It's Not Your Fault

"When a baby arrives sick or too soon, we feel out of control and helpless. People often feel guilt or self-blame. It serves as a painful way to restore order. If I blame myself, if I can identify the reason I believe this happened, then I can make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. Guilt is a strange medicine we give ourselves. A mother I met told me about being in the NICU, crying by her daughter's bedside, when a nurse told her, "You did not do this." That was the beginning of healing. Many moms talk about someone who helped relieve their guilt, who reassured them "it's not your fault." It doesn't usually take all the feelings
of guilt away, but it is comforting when someone you respect tells you it's not your fault. Let these important people in your life know what you feel. Tell your doctor what you blame yourself for. Tell your spouse, your mother, your best friend what words would be supportive."
- Liza Cooper, LMSW
Director, Family-Centered Care and Family Engagement

I recently read this in a March of Dimes e-newsletter. I too am working through self blame. Some women blame the doctors and some women blame God. I mostly blame myself. I feel like I should have known somehow, that there should have been a sign, mother's intuition.
Like a mom should know when her baby is going to die. I did not.I felt fine and because I didn't have any symptoms until I went into labor, even if I would have gone to the doctor that morning for a routine check up, the infection would have gone unnoticed. At least that is what the delivery doctor told me. But knowing that it is not my fault and knoooowwiing that it is not my fault are two separate things.

Logical me understands this was an act of nature. Nature is made up of life coming and going- never ending. We are mammals,we are part of nature and not excluded from its cyclical welcome and departure of all creation. Bacteria crept into my uterus and infected my amniotic fluid. My body went into labor in an attempt to save him. His lungs were not developed enough and he couldn't survive in the outside world. Mateo died of natural causes. As natural as it gets.

However, it is not logical me that lays in bed at night blaming myself for not knowing better, being better, doing better. I will always have regrets. I don't aways need to have self blame. I am starting to cut myself some slack. Admitting that I am not perfect, I am not an all powerful all knowing divine being. Only a regular human could have done something as natural as lose a baby to natural causes. When I stop elevating myself to grandiose status and acknowledge that I am a mom and a human and a mammal and just a person, those are the moments this almost makes sense.

I feel like my body and my intuition  betrayed me. The way the peaceful ocean betrays those caught in a tsunami's path. What once was familiar now the source of destruction and pain. Do you stay mad at the ocean forever? How could the waves you once thought beautiful wash your whole life away? How could my body go into labor to save my child only to have it be what kills him? All completely natural. Still a disaster. At some point grace must conquer blame. That is the moment when you venture back into the ocean and swim into the waves and let them carry you to shore. I look forward to that moment.