Dear Postpartum Self

Dear Postpartum Self,

It’s going to be okay. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but things will get easier. You probably want to scream at me for saying that, but I just have to tell you that things will be okay. It really will get easier.

You probably are still in bed, wearing only your robe because why even put clothes on when it seems like Edmund wants to nurse every ten minutes? And we both know that nursing these days doesn’t look anything like it does in the movies. It’s messy. And it’s hard to keep him balanced. And it hurts. I’m so sorry that it hurts so much. I know the nurses at the hospital kept telling you that it shouldn’t hurt, but it does and it is totally and completely normal for it to hurt right now. It really is. But you know what? It will not hurt like this in the next month or so. I’m not going to lie to you and say that it will be picture perfect or anything, but it will be easier. And don’t roll your eyes at me when I say this, but you will actually grow to treasure nursing.

Looking in the mirror is probably one of the worst parts of your day. Your body is not the same as it was when you were pregnant and it definitely is not the same as it was before you were pregnant. I know you feel like you look like a complete disaster. You are breaking out in postpartum acne and you have a closet full of clothes that don’t fit. You got stretch marks despite applying that cocoa butter on your belly every. single. day. You don’t even feel like you smell the same way you did before. Ash, I know this is so hard for you. You probably won’t feel quite like yourself for a good while now. But you will start fitting back into most of your clothes again.  The acne on your face will start to clear, but it might still be a bit of a rough road ahead. You will smell like yourself again…I’m not sure what that was all about anyways. But the good thing is you smell like yourself, okay? Anyways, you do look different. You do. But those things that mark your body with such unfamiliarity are a result of something so, so good. I’m not trying to tell you to “chin up” and just be happy with it all. I’m really not. I’m just reminding you that the last nine months your body carried the life of your little boy and when he looks up at you he just sees his Mama.

You may be on the verge of tears right now. Sad and happy tears seem to come and go at random. Sometimes you just aren’t ready for all these emotions to start spilling out, but they do. It’s okay. There’s so much happening right now. So much change all at once. Please don’t feel guilty for being sad that there isn’t as much time with just you and your husband. I know you wouldn’t change things. You are thankful for this precious gift you have been given. You love your son. Things are just different now and it is okay to grieve the time that was just you and Mike. It is okay to be sad that your attention is split in all sorts of directions and that you are tired.  So, so tired. And that sometimes you just aren’t sure you are doing anything right at all. Listen; please listen to me when I tell you that you are doing just fine. And then there are those happy tears that seem to burst up unexpectedly as you look into the face of that sweet boy. He’s beautiful and he’s growing so fast. Keep taking the time to look at him. These moments of gratitude and awe are the moments that you should take your time with. The laundry and cleaning can wait. Seriously. You just had a baby. Let this be your excuse for why the apartment is a mess. You can use this excuse for a while by the way.

Ashley, these months after having a baby are wonderful, but they can also be really, really rough. They really can be, but please don’t be hard on yourself. You are doing a good job. Hear me when I say that, okay? Don’t just brush it off. You are doing a good job.

Now go watch the rest of season nine of The Office. You are going to go through the whole series one more time before Edmund is even one month old so get comfortable.

With Love,

Me

The Reason for our Grief

Reason [ˈrēzən]

1. a cause for an action or event.

2. a sufficient ground of explanation or logical defense.

This is a post I’ve wanted to put together for a long time.

As my wife and I have walked this road of being parents to a child lost in miscarriage, we have had no shortage of sympathy, compassion, and care.  But on occasion we’ve encountered friends that, while sympathetic, don’t ultimately understand the cause of our grief.  For many, the grief of miscarriage is little more than a big disappointment.  At worst, some have gone so far as to suggest that we don’t have real reason to grieve with the intensity that we have.

That is why I wanted to write this post: to show how there is reason to the reason for our grief.  In other words, the cause of our grief has a logical, rational justification.  And there are few cultural scenarios I can imagine in which this justification would be more important.

The reason we grieve is not because we are disappointed that the pregnancy didn’t pan out the way we wanted, though that’s part of it.  The reason isn’t because we wanted a baby right away and were denied it for a time.  The reason we grieve isn’t even just because a human being died, though one did.  The reason we grieve is because that human being was a person.

