Return to Zero

Last night was the Lifetime Premier of Return to Zero, a movie that many in the stillbirth community have looked forward to with both dread and eager anticipation.

The experience we had with delivering Jackson is by no means unique. In the United States and Canada, one baby is born still every 20 minutes.  Even so, there has been very little discussion about what it really means to experience a stillbirth and the grieving process that begins the moment a family realizes their pregnancy has not resulted in the living, breathing baby they'd expected.

I sat in my rocking chair on the main level of my home, alone, and watched.  I was very impressed with the movie overall.  The entire movie was filmed in 19 days which is quite a remarkable feat in and of itself.  Add to that the pressure the actors had to convey the necessary emotions--right in front of the very man whose story is being told--and you have an unforgettable movie.

**I am going to discuss parts of the movie so please don't read if you don't want the movie to be spoiled for you**

The opening scenes were pleasant as the couple went through normal end-of-pregnancy events such as a baby shower, labor course, etc.  Things quickly change.  I felt gut-punched when Maggie mentions she hadn't felt the baby move all day.  The following day she is in the doctor's office and the nurse can't find the heartbeat.  I went through this with my ob/gyn on September 28th, 2012 and again in L&D on March 30th, 2014. In both cases I hadn't felt movement and went in when I couldn't find the heartbeat on my own, only to have the medical professional stand there and keep trying, moving over every inch of my lower abdomen, with nothing but static coming through the doppler.

In both cases an ultrasound machine was wheeled in, just like in the movie and the words, "I'm sorry" were uttered.

I wish I could say that I was completely alone that September morning like Maggie was.  But I wasn't. In that room with me the first time was my daughter who was 2 as well as two of the daycare children who were 19 months and 2.5 years old.  I had to keep myself pulled together as my fears were confirmed in that moment. Tears dripped silently down my face while the doctor and I discussed my options.

In March, my husband was sitting across the room, so I wasn't alone, but I was horrified that I was losing yet another baby. How could this be happening again?

In the next hour of the movie the couple pulls further and further apart in their grief. They are unable or unwilling to talk about how they are doing, saying they're "great" when they're both completely broken from the loss of their son.  Throughout those scenes, I was filled with gratitude that my husband and I are truly best friends.  We have leaned on one another when the grief was too much to bear, held each other through our tears, and supported one another when something was simply too hard to manage alone.

My husband lost his son, too.  I've said this before, but it bears repeating because he is grieving, too.  I have sometimes lost track of that for a moment or two, but it's always there, reminding me that I'm not alone.

Maggie meets a new doctor, a perinatologist, who reviews the autopsy results and who I assume takes over Maggie's postpartum care.  I have refused to see the doctors involved in my D&Cs and my stillbirth for postpartum care--it's just too hard.  This new perinatologist is compassionate, honest, and calm.

My experience with infertility was enough to help me treasure my living children but my experience with loss has magnified that beyond anything I could have imagined.  In the film, Maggie gives her new perinatologist a big of a dressing down about bedside manner and never being able to understand what she'd been through. The doctor gives this heartfelt response:

You've been fortunate enough to experience something very few people even have the courage to think about. . . Maggie, I was in medical school, studying obstetrics when I was pregnant with my second child, a boy . . . and at 7 months, his heart stopped. No reason. It just stopped. And I lost him and I'll never get him back. I lost a part of myself that day and I'll never get it back. . . There is life after this. I promise you that. I was blessed with two more girls after I lost my son. . . and I can't imagine my life without them and I don't want to. Because of what you've been through, because of what your son taught you, you will forever be available to a child, appreciate that child better than most parents ever can and that truly is a gift. We loved them all we could while they were here. No one can ever take that away from us. You will always be Arthur's mother.  Be proud of that. He is."

I bawled and bawled. Because of what I've been through, because of what my son, my daughter, infertility, has taught me, I appreciate children better than most parents ever can and I do believe that is a gift.  I believe it is the reason I am able to care for others' children on a daily basis, to bond with them, to see them for who they are and what they are capable of and to push them to ever greater independence.  To teach them the things I will never get to teach to those I've lost. I am not easily frustrated by my living children and even those "Why don't you listen to me?!?" moments are overshadowed by the knowledge that I have that my children are miracles.

Later on, Maggie and her mother are talking on the sofa and her mother begins with the ever-persistent, "Everything happens for a reason" nonsense.  Her mother reveals that she had a miscarriage about a year before Maggie came along. Maggie claims that "Miscarriage is not the same as a stillbirth."

Having experienced both, I can attest to the truth of that claim.  But them Maggie's mother steps up to the plate and nails it out of the park.

It's still a loss, Maggie. And it still hurts. It's not just the loss of the baby.  It's the loss of a possibility of what might have been and that is exactly the same."  

The movie then works through the difficulties of pregnancy after stillbirth.  This is something I have not experienced and quite frankly, is something I may never experience.

In the cases of all the women I know who have experienced a stillbirth, there was either a very specific known cause such as a prolapsed cord, an umbilical cord anomaly, or an undiagnosed clotting disorder.

I knew I had a clotting disorder and my doctors did, too.  I was on medications to prevent the clotting and yet it STILL happened.

If my husband and I do get lucky enough to experience pregnancy again, I will always have the fear that I will lose a 6th child for the same reasons I lost the other 5.  Because that is all I know.  During my two successful pregnancies, I was blissfully unaware that my body was a ticking time bomb but now that I've lost 4 in a row, and even while on medications to prevent it, I can't ever go back.

The surprise to me is that I don't want to.  Would I change my losses for living babies?  Yes!  But not all of them.  Because if I hadn't had these losses, if I hadn't experienced infertility, I wouldn't be able to appreciate my children and the children of others to the degree that I do now.  And I wouldn't change that. The depth of my love has grown with each new sorrow and I am grateful for that love. My losses have changed me and I am a better mother because of them.