle piece in the grass near his grave (but clearly from someone else). Seemed fitting, though!

I almost always have Pookie with me on visits. He helps out with the garden as much as he can without getting grubby, and likes to pose for pictures.

What a sweet fuzzball!

We're pretty close to a line of trees, so late summer afternoons start to get shade because of the angle of the sun. No overhead shade, though.

This cemetery is located along a river, and in the river is a large rock that has served as a landmark for hundreds if not thousands of years. You can see it behind Pookie, who is enjoying a new bench overlooking the peaceful river!

The view upriver

Yours,

Sarah

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Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

The World Grieves with an Orca

(Topic warning: Infant loss and grief)

Dear Friends,

I don't know if you have seen it, but there are many articles right now about a mother orca (killer whale) whose baby died. The orca is making the news because of how she is grieving, and it's pretty amazing.

In a nutshell, the calf was born, and was seen swimming with mama, but the next time the orca mama was seen (about half an hour later), she was carrying the deceased baby. She has been carrying the baby ever since, and it's been 10 or 11 days.

Here are a few articles about what's been happening:

MSN's article from Aug. 2
Fox 5 San Diego (with video and audio I have not viewed)
National Geographic Aug. 2
NY Times "The Orca, Her Dead Calf, and Us) Aug 4

This story is being reposted all over loss-related Facebook groups, sometimes with commentary, sometimes without. I find it fascinating how people have such different takes on the situation. I've seen several articles that focus on the issues with the habitat and food sources, but then a lot of the commentary I've been seeing draws parallels to human infant loss, and the human grieving process.

And I think that this phenomenon is fascinating: it allows non-grieving people to interact with the grieving process at a "safe" distance: we can admire and understand an animal going through this, even while we are astonished that they can grieve, without being uncomfortably confronted with human mortality. I think we're more used to the idea of animals dying.

In the National Geographic article, this came up: "As J35’s sojourn continues, some experts question why she’s still so attached to the calf. Could it be because the calf lived for about 30 minutes after it was born? Atkinson thinks the grief Tahlequah is feeling is deeper because after 17 months of gestation, she then had the chance to form an emotional connection with her baby before it died."

Does he mean, she only formed the bond in that half hour? Or did he mean, she formed the bond in those 17 months? To me, this is a no-brainer - but then, I'm projecting my own experience onto the orca. For me, it was during gestation. I knew that Charlie liked solo violin music, and handbells. He was a baby in motion, and very active. I know things about him because of the time when he and I were symbiotic, when I was pregnant with him and in some ways, he was truly a part of me.

We know cetaceans are very intelligent, and it does not seem far reaching for me at all, that an orca mama could get to know her baby during pregnancy, then mourn her baby, and not want to let the baby go.

If this is a safe way for you to talk about loss with people you know, I encourage you to use this news story as a stepping off point to talk about your own grief. I think there truly is a parallel here that might help make our grief easier to explain: our lack of "letting go" because we want to keep the love, our insistence on mothering our children no longer here, and carrying them with us always in a thousand metaphorical ways.


Yours,

Sarah

To subscribe, find the "subscribe by email" note in the left column and enter your email there. Posts will be emailed directly to you whenever I post them!

Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss

Pookie Poses

(Topic: Teddy Bear)
Warning, picture heavy post!

Dear Friends,

If you've been reading many of my posts, you almost certainly have met Pookie by now. His name is short for Charles Peacock Bear-Warner. Since he shares his name with our son, his nickname is based on his middle name instead of his first name. He's a weighted bear, from Molly Bears. He's meant to help comfort us, but we've also given him his own personality, and I've helped develop his wardrobe! So here are some fun pictures of Pookie just doing life with us.

Easter. Note the dragonfly in his hat. Blue dragonflies are a symbol for Charlie, secondary to tigers - seen here on Pookie's socks! My whole outfit for Easter was blue dragonfly-themed.

Dapper bear! Chillin' in his chair.

My large hairy copilot, ready to punch the hyperdrive.

Volunteering at church by making mailings ready.

Picking ALL THE PARSLEY!

A quiet day.

Peek-a-Pook' !
I think this was a virtual Pookie Hug I sent to a friend having a rough day.

Even bears help with house chores.

New shoes! I'm thinking they are meant to be foxes, but to my eyes they are tigers. Of course.

New friend Tigerlily, shortly after Charlie's birthday. Despite getting Pookie on the day before Christmas Eve, we celebrate Pookie's birthday on Charlie's.

Fourth of July! Dressed in all the colors and ready for some sun.

Watching the World Cup soccer final, between France and Croatia.

We have lots of fun taking pictures of Pookie in our life. I'm always looking for ideas of what else to take pictures of him doing.

Yours,

Sarah

To subscribe, find the "subscribe by email" note in the left column and enter your email there. Posts will be emailed directly to you whenever I post them!

Resource list: Visit my spreadsheet at www.tinyurl.com/infantloss