You may ask, what’s the difference?  Well, in some ways, there isn’t a difference between a human being and a person; at least I don’t believe there should be.  But I make a point of calling Levi a person because of what personhood means.  A person is a being that has innate moral dignity, meaning that their life is valued higher than other species and they possess rights.  We have a moral obligation toward persons by virtue of this innate dignity.  In short, they are set apart; some would say sacred.

To explain it a different way, what is the difference between hunting and murder?  Well, unless we’re playing “the most dangerous game,” we only hunt animals.  Why is that?  In either case, something dies.  Moreover, something is killed.  So what makes hunting any different than murder?

Personhood.

Whereas we do not have moral obligations toward animals, at least not in the sense we’re talking about here, we do have moral obligation toward humans.  If someone were to hunt a human being we’d be appalled in a way that ought to eclipse whatever we felt about Cecil the Lion.  It doesn’t even matter if that human was hunted for sport or food.  In fact, I can’t tell which would be worse.  On some intuitive level, we sense that humans are set apart.

Now, I recognize this is vague so far.  Personhood is hard to define, and part of the reason is because it is exactly the definition of personhood that scholars are arguing about.  They recognize that it refers to beings that are owed a particular honor or dignity, but what exactly makes something a person?  Is it some ability they have?  Is it something innate?  Is it achieved?

Well there are a few ideas to that end, but I will only cover the main two here.

First, there is the capacity definition of personhood.  This is the argument maintained by Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, and others.  They would argue that a person is a person when they attain to certain functions, such as a certain level of cognition, the ability to feel pain, the ability to communicate, and so on.  There are different suggestions as to which set of functions constitutes personhood depending on which scholar you are consulting, but ultimately the criteria comes down to observable operations.

Secondly, there is the substantive definition of personhood.  This defines personhood according to the biology of what a thing is.  In other words, something is a person if it is a certain species, in this case human.  If a Christian were articulating the substantive definition, they would say this is because humans have been made in the image of God.  Non-Christian articulations of the same definition have been put forward by men like Patrick Lee (a Christian himself), and are centered around the language of intrinsic value, rather than the image of God.

Now, I reject the capacity definition for a couple reasons.  Firstly, how does one decide the criteria?  It seems that one can offer one set of functions just easily as any other.  There doesn’t seem to be any substantial argument to explain why one criteria is better than any other.  On the same token, I could construct criteria that would confer personhood on a zygote, just as someone else could construct it around a toddler.

Secondly, the criteria tend to be very ill-defined.  Why is one level of cognition insufficient while another is?  Because of the way the argument has to be constructed, any one of us could at any time be excluded as a person by the vagueness of the definitions themselves.  Thirdly, and related, this leaves the definition up to whoever gains enough power to make the decision, in which case personhood could be denied someone because of race, ethnicity, sex, etc.

Finally, on the grounds typically put forward, a capacity definition would exclude a number of people groups from personhood on the grounds that they don’t meet the given criteria.  Such groups include: the mentally disabled, the elderly, infants, the comatose, and, in some articulations, the sleeping.  By virtue of this reasoning, euthanasia, eugenics, post-birth abortion, and infanticide can and have all been justified.  Those already vulnerable in human society become even more so.

As for myself, as you may guess, I take the substantive view.  Aside from the fact that this view just seems more common sense, I take it in part because it is streamlined enough to avoid the dangerous pitfalls of the capacity definition.  In other words, biology is not arbitrary.  Additionally, it makes sense given the fact that the DNA structure of a human will remain unchanged, like all organic life, from the moment of conception.  The zygote is, unquestionably, human.  Therefore, given that both sides of the argument mark out humans, of at least most types, to be persons, it seems to me that any criteria additional to biology alone is arbitrarily and unnecessarily exclusive.

Lastly, but certainly not least, the Bible suggests that it is so, not only in Genesis where God confers His image on humanity, but elsewhere, such as in Psalm 139.

So taken together, the weakness of the capacity argument and the simplicity of the substantive argument convince me of the latter.  But what does that mean for our grief?

