By Alison Ferrera
Bereaved motherhood and a pandemic is complicated and there is much to say, but let me just start by saying COVID-19 sucks. It sucks for everyone.
And there are so, so, many specific groups it sucks extra for. And, yes, my mother taught me not to say ‘sucks.’ But this warrants it, right Mom? It is terrible for the elderly and those with preexisting conditions for obvious reasons. It is terrible for those with depression whose symptoms worsen with isolation. It is terrible for those on the Autism Spectrum who find a disruption in routine more than just inconvenient. It is terrible for those working in healthcare. It is terrible for small business owners, hourly service workers, and all of us who live paycheck to paycheck.
It is terrible for beavered parents, though, too.
You may not have thought of that one unless you are a bereaved parent, and that is okay. (I am sure there are many groups of people that I do not realize how this could affect them.) But because you may not realize how this impacts us, I wanted to take some time to talk about how COVID-19 feels as a bereaved mother.
I honestly thought it was just me at first, but then I saw the comments and posts pouring out on the online support groups I am a part of, and though each person’s story and specifics are different, I think I can overwhelmingly say, this is extremely tough for beavered mothers. (Though I want to make it clear I am not trying to say we have it worse than other people, but each group that is struggling has a unique point of view and I want to offer ours, or at least mine.)
The first thing that hit me when the threat of COVID-19 became serious in the US, was that this feels so much like when my daughter, Mira, died. Not the intense pain and grief, obviously, but the ‘emotional’ atmosphere. The feeling is so similar in so many ways, but I am not just seeing my husband and I react to it and I am seeing EVERYONE. The feeling is a PTSD trigger for sure (not in a Millennials overuse the word ‘trigger’ way, in a real way).
When Mira died, my world stopped.
Right there. Everything stopped moving. There was no going to the store. People stocked my house up with food. We didn’t go to work for a time. Our daily routine stopped. Everything just stopped. We stood in amazement that the rest of the world kept moving. It was surreal. Everything for us had stopped. When your child dies the dishes don’t matter anymore. You might not get out of your pj’s the whole day, I mean, who cares? Your child died.
All of a sudden everything is stopping again, but this time for everyone. Many of us are not working or are working from home. We cannot go out to eat or to the movies. We make sure we have enough food in the house for a week or two to limit grocery runs. It feels so similar. But this time we aren’t dazed at how the rest of the world keeps going, because it stopped too. Though this ‘stopping’ is not as all-encompassing as when Mira died, it is so similar that it wakens those responses in us loss parents, especially those of us with PTSD.
As loss parents, we know that people die all too well. And we don’t find statistics comforting. A 1-3% death rate for this virus means little to us. We know what it is to be in the minority statistic. We know each of those people in the 1-3% had loved ones whose world now stopped in a way that is beyond ‘social distancing.’ We know that pain. We don’t want anyone to feel it. We don’t want to feel it again. Statistics hold little to no weight when your infant died, which has a less than one percent chance of happening (America’s infant mortality rate is 5.8 per 1000 live births).
For me, personally, I am not fearful of getting the virus, I am young and healthy. I take every precaution anyway (as we all should!) to protect our vulnerable, I know the pain of loss, I will not put it on others. My husband, I know, fears me getting sick. It is so common for a loss Dad to become over-protective of their spouse, and mine is for sure. I tell him I am in no danger even if I get COVID-19 as I have none of the preexisting conditions, the risk of death is less than 1 percent for me! But of course, that does not give comfort to someone who lost a child, someone who is already in the less than 1 percent camp.
As loss parents, we learned that things are not in our control a long time ago. So, we control what we can. Our child’s loss was completely out of our control. We did everything we could to save them. In the end, it did not matter, we lost them to Heaven. Things outside of our control are especially tough after that.
It is not in our control if we get the virus, or worse if our vulnerable loved ones get it. That is scary. It is also not currently in our control if we go to work, if we go to the movies, if we go out to eat, or really much of anything else right now. It is needed. And I fully support the measures my state has taken to enforce social distancing. But I think we can all agree it still is not pleasant. And since last time everything in our world spiraled out our control our baby died, well you might find that us loss parents start holding tight to what we can control as these memories come flooding back.
Last, but certainly not least, to discuss is the jokes about children right now from everyone else in our lives. The jokes circulating FaceBook about having a ‘baby boom’ in nine months are not funny for us. As someone who has lost a baby, then waited my due time to be cleared to try to have another, and then got a negative test month, after month, after month, those jokes are little stabs to the heart. They aren’t meant to be hurtful; I know. But they are.
Four years ago, my husband and I decided to bring a baby into our home. There is still no baby here in our house. That sucks. And 1 out of 8 (US infertility stats) of the other couples you know feel a similar stab in their heart when they see those jokes too. We would LOVE for a couple of weeks of forced quality time with our spouse to lead to a baby.
Beyond the baby boom jokes, is all the joking, also sometimes serious, complaints about being home with your children right now. Parents needing so much wine to get through the increased time with their children. They are distracting from work. They are misbehaving. The posts are everywhere. Avoid Facebook? It doesn’t matter, the jokes are in person too. At the store. From friends and family. My coworkers jokingly complain during video meetings that the children are causing chaos. God, do you know what I would give to have my 2-year-old causing chaos right now? To have a toddler that I had to balance care for while I worked? To have the responsibility of caring for my precious little human?
It is okay to complain sometimes, I am sure being a Mom/Dad to living children is especially hard right now. But don’t forget how lucky and blessed you are to have that child there to annoy you and love you. Some of us can only dream of that and we are being reminded of that an awful lot right now. Our homes feel empty, as the person we want to be quarantined with us is missing.
I guess my point is, COVD-19 sucks for everyone. And there are many specific groups it is pretty terrible for, and one of those groups happens to be beavered parents. I certainly am not comparing our current struggle to those who are most vulnerable to severe reactions to COVID-19. I am just hoping we will all remember to think of everyone who this is extra hard for and I ask our friends and families remember the bereaved Mamas and Daddies when you are sending out your support.
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Alison Ferrara lives with her husband, dog, and two cats in Lititz, PA. She is a behavior consultant and program manager working with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Alison is mother to Miriam (Mira) Jordan Ferrara who was born on December 18, 2017. Alison carried Mira to term after she was diagnosed at 18 weeks with fatal birth defects. Mira lived for 53 beautiful minutes. Alison maintains a blog to share Mira’s story and hopefully help end some of the silence surrounding infant loss (babyferraraM.blogspot.com).
A prior version of this article was originally published on Ali’s site here.
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Thank you for this.
As a still mother of 4 (first one born 15 years ago), I have struggled with the losses (including my marriage in the end) & trauma, gradually built a different sort of life, and found ways to enjoy & nuture relationships with children in my life (if not in my home).
So lockdown & the necessary isolation has been a huge challenge, living on my own and unable to see, play with, hold the children I have gathered in my life. Friends whose children have left home talk of how painful the yearning & missing them is …and I want to whisper or cry that, at some level, I feel like that all the time.
It’s good to know I’m neither alone nor bonkers to be feeling this so sharply.