Welcome to Holland, by Emily Perl Kingsley

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, Michelangelo’s David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later the plane lands and the stewardess comes on and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “HOLLAND?” you say. “What do you mean Holland? I was signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy! All of my life I have dreamed of going to Italy!” But there has been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So now you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must now learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would otherwise never have met. It’s just a different place. It is slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you have been here awhile and you catch your breath, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, and Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” The pain of that will never, ever go away because the loss of that dream is very significant. But if you spend your whole life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the special and very lovely things about Holland.

No real words of wisdom, other than empathy and that I hope writing this out helped. It’s normal to feel resentment after your experience, I think. (((HUGS)))

As for the “coulda/shoulda/woulda” feelings…well, I liken it to what happened to me after my cancer surgery and after my brother’s suicide, and from this standpoint I think I can relate somewhat. The complications from my cancer surgery traumatized me to the point that I believe I had PTSD for a least a couple of years afterwards, plus the fact that it wasn’t the smooth sailing that everyone said it would be. What happened the week after my surgery would come back in my dreams (nightmares!) and I’d wake up hyperventilating and sweating. Talking to others about it helped, and mostly it just took time. The first anniversary after the “event” was hard and it felt like my body was reliving it, but I got through it and it also got better with time. When I had to have surgery again two years later, I was in hysterics (or close to it) for about 3 weeks prior to. That surgery went smoothly, thank God!

As for my brother’s suicide…well, we will always have questions, like, did we do the right things, did we do something we shouldn’t have, did we miss something we should have done, and on and on. There is no way to know, yet it doesn’t stop the questions and the wondering. It’s the same for you. You will never know how things might have been different, but that doesn’t stop the questions and the wondering. Again, the first anniversary was very difficult and I found myself in the month before it reliving what was going on in my life at that point and wondering what my brother was thinking and doing in the days leading up to his death. I was a basket case at the first anniversary. After that is has slowly gotten easier, with ups and downs. I imagine your situation is very similar — different events, but very similar feelings, questions, grief (yes, grief for the things that you felt should have happened and didn’t). You are reliving everything that happened a year ago, much like I did with my brother’s death. Some people process this way. It is what it is.

It’s good that you see the ultimate blessings, and there will be more as you heal and move forward. I’m still working through the deaths of my brother and my father (who died in a murder/suicide 2 years after my brother). Even still, I’ve been able to reach out and support a few people experiencing similar things because I’ve been there. I’m also starting to move forward. You are doing the same with the NICU support group — you’re still processing your feelings, and it hasn’t stopped you from reaching out to others. I wouldn’t be able to truly understand what a suicide or murder/suicide survivor has gone through if I hadn’t experienced it myself. You wouldn’t understand what other IF/NICU parents are going through if you hadn’t experienced it yourself. I wish neither of us had gone through these things, yet they happened. It’s what we do with them that matters. I think we’re both doing the best we can, and that is what matters in the long run. You will get to the point where you move on from here; you’re not there yet. Everyone gets to that point in their own time. You don’t always get over it, but you get through it.

You’re going to be okay, Kerry. Take care of yourself, and take it one day at a time, one step at a time. Big hugs to you!!!!!!

i am and have had a hard time dealing with my girls early arrival…a very hard time, i havent’ really told anyone but i got on medication to deal with it.
i think all the time (literally) like you what if they hadn’t made it, what if they get some infection in their lungs and die now it puts so much stress on me i can’t sleep anymore!
even tonight walking down the hall at swedish to our meeting i just thought to myself wow i will never be here again to have a baby that my girls are almost 1…where did this year go? even the thought of taking them out of their infant carriers is killing me. i just think no baby should be born 13 weeks early its not normal and i am not okay with it….maybe i should try therapy as well! we should do dinner and chat about this!