It means that what Ashley and I grieve is a person, with just as much dignity as any adult, valuable, precious, honorable, and image-bearing.  And that person, lost after 9 brief weeks of life, was our child.  When people diminish the equal personhood, the equal grieve-ability of the unborn, they are diminishing humanity itself.  They are buying into the capacity definition, which would suggest that in order to be grieved a human must meet a certain set of arbitrary criteria.

The question comes down to whether you believe humans are persons.  If they are, then it is not weak to mourn what we never knew except in a blurry, indistinct sonogram.  If they are, then their vulnerability should lead us to give them special honor.  If they are, it seems to me an act of godly and obedient courage to see the horror in the invisible and silent deaths of the miscarried, and yes aborted, children of the world, and to give them the tears they deserve as God’s image bearers lost to sin’s rampant chaos.

-Mike

Much of the research for this post is condensed in Ethics for a Brave New World by the Feinbergs.

A New Year

We began a new year just over a month ago and ever since the toasts and celebration ended I have felt a strange ache in my heart. Last year, five days after welcoming 2014, we said goodbye to our dear Levi. The hope that maybe she would make it was crushed that day as I heard the doctors in the hospital confirm what I had already known deep, deep down. 2014 was a nightmare of a year. I can honestly say that my heart has never felt so torn and so exhausted. But as 2014 came to a close and this new year began I felt myself grasping at her memory. I didn’t want her to be left behind.

As a mother of two, one living and one in Heaven, I have felt this struggle to be in two different worlds; one of grief and one of joy. As I begin preparing my son’s room and thinking of a future with this little boy and the excitement overwhelms my heart there is this question that flashes through my mind at times: Have you forgotten already?

Have I forgotten my first child? Have I forgotten my daughter, my sweet Levi?  My eyes fill up with tears at the thought of forgetting her…of leaving her behind.

Of course, I have not forgotten. I could never forget her. God has used her life to change me. Because of her I’m not the same person I once was, but still this fear and this ache is left in my heart.

I know I’m not alone in this. I know there are other mommies and daddies who feel this same twinge in their hearts at times.

In the last few weeks God in His goodness and grace has brought about several ways Levi is still remembered. Remembered not only by me, but by my loved ones. And from these kind people I have received tangible things that help me remember and celebrate my sweet girl, whether necklaces or letters or other things. I’ve also been so encouraged by prayers from many people, prayers for comfort and prayers that we would find ways to invite Levi’s memory into this new adventure with her brother. Oh, I cannot express how much it means to me as a mother to have her children remembered.

I am beyond blessed to have such amazing support from friends and family who encourage me and walk with me in this season that I am in, in this in-between place where my heart waits anxiously to hold my son in my arms and at the same time still feels the empty place where Levi should be along with him.

Thank you, sweet friends for your ongoing prayers, support and love for our family of four.

-Ashley

Boy or Girl?

*****pregnancy mentioned*****

Okay, so we have not been very good at making our posts very consistent. We apologize for all the time that has passed and hope that this joyful post makes up for it. On January 8th we woke up with an excited and anxious feeling in our stomachs. On that day we would finally, ten weeks after the last ultrasound (Yes, I’ve been counting!), get to see our baby and possibly find out if we would be expecting a little boy or little girl. But, of course, ultrasound days are always more complicated than that for us.  After losing Levi it’s always hard to keep our anxiety from taking over whenever we go to the doctor’s.  So our plan that day was to busy ourselves till our appointment at 1:20pm.

We decided to go out for breakfast that morning at Egg Harbor Café, take down all of our Christmas decorations and then just try our very hardest to be patient and calm as we waited for the clock to get closer to when we would leave for our long-awaited appointment.  So we had our delicious breakfast, took down lots of decorations and waited.  The snow started falling. We felt anxious. Excited anxious, but also terrified anxious, full of these fearful questions and worries. We just wanted to know our baby was alive and healthy. Fighting that fear is so hard and it upsets me that sometimes fear overshadows the joy that we feel in these special moments. As the clock ticked, we prayed, asking God to fight this fear for us. To allow joy to overshadow fear from now on.

