Wow.

I'm amazed by the compassion and reception this thing of mine has gotten. It's maybe even a little overwhelming, though not in a bad way. I guess, over the course of my life, I've gotten so used to working through things pretty much on my own, that having all of this is a brand new experience. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I appreciate all of your comments and words of support, and try to respond when I can. I'm not the best person in the world at staying in touch, but this has just been amazing. Thank you.

This recent interruption in my posts has been brought to you by trying to put together a job application for a visiting professorship for next year in something like four days. Lots of running around and shrieking. Better now. Calmer now.

The strong, silent type.

Part of it is being a man.

The masculine gender role in Western culture is defined in part by agency - the ability to provide, to take action. The feminine gender role is defined in part by communion - the ability to connect, nurture, support. All kinds of traits and acceptable/unacceptable behaviors stem from this distinction. Expectations about appropriate responses to an event stem from this distinction as well. Not just how you should act, but also how others respond to you.

I am especially feeling this right now.

It's not even necessarily other people putting it on me as much as me putting it on myself - I assume that because I'm less prone to let my feelings overwhelm me, it must be my responsibility to take care of things when S can't. I may be the walking wounded, but I'm still able to walk, right? So I should keep walking. And I know from previous experience that keeping busy helps me to outrun pain, but right now, it's tough. The depression has set in in a big way, and just getting out of bed and doing what I have to do feels like a victory. I made dinner from something vaguely resembling scratch tonight for the first time in who knows how long, and just doing that felt like one more rung on the ladder out of the dark. I don't really want to do anything but sleep, surf the web, watch TV and play video games. But neither does S, and it's all got to get done somehow, so I do it. Time to grieve later.

It also affects how others respond to you. For the most part, we've been very, very lucky in how others have spoken to us. There's been some inappropriate stuff, but not really from unexpected quarters, and nothing too offensive. Honestly, I'd braced myself for much worse. But how people treat me is very different from how people treat S.

S has people asking her how she's doing, mostly being sensitive, checking in on her. For me, it's been mostly silence. I got condolences early on, but it settled very quickly into awkward silence, then less awkward silence, and now it never comes up. And I don't know if it's because I'm a man or what, but when someone does say something thoughtless, I don't want to say anything because I don't want to be perceived as playing the victim.

And I'm surrounded by baby stuff. I mean, of course it's on the cover of every magazine, all over the TV, it's all over the place. My advisor is pregnant. Another faculty member just gave birth and of course I get the email announcement. Why wouldn't I? Why would that be a problem? Sometimes when my officemate starts waxing rhapsodic about our advisor and how pregnant she's looking, I want to snap and say "look, I don't care how fucking pregnant she looks now, because we already have a weird relationship and every time I look at her, I see all of the happiness I should be getting ready to enjoy but won't be because my fucking children died."

Not one "how are you doing?" from any of the people I see every day. Not now. First week back? Sure. Couple months later? Old news. Maybe I should just be over it by now. Maybe I should just man up and get back to work. Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood. The strong, silent type.

But it fucking hurts.

Apropos of nothing.

I can still remember one of the first things S did that really endeared her to me.

When we first started dating, I was in a crappy job that I didn't like. Inevitably, our evenings together would start with me venting for about ten or fifteen minutes about my stupid job. After one particularly firebreathing rant, she looked at me with an amused expression and said...

"You don't scare me."

And, just, awwwww. I loved that.

Missing completely at random.

Antigone asked a good question in response to a previous post...

"What if there's no sense to be made?"

I think it depends on what's meant by "making sense."

I'm sure we've all heard it from well-meaning people: "Everything happens for a reason." The last thing I want to think about is what possible reason there could be for the death of my sons. I mean, there's the cause of death, but I know that's not what people mean. They mean "this wasn't some random occurrence, the universe isn't completely arbitrary and frightening in its uncaringness." And I know they're trying to make me feel better, and I know that it's a powerful human motivation to seek order. I try not to judge them too harshly.

Personally, I am generally okay with the idea that the universe is random and arbitrary. Knowing that this could have happened to anyone is actually more reassuring that wondering what secret rule or law I violated brought this suffering upon me. It's part of my worldview. I don't believe in God, I don't believe in higher powers. I believe that this is all there is, and that it's up to me to derive meaning from the events of my life. I make whatever sense I can, I figure out what good I can take away from something horrible. Whatever it is, no matter how small, if it helps me to grow or become stronger, then it hasn't been for nothing.

I have lost my sons for no good reason. I accept that, and I am stronger for knowing that I am able to survive it, if nothing else.

The purge, the long slow climb.

