Saturday, July 4, 2009

Phantom Kicks

I notice I’ve been using Scott as my shield to protect me from anything to do with babies. He screens telephone calls for me, and tells me when to leave the room so he can make cremation arrangements. If he sees something on TV that he knows will bother me, he quickly changes the channel. In the store today, a baby being held by his mother in line in front of us was smiling and gesturing at us; Scott made sure I had room to stand behind him, where he became a literal shield so I didn’t have to look at the baby. In accepting his help, I wonder if I’m sacrificing a part of my independent nature. I no longer feel the need to handle everything, to be in control of everything. I want to hide from responsibility – who is this person I’ve become?

That weird thing has still been happening – I’ve been getting phantom kicks. I know they must be just little twinges in my uterus, but they feel like a baby kicking me. I look it up online, and sure enough, other women who have had stillbirths report feeling the phantom kicks, too. Of course, after feeling one, there is the conflicting feelings – the flutter of joy that must just be a Pavlovian response, and the subsequent sadness at remembering that there’s nothing inside to kick me.

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