Finally the clock struck 1:00pm and we could finally make our way to the appointment and be done with all this waiting-except not really because there was more waiting to be done in the waiting room. And P.S- waiting with that excited and anxious feeling in your stomach is so, so much harder with a full bladder. Just saying.

Anyways, let’s keep you all from waiting any longer and fast forward a bit. We got into that ultrasound room and finally, after ten weeks, got to see our little one again. So much had changed. The hands, the feet, the arms, the legs. That face. Oh, my heart felt so full. Our ultrasound technician was wonderful as she kept reassuring us that everything was looking just as it should be. That alone was a huge relief.

And then she asked, “So, any guesses?”

My heart started pounding. I said, “Well, I’ve had a lot of dreams about the baby being a girl…”  These dreams had been very frequent and often weird.

The technician and I turned to Mike and he replied, “Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve been looking at a member this whole time.”

The three of us laughed and the technician began nodding her head and said, “Yes. There’s a little boy in there. Are you excited?”

We both exclaimed, “Yes!”

And then the tears started falling as it sunk in.  We are having a little boy. Our little boy.

Our son.

-Ashley

A picture a day…

***Pregnancy mentioned***

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a while. We are so thankful for all of the support, prayers and excitement we have received since announcing the pregnancy of our second baby! As mentioned in our previous post we have been taking a picture a day since finding out about this little one’s existence and we are excited to share them with all of you!

Below is a link to the album.  Please let us know if it doesn’t work.  Neither of us are very good with computers.

Baby Stanczak

-Ashley

He has made laughter for us…

No matter how hard you try to prepare for the worst, the worst is always surprising.  Even when you bend your efforts toward concocting the most horrific scenario imaginable, when tragedy strikes it is always in ambush.  Unless every shred of optimism is gone there is something left to be bruised.

The same goes for hope.  No matter how hard you hope and pray for something, no matter how long it has been since that dream formed into a constant plea before the Lord, no matter how many times you reassured yourself with the statistics that your hope will indeed come to fruition, it will always catch you by surprise.

Ashley is pregnant again.

We are fifteen weeks in, and every day, oscillating between anxiety and joy, we are thankful to the Lord.  Sometimes I still forget that it’s real, and that things look good.  Sometimes I fear what will happen if I let myself dream too long on the possibility of holding this new life, of feeling the weight of this baby in my arms.  We are so, so thankful.  Grace, as usual, comes undeserved. The pain that Ashley and I still feel over losing Levi motivates us to treasure every second that we have with this baby.  We will honor her memory with our love for this child, and in constantly, constantly acknowledging to ourselves and before others that God is gracious, and God is good.  He makes laughter in the midst of trial.

Please keep all three of us in your prayers.  We really are anxious and struggle to find peace at times.  That being said, so far everything is looking pretty good.  There were some scary things that took place up front, of which we will eventually speak, but overall the doctor feels very positive.

As a means of coaching our hearts into celebrating this incredible gift from the Lord, Ashley and I are taking a picture for every day of this pregnancy to show to you guys and eventually to this little boy or girl (5 weeks until we find out!).  We will be posting those soon.

As an added note: we understand that it can be very hard to read about this sort of thing when you desire it so strongly, and so we want to be sensitive to that.  This is still a blog primarily about grief, healing, and God’s grace, but when we do updates about this pregnancy we will be “tagging” them at the very beginning, just so anyone who would rather skip posts of this kind can do so and not expose their hearts to anything that would be unnecessarily hard in already hard circumstances.  In addition, while we will announce posts on twitter and Facebook like we usually do, we will only be discussing this pregnancy on the blog.

One final note:

Everyone who has supported and prayed for us,

Everyone who has listened to our story so far,

Everyone who has loved us so well in our grief,

Thank you.

This story is not over for us, but the plot wouldn’t look this rich in grace if God had not been moving through you all in so many ways.  You are His hands and feet.

Our cup overflows.

