The Comparison Of Pain

> Ironically, the last week has had many of the people with whom I am cyber-company up in arms because of a post on BBC about how a miscarriage isn't the same as the loss of a baby. Frankly, I detest BBC and many similar sites because if I am honest, I find those sites are just too full of arrogant people who feel as if they are entitled to judge based on their measly little, "It took three long, horrible, terrible months to conceive, but now that we finally have, I know everything and am an authority on all things pregnancy, baby and child-related." mentality. Blah.
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> Look, I'm not judging anyone's pain. Three months could be excruciating to someone. It was for me. Until it turned into four. Then a year.. Then five years. Then ten years. Then a grave. Then a D&C.
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> Just saying.

> I am just not into a lot of the BBC type forums, but I know many friends are, and Melissa over at The Stirrup Queen had a really lovely response to the insulting original post. If you are interested, you can find it <a href="http://www.stirrup-queens.com/2012/04/baby-loss-and-the-pain-olympics/">here</a>.
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> That said, I think it's important to be real. To be honest. We in this 'community' are constantly supporting each other and encouraging each other and reminding each other, "Pain cannot be compared."
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> But it can. And it is. Every day. All the time.
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> We are always comparing and judging pain.
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> Nightly, as I pray for every hurting heart I know of, I often find myself thanking God that THAT pain is not mine. That it's not MY husband who crashed and died. MY heart that isn't broken as I give that baby back. MY gut that isn't wrenching as I yet again go through another month without any child for whom I can tangibly mother.
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> Thanking God that it's not *me* suffering loss after loss after loss as so many I love are.
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> I know, with every fiber of my being, my pain...great and heavy and encompassing as it is...it could be so much worse.
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> And I know many are thinking that's where I should be right now.
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> Losing this baby can't surely be as hard as losing Matthew, could it? John held him. He breathed. He opened his brown eyes. He had curly hair. He peed on the nurses. His room was ready. We were ready.

> Losing This baby couldn't possibly compare, could it?
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> Nor could losing Matthew be as horrible and difficult as if God forbid, we were to lose Luke, right?
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> Don't doubt that I beg God every day to let me die before Luke because I'd never be able to survive losing him.
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> Yes, I am surviving losing Matthew, but to lose Luke would kill me.
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> Or so people, and even I, sometimes think.
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> Why? Because we love Luke more? Because he is more real than Matthew was? Or Dash 3 was?
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> We think these things, and I know there is not a mother of a living child out there who has not let these same thoughts somehow be entertained in her mind, if only even for a brief moment here or there, because the reality is, we DO compare pain.
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> We compare it and rank it and negotiate in our heads how we would take this for that...I'd take a miscarriage over a neonatal death...lose my mother over my husband..a failed IVF cycle over a successful one that end unsuccessfully...yada, yada, yada.
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> All this comparison done by our finite, tiny minds, as if we can control our reaction to something because we are able to rank it and anticipate its depth of pain.
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> That, my friends....that is what is impossible.
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> Not the comparison...that's human and inevitable.
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> The reaction...the emotions...it's impossible to rank the reaction because it is simply and uniquely different for each and every person.
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> For each and every situation.
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> For each and every life and what that life meant to his or her family in its own individual way.
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> In many ways, this miscarriage has been easier than losing Matthew. To deny that is just not honest. I only have a couple of things bought for this baby...only a few overt triggers to navigate around...three months of this baby under my heart instead of ten. A different type of attachment.
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> But in many ways, this is the most devastating thing I've ever experienced, and I'm including burying my first born son.
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> I did not see Matthew's last breath. His still body. A haunting picture of him looking out at me from inside my womb, curled as if I'd let him down and he'd resigned himself to abandonment from his mother and simply let his heart stop beating.
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> I did not allow a single thing to be done to alter one precious thing about Matthew's body and not only did I allow this with my littlest one, I chose it. Purposely chose to destroy and scrape and suck every last piece of life that precious miracle was in favor of protecting my own body.
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> Purposely chose the most heinous act I can think of to be done to my child. My flesh and blood. My baby.
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> I don't believe haunted is even close to the description of how I am feeling right now.
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> I was never this haunted with Matthew.
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> The point is that it doesn't matter.
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> Of course we compare pain. Of course we would prefer one lesser (in our mind) pain over another. We are human and pain hurts and we want to lessen the impact if able to.
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> But we aren't. We cannot negate pain and suffering because it could be worse, and therefore can't be as bad as we are acting as it is. But that doesn't mean that the pain we are experiencing is any less devastating. It's just different.
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> It can always be worse. That's this world.
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> But it is always, always, always different and the reaction will always be different because what we are really comparing is the depth of love for individual souls. Individual people. People with whom, we share unique and precious relationships that cannot ever be duplicated.
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> I will never love Matthew any more than I do Luke or do this little one or any siblings to come.
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> Or Luke any more.
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> Or any other siblings any more.
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> But I will always mourn completely different things and completely different losses because they are completely different people.
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> Comparable simply by designation as my children....but forever heartbreaking and life-changing in very, very unique and devastating ways.<strike><strike><strike></strike></strike></strike>