In the process of grieving our lost sons, a lot of things about how we live our life have sort of gone ignored. Lots of things that held over from before, the artifacts of a difficult pregnancy, stuck around because we were/are too busy being in shock to do anything about it. What I've found, over the last few weeks, is that trying to restore a certain amount of normalcy is good for me, even healing. And this means a lot of getting-rid-of. I finally got my hair cut about three weeks ago - I was already a little shaggy when we lost our sons, and by the end of the whole process, it was all I could do to shave off my week's worth of beard. But when I finally did, it felt good. And when I got the damn-near shoulder-length hair cut off in favor of my usual short, clean-cut look, a little more weight left my shoulders. It was one more step away from that awful, awful time.

As if this wasn't mundane enough, a few days ago I cleaned out our refrigerator, getting rid of some of S's staples from when she was still pregnant - the only foods or beverages she could take without getting ill. It left a lot of room, and again, I felt a little freer.

Mundane? Oh hell yes. But in each case, shedding something, removing it, made me feel a little calmer, a little lighter. Every reminder of those horrible weeks around the death of our children got shed, and it left room for something new. I don't expect it to take the grief away, but the more I can clear away, the easier it is to deal with what's left. The easier it is to deal with what's left, the closer we get to being people again, instead of victims.

Who to the what now?

So having spilled a long, detailed, sequentially-if-not-chronologically accurate account of the loss of my sons all over the first part of this thing of mine (I never liked the word "blog" - to me, "blogging" sounds like what you do after you have too many beers and any number of cheap burritos), I should probably talk a little more about who I am and where I'm coming from. The absolute basics are in my profile, so I'll try to flesh it out a little.

*I'm a doctoral student in social psychology. Just to get it out of the way, no, I don't see clients. I'm not that kind of psychologist. Teaching and research are what I do. Some of my research interests have to do with gender roles, so I'll probably be touching on that here. And I'll try not to be too pedantic about it.

*The Political Compass puts me on the libertarian left, which makes me one of them there liberals. I will try not to go on too many rants - I have definite opinions about a lot of issues, but if they aren't germane to what I'm writing, I'm not going to go out of my way. Opinions on the culture will come up, though. So fair warning.

*Just to get this out of the way: I am an atheist, and have been one for many years. I understand completely that many people cope with their losses through their faith. I don't have that as a resource. God comes up a lot around this issue, though, and as sensitive as I try to be to others, this journal is first and foremost about how I'm experiencing our loss. If I say something about religion that offends you, please do not take it personally. I am not mad at you - I am mad at a culture that doesn't seem to see my perspective as a valid or healthy one sometimes.

*I am a man. More to the point, I'm a guy. In some ways, I'm a very typical guy. I enjoy movies with explosions, beer, poker, video games, and laughing my ass off at "Jackass," among other things. In other ways, I'm not a typical guy. I do most of the cooking, laundry, and grocery shopping, and my wife handles the bills. I don't like professional sports all that much, have been known to watch and enjoy film adaptations of Jane Austen novels, and have been tagged as "sensitive" more times than I care to count. Maybe that's why I'm writing about all of this stuff. I can't believe that my experience is that atypical, but I don't feel like I see the man's perspective on infertility and child loss all that much.

It's interesting, both S and myself have gotten comments to the effect of "I wish my husband wrote about his experience", and maybe this journal is a little of that too - I need to talk about it to people who understand, because on top of everything I've detailed until now, our support system is starting to fall away through no fault of their own. And even that was more focused on S than me. But also, it is my opinion that men sometimes get the short end of the stick. Not to go into a rant here, but I know I'm not the only man going through this. But I've heard from maybe one other man who has. Maybe somebody needs to take a step forward. Sure, I'll do that.

How I Got Here (Too Long, Didn't Read Edition)

Okay, for those of you who'd like a little background and don't want to wade through 6 incredibly long posts (and honestly, I don't blame you if you don't), here's the nutshell version:

1) My wife and I found out we were infertile the hard way a little over two years ago.
2) We did about 9 IUI cycles over those two years - the first 8 netted us three chemical pregnancies and not much else.
3) The 9th, sort of a "what the hell, we've got the drugs, let's do it" cycle got us full-on pregnant. With twins. Two chromosomally normal boys.
4) My wife was really sick throughout the first trimester, until about 18 weeks.
5) At the tail end of 19 weeks, at least one of the amniotic sacs ruptured, maybe both. This was on Christmas day.
6) One of our sons was already dead, and the amnotic sac for the other was leaking fluid steadily.
7) We decided, after much agonizing, to induce labor. Our other sons' chances were slim, the outcome most likely bleak, and infection was going to become an issue soon.
8) On January 2nd, we went in to induce labor, only to be told that state law forbade it at that hospital.
9) We went to another hospital, and after a messy, painful, difficult delivery, our sons Jacob and Joshua were delivered into the world. Joshua had been dead for several days, and Jacob didn't survive the delivery.
10) This is an attempt for me to make sense of it all.