-Mike

Her Name is Levi

Maybe some of you were confused when we started referring to Levi as “she”. I know that it can trip some people up so I wanted to explain…

While we don’t medically know if Levi is a girl or a boy, early on I had a sense that Levi is our daughter. I feel as though God in His grace has allowed me to know her in a way-who she is, what she would have been like even when I never actually got to meet her. I feel as if I could recognize her in a crowd, but there is no way I could describe to someone else what she would look like. I can’t explain it, but I am so very thankful to God that he has given me this sense of knowing her.

We named her Levi before knowing her as a girl, but her name probably would have stayed the same because of its meaning. Levi means “joined”, “attached”, and “to bring together.” God has used Levi’s precious life to draw my husband and me closer to Himself and to bring a community of people near to us in our time of deep, deep need, specifically our church community. Levi’s life also brought about this blog which has connected us to so many.

We are so very thankful for our daughter, Levi.

Levi. I love saying her name.

-Ashley

Enter In

How are you?

Simple question. Simple answer. Right?

Most of time it seems like people don’t really want to know how you are doing. They want a short and sweet, “Good. How are you?” response.  Nothing more.  Sometimes I’m no exception.

This question gives me some anxiety now. I don’t know how I should answer. Do they want the long answer or the short answer?  I try to figure out in the moment how they expect me to answer, and most of the time it seems like it’s the short answer. That way, there’s no baggage to pass off on them. There’s not much emotion to deal with. It’s just…easier.

“I’m okay. How are you?” It’s short. It’s what most people want to hear. Right?

We move on in our conversation and move on to whatever we were doing.

But if I were to be truthful, if I were to really open up my heart and speak about what is behind the, “I’m okay” I would say:

“I’m trying to do my best, but it’s been hard. I miss my baby and every day I miss her more. The pain isn’t quite as strong every single day, but there are days when it takes everything in me to get out of bed in the morning. My heart hurts, but I’m okay.”

A co-worker of mine lost his father a couple months ago.  He and I don’t work together often, but I see him once or twice a week. When he came back to work after the funeral I asked that question, “How are you?” and he replied “I’m okay. How are you?”  And I said the same.

I let him hide his emotions and didn’t let it go any farther.  He went to his truck and I went to my cubicle.  After all, I don’t know him well. I didn’t know his father.  I don’t know what it is like to lose a parent or even a grandparent.

But I do know what it is like to lose someone you love.

After losing Levi I felt like everyone else’s lives kept going while mine had stopped, and I remember how much it meant when someone took the time to stop and grieve with my husband and me.

I felt God tug at my heart to say something to my co-worker. To share in his grief. To enter into his world, even for just a moment.  But how was I supposed to help? What was I supposed to say? What if I made him feel worse? I went through every excuse I could think of. I just wanted to stay in my comfortable cubicle and let it be.

“Enter in.” So I did. I caught up to him in the parking lot and told him how sorry I was for the loss of his father and that I was grieving with him. It was messy. I cried. It was uncomfortable to let myself feel pain that was not my own when I could have just stayed at my desk.

I’m not proud of the fact that it took me a few minutes. A few minutes of back and forth excuses until I finally did enter in to his world. The world that he says feels “foggy” and “not quite real” right now. But I am honored to have been a part of this world even for just a moment.

I encourage you all to enter in. Enter in to the worlds of those who are grieving. When you ask that question-the question that is usually followed by the short response ask for the long response too. Enter in.

-Ashley

As We Promised

Hey everyone!  We just wanted to put up a post updating all of you on how things have been going, especially with our new, swank apartment.  As promised eons ago.

We apologize that it has been so long since our last post.  To be honest things have been very difficult.  We had an extremely trying month that really shook our foundations and intensified some of our grief.  Nothing in particular happened to cause it, but both of us felt very rocked by yet another month gone by without conceiving.  We realized that there is a lot happening under the surface emotionally and that it would be best for us to seek counselling with our Associate Pastor, John, to help us process these things that we’ve been sitting on in isolation.  We hope to talk more about that soon.

In other news, I have gone back to school.  Hebrew with Dr. Dennis Magary and Biblical Theology with Dr. D.A. Carson will be keeping me more than busy over the coming months, but I’m actually really excited to be back.  As many of you can guess, last semester I was in shear survival mode, so I’m happy to be approaching this academic year with at least something vaguely resembling order.  Meanwhile, Ashley has been getting more interested in finding new ways to make our lifestyle healthier and more self-sufficient, inspired by her friend Sam from the great, white north.  (Eh? Oot and aboot.  Degrassi.  What else?  Hockey and stuff.  Robin Sparkles.  You get the picture.  She’s from Canada.)

