Friday, October 14, 2011

My Little Tittle

Tittle
Noun
1. a dot or other small mark in writing or printing, used as a diacritic, punctuation, etc.
2. a very small part or quantity; a particle, jot, or whit
3.  My third child

I struggled with what to write for number 3. It would not be correct to say Tittle was born, as he was technically a miscarriage. I've never liked that word miscarriage, but I'll save that for another day.
When we found out we were pregnant after the loss of Oscar and Bella we were around 4 weeks pregnant. When we looked up online how big a baby was at 4 weeks pregnant we found out they would be about the size of a period at the end of a sentence. My wife, being a fan of words, and me, enjoying trivia, decided to use the nickname of Tittle, as it is not a common word and is interesting knowledge. 

It turned out that we were pregnant with twins, so the one Tittle became a Tittle and a Dot (as period did not seem like a good nick name for a baby). We lost Tittle a few weeks later, and that is the point of this post.

I didn't bond to the pregnancy the same way my wife did. Because of that I did not feel the loss the same way she did. At the time I didn't mourn the loss of my child; I feared the loss of my other child. It took me by surprise how hard it was on my wife. My thoughts were more along the lines of: at least we still have the one. I have struggled with that reaction quite a bit.

After the loss of our first twins when some one would say "you can always have another" I wanted to hit them. That is what made my reaction to the loss of Tittle even worse. I knew better, or at least I should have known better. That was my child that I lost, how could I not feel that loss? How could I blow right past it and only worry about my other child?

Things have changed now. It took until my son, Gus, was born for me to feel that loss. I think that similar to when my wife told me she had an ok day, I was able to let my walls down and grieve. Once Gus was here I could stop worrying about the pregnancy and reflect on what happened. I was finally able to grieve the loss of another child of mine. 
Why do I put these walls up? It just makes the grief that much worse later on. Does not grieving the loss until months later make me a bad dad? I hope not. I try to not live with regret. Instead when I see that I was wrong, or not in the right place, on an issue I own it and try to learn from it.

An early miscarriage is difficult, even more so for mothers. Society does not see them as a big deal, and even caring fathers (I hope I could be described as that) don't always understand. I have heard it said that a women becomes a mother when she finds out she is pregnant, and a man becomes a father when he first holds the child. While that quote is not 100% true, there is some truth to it. So I ask mothers please be patient with us dads who might not get it right away. In time, like me, I believe most fathers will grieve that loss, even if it is differently.

It has been a much different road for my wife and me with the loss of our little Tittle. The destination was the same place though. We are both proud parents of 4 children.

Feel free to leave a comment. I would love to know who is reading these posts. Share this with anyone you think would benefit from reading it. If you are a father or mother who has suffered through loss, speak out and break the silence. The loss of a child will only remain taboo as long as those who suffer do not speak out.

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful Jon! I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts.

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  2. That was a terrific post, thanks so much. It can be so hard to feel you're not "taking it as hard" as your wife, and wondering if you're not a good enough father/husband for that reason. It's really hard to face the reality, I think. And you will want to be in control of yourself so that you can best serve your wife and family. It hurts like hell to bottle these things up, but you are, as far as I can tell, doing a hell of a job. Hang in there.

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