Katelyn

Katelyn has been a different adventure than Ethan and Lincoln.  She has wanted a baby sister so bad....for years.  I remember when I told her that Lincoln was a boy.  She was pretty disappointed.  She thought she would just die if this baby wasn't a girl.  When she found out that our new baby might not live, she said she didn't care if it was a boy or a girl because "it didn't matter any way....  they were just going to die."  She approached this situation, initially at least, with an attitude of indifference.  She would say harsh things about the baby dying in the beginning.  That is how she dealt with it.  It was hard for me to hear and really hard for Ethan to hear.  I had to tame her a little, but still be sensitive to the fact that this is how she was grieving.  

She is at such an interesting age (9) because she is smart enough to understand a lot about what was going to happen, but not old enough to really know how to process it.  I remember her saying that she didn't even know things like this could happen.  Of course she didn't.  What nine year old knows that? What nine year old should have to know that?  

Before we found out the results of our genetic testing she said she didn't care that we were having a boy. She just wanted him to live.  She didn't care what was wrong with him.  She just wanted him to live.  I wanted to give that to her so badly.  It was awful to hear her say that.  I didn't think it was fair that she had to feel that way.  But, I knew I had NO control.  

When I got the phone call about the genetic testing I went outside to answer the phone.  I recognized the number as being from the hospital.  She saw me talking on the phone and kept asking if our baby was going to die.  She was so blunt.  It was so hard for me.  I eventually had to answer the question.

She noticed that her friends and neighbors were going to get a healthy baby at their house and she was going to get nothing.  She understood the discrepancy.  She later told me that she felt angry at one of her friends.  I asked her why.  She said that her friend had 10 kids in her family and none of them had died, and she only had 4 and one of them had died.  It made her so mad.

She wanted people to know about Eli at school.  She put a little ultrasound picture of him in her backpack and desk.  She has since replaced those with other, more recent, pictures.  She wants pictures everywhere.  She has some in her room and in her wallet.  She wants them in every room in the house.  This seems to help her a lot.  She also has a very good friend at school that had similar thing happen in their family.  Seeing that this had happened to someone else made her feel more normal.

She acted excited for the chance to meet Eli, but she masked her anger and pain behind snide remarks.  After he passed away, she seemed to be doing really well.  I have to admit that it annoyed me a little.  Isn't that awful of me?  I was surprised that she didn't seem affected at all.  I know I should have been grateful.... I was, deep down.  After we buried Eli, she commented on how lucky I was that I got to ride in a limousine to the cemetery.  I remember just staring at her until it occurred to me that I had been in a car like that, but obviously hadn't seen it that way.  She commented on how many flowers I got and was bothered that she didn't get any....so I gave her some of mine and told her that someone brought them for her.  She seemed to be doing great.  Then, around 2 months she started doing some peculiar things.  I won't tell you all of that, but Jason read about grieving in relation to children and discovered that it is very common for their grief to be delayed for 2 months or so.  

She said she was worried that when she grew up her babies would "start dying."  I thought how awful that her brain had even processed that possibility.  How unfair that a nine year old doesn't get to be ignorant.   That just seems unfair to me.  About 7 weeks after Eli was born, she wrote me a very sweet note.  It said something to the effect that she felt that Eli dying had been the hardest on me because I was his mom and she was sorry.  She cut out a picture of Eli and included it with the card.  It was so hard because I felt like she was more affected by my behavior than anything else.  I wasn't acting anything like myself and that affected her a lot.  She was trying to fix it in her own way. 

I started talking to her more about everything.  I ask her lots of questions about what her hardest, best, scariest and most memorable experiences were.  I asked her how she felt for different portions of the journey. It has been eye opening.  I am grateful, in a lot of ways, that her grieving process was a little delayed because I never would have been able to help her during those first two months.

I know this experience will give her have a different perspective than most 9 year olds.  She has experienced the death of her brother.  It will bless her and expand her mind, but it still sucks that she has had to feel these things.

Oh, and I should add in my thoughts about "children are resilient."  Isn't that the most common thing  people say in regard to children who experience a difficult situation.  I do believe that children are resilient, but sometimes I think that makes people think they have permission to do less than their best to help them.....they are just going to bounce back anyways.  I don't like this idea.  I don't believe we should just brush children off and say, "Oh, don't worry....they are resilient....they will be fine."  I'm not sure what makes their spirits so different than ours.  I think the human spirit, in general, is resilient.  I think God made us for greater things than a telestial sphere and so our ability to "bounce back" after a tragedy has more to do with WHO made us than our age.  He made us for greater things.