Ashley has also been working on projects around the apartment, the coolest of which is a set of baby food containers converted into magnetic spice jars.

In terms of how this month is going, we’re actually happy to say that we’re doing okay.  We’ve had a lot of encouragement recently, the first counselling session was great and God really met us through it, and we’ve been trying to be intentional about enjoying what we love about life while still tending after this desire that we truly feel is righteous and good.  It’s not an easy tension, but it’s a good one.  We’re praying we can feel the same if this cycle doesn’t go our way, but as always and ever God will be faithful.

Now on to the apartment!

As many of you know, our apartment journey this year has been long and arduous.  We moved from our awesome and beautiful first apartment to a very big but very unattractive apartment on the other side of town.  And then that apartment flooded four times over the course of two months.  After an unnecessarily long process with the landlords we managed to get them to agree to a cancellation agreement, provided we vacate within ten days of finalizing it.

So that put us in a tough spot.  After searching hard and watching many doors open and close we finally felt like everything had been eliminated except for one tiny apartment in downtown Libertyville which we had ruled out without actually touring.  We had always wanted to live above one of the shops in the downtown strip so we decided to give it a try.  Now, it was small.  The kitchen has virtually no counter space, and electric heating isn’t ideal, but overall we loved it.

Of course, at that point it didn’t really matter anyway.  We needed to take it because we were going to be out of time very shortly.  So we got rid of our huge, broken couch (finally) and returned the kitchen table we had on loan from my parents and started the process of resourcefully finding new ways to swing a very small, but very cool apartment.  The results so far have been a cross between a tiny house and an urban loft.

Oh yeah, that’s right.  I forgot to mention.  We have a loft.

That’s about it for now.  Pray for us as we continue to piece together our new pad.  Pray for us as we continue to weather our way through the seminary and trying-to-conceive journey.  Pray for us as He comforts us.

We love you all.

-Mike and Ashley

A Good Parent

The sermon on parenting was hard, but so good.

I went into the sanctuary somewhat nervous about the topic, but trying to keep my mind focused on what I could take away from it. I am a mother who can’t mother her child, but because I hope and pray that God would give me a child that I can parent one day I want more wisdom about godly parenting. I saw this sermon as a learning opportunity for the future-and it was, but it was so much more.

It was more than just learning about how I could be a better parent. It was about how I have the perfect parent already.  The One who is wise in everything He does.  The One who is always right in His discipline. The One who truly loves unconditionally.

A woman at church read her own Psalm about her road to parenthood. A road that seems to have taken a horrifying detour. The one where the doctor turns to you during what should be one of the happiest moments of your life with that look and those words, “I’m sorry.” Her story was all too familiar to me and I finally broke down. Her words sent me back to that room where I saw Levi for the last time. She was still alive-barely holding on I guess, but she looked so strong to me.

As my mind went back and forth from memory to reality and the worship music started to play I felt His love so deeply.

“Lord I need you. Oh I need you. Every hour I need You.“

It seems like my dad can fix anything. I can take just about any broken item to him and he can put it back together. I remember as a little girl I’d run to him with tears in my eyes, urgency in my voice and my broken toy in hand.  He’d be in his recliner, and no matter what it was I had brought to him he would put it back together.

But ever since I lost Levi the thing I need fixed is my broken heart. The pieces are shattered. It seems impossible to put them back together. I need my Heavenly Father to restore what has been broken.

“Lord I need you. Oh I need you…“

Those lyrics ran across the screen while my heart felt like it was breaking all over again. And still I felt His comfort. Just as a good father comforts his daughter through heart break, our Heavenly Father comforts us in the wisest, most loving, perfect and unconditional way. He takes our broken hearts and puts them back together.

He’s my Father. My perfect Dad.  And oh, how I need Him.

-Ashley

 

Lyrics from “Lord, I need you” by Matt Maher