Rainey Dee
Last spring, my friend Bree was due with a baby girl. Bree is the type of friend that I can text back and forth with all day. She runs a business like Motherhood Strong called Loved Momma Fitness in Nevada, and we are both Pregnancy and Postpartum Athleticism coaches. We talk about everything from our children to our homes to how we are planning classes. In many ways our businesses were unofficial sister companies and our bodies are each other’s best clients and guinea pigs.
Bree was due any day. We had been discussing her labor plans and how her body felt. Nervous anticipation was rampant. While I was coaching my clients on Zoom in my garage the Monday after Easter, I received a group text from Bree with several numbers I didn’t recognize. I slid the text open fully expecting a “I’m in labor!” or “Meet my baby!” text. It was not quite that. In fact it was horrifying.
I read the words over and over as my clients continued moving through their workout on my computer screen, unaware of what I had read on my phone. “My baby came. My baby passed away.”
My brain could not comprehend fully what the message was saying. My heart felt like it immediately started bleeding out. How could this happen to my friend? How could this happen to her baby? WHAT happened to her baby? How could I fix it? I needed to fix it.
I felt immediately that I needed to DO something. I couldn’t give my friend her baby back so I needed to act in another way. The reality was that I was in Saint Louis, far from my friend and her family. I couldn’t do a lot. My midwestern gut reaction was to make a meal to nourish my friend’s broken body and alleviate her responsibility. I wanted to bring over a basket of distractions for her living daughter, or to take her daughter on a walk or to the playground. I wanted to give Bree space and time, and also be present for her. I had no idea how to do this. All I had available to do so was my phone. I could send a text, I could make a call, but I was paralyzed to do so imagining Bree limp in a puddle of her grief and tears. Would I want her to reach out to me if I was in her shoes? What would I need? What would I want? I had no idea how to process what she needed and felt selfish for trying to realize what I needed. Me, who didn’t have a baby born not breathing. Me, who had two living breathing children to tuck into bed. Me, who has never experienced grief like hers. Me, who still cannot imagine birthing a body with a soul not meant for this world. How unfair to her that I was grieving too. That I immediately started to mourn for her, with her, that I longed for her baby to alive and well and in her arms so we could keep talking about bodies and birth and carriers and motherhood.
My brain kept going back to conversations I had had with Bree days before she went into labor. I had been answering her text messages with a distracted brain as I was busy doing what moms and business owners do. I wasn’t giving her my full attention. Bree mentioned that she wasn’t feeling her baby move as much. I had reassured her, suggested drinking or eating something a little sugary to see what would happen inside her tummy. I told her that the baby was just running out of room! I didn’t tell her to check in with her midwives. I didn’t tell her to follow her gut that something was wrong. I didn’t intervene and push her to an ultrasound or a check up. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t save her baby.
Now I had this guilt in my chest. What if I had reacted differently? Should I have pushed Bree to look into her concerns more closely?? We had several conversations over the years we had been coaching about stillbirth moms. We had said, “we could never imagine.” “That could never happen to us.” “We would never survive the death of our babies.” And now she was in it, she was in the deepest trench o her life and she was dealing with the death of her baby. She had to survive, she had to continue on without her new baby, because she had a daughter still alive on this earth and a husband who was also mourning.
I felt incredibly selfish, but I had to apologize to my friend. I had to address that we had discussed this possibility as something that couldn’t happen to us. And I had to address the fact that I had dismissed her concerns, because “bad things don’t happen to us.” I cowardly typed a text to her. I couldn’t bring myself to call her and hear her voice or to listen to myself stumble through the words.
I don’t know if Bree even remembers the text. I don’t know if she had even remembered our conversation about her baby’s movement or lack thereof. But when she got my text she did not blame me. She did not blame me for discounting her fears and concerns. She said only, “I know, it’s been in my mind. It isn’t your fault.” And I selfishly felt better while her heart was still broken.
Over the coming days and weeks, I would check in. “How’re you? Do you want to talk? Tell me about XYZ, if you want to.” I sent flowers. And then a few weeks later Bree mentioned how sad it was that the flowers were dying and the meals were stopping and people were moving on. People were moving on and she still felt stuck. So I sent a care package.
It didn’t feel like enough. It isn’t enough. I have realized in these months after the death of Bree’s baby that what she needs is just my presence, to hold space, to listen or cry or maybe offer words of support. I mean she needs a lot of things, and I know I can’t deliver all of it to her. In our relationship as “text always” friends, Bree needs to just know I’m here with her. I can listen. I can grieve. I can proof read a blog or biography paragraph. I can talk about normal things like navigating parenting a three year old, or hard things like how to restructure her business that was originally built to serve pregnant and postpartum moms. I can ‘“practice brave” with Bree, a phrase that is a motto of sorts for PPA coaches. And I can say her daughter’s name.
Bree and her husband named their beautiful baby girl Rainey Dee. There is a story behind her name that Bree tells better than I ever could. The important thing here in this story I’m typing right now is that Rainey lives on in the lives she touched, though she is safe in the arms of Jesus. The truth is that Rainey touched many lives for a baby that never took a breath outside her mother’s womb. Rainey has specifically taught me about friendship, about faith, and about grief. She reminds me of these things when it sprinkles or when it pours. Bree posts often about her all consuming grief, her broken heart, and her path of living with a part of her gone. In her posts she always mentions the rain. Raindrops tumbling down a window pane, rain on her beautiful face as she hikes outside with her daughter, rain over the mountains outside her home. And now the rain that falls on my own face are a reminder of a life well lived, a life that mattered though it only existed inside of a warm and cozy tummy.
What would Bree want you to know about grief? What do I want you to know, as a friend of a grieving mother? Talk about it. Normalize feelings that aren’t expected. Validate sadness, validate anger, validate the paralyzing feeling of the weight of your world crashing down. Stillbirth happens. Miscarriages happen. Pregnancy loss, infant death… they happen. There is no manual written on how to pick yourself up, or how to counsel your friend going through it. In fact sometimes I have messed up, and apologized again for not saying the right thing or for naively acting in a way that could hurt her without me even realizing it. I’m not perfect. Ive been watching Bree go through this and I see her clinging to her faith in Christ, I see her in a puddle of feelings, I see her pulling herself up while leaning on God and her husband and her friends. And I think she wants you to know that it is ok to not know what to do, and that it’s ok to say that you don’t know what to do to your friend, and it’s ok to apologize for not handling things optimally. If you’re walking this journey with a friend, just keep walking. They need you to do that.
This grief is not going to go away for my friend. Time will not heal this wound (does it heal any wound? Or does the pain just dull and become a normal part of the grieving persons existence?). As I continue walking with Bree who is walking this, her grief will be with us. We have started talking about more “normal” things. We both have sassy, stubborn, beautiful girls to parent. We both still have our businesses in some capacity. We both are Christians on our own journeys with Christ. It is natural for these things to be items of conversation between us. But should Bree need to or want to discuss her broken heart, her daughter Rainey, her postpartum body, I hold space for that. That is all I can do. I can hold the space and I can say Rainey’s name, I can be a small help in holding the weight of Bree’s broken heart. She will be carrying it with her always.
Bree wrote a blog about her experience birthing her daughter, and her life today. If you would like to read it, it is linked here.
