Sammy Kai - Birthing Death

Photo by Bodhanaa. Japanese Maple

On the eve of my daughter's birthday, I was thinking about a summer night many years ago when I gave birth to Sammy Kai. He had already died so it was not a live birth but it was still a birth. I went through the contractions and labor at home, alone. I held his tiny frog-like body in the palm of my hand. We buried him in the yard under a Japanese Maple. The morning of my daughter's birthday was the first time that I realized I gave birth to him. Or that I went through the birthing process. It had mostly been a jumble of images mixed in with shame, anger, loneliness, and unbearable loss. It was a birth. It had the same intensity of going through a delivery, but it was a “missed" (carriage) baby. I had had no medical models or examples to labor and birth this baby naturally at home. But I trusted nature. I trusted nature within me. And it seemed that a natural process must exist for letting him go. 

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I would not let go of Sammy Kai in a hospital. My experiences of hospitals were places devoid of life, places of giving up control, a place where I felt powerless. I wanted to deliver Sammy Kai at home, the same way Asha, and later Saskia came into the world. ​

I was still very active in the second trimester, enjoying summer, still roller blading while pregnant. I was so happy to be carrying this second child whom we had already named Sammy Kai. When I had the first inkling that something was not right I just froze inside. Freezing has always been my reaction to events beyond what I thought would happen. I had been trying to ignore that my belly had not been growing and that things felt still and quiet with the baby. Then one night I had a night sweat. I woke up with the same icy cold fear in my veins that accompanied me when I woke up from a nightmare. I felt betrayed. The thoughts came fast one by one; I only had night sweats when I was about to start my period. And I would only have a period if my cycle had started again. And that could only mean one thing. It was a difficult night, tossing and turning with the intuitive knowledge I could not fully accept. In the morning I made an ultrasound appointment.
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​We went for the ultrasound. In every way you could tell from the technician that Sammy Kai was dead. Her face, her body language, her evasion when we asked. She could only say, "The doctor will answer all of your questions." We had to wait an agonizing amount of time while a doctor was fetched to give the painful news. I was told to have a D&C and in my state of shock and grief I could not understand what they were saying. The doctor had to spell it out, and did so mechanically, as if I didn't know my body, as if I didn't know Sammy Kai, as if I didn't know the sacredness of life and death. It was just a clean-safe-antiseptic-efficient way to get rid of the problem. My natural reaction is to fight, and when I asked if I could deliver the tiny baby at home the answer was absolutely not. I started freaking out and arguing which did not help. 

​This is where my husband really shines. He's like an underwater anchor, a quiet force that knows how to lean sideways into me, so I won’t fight him, but he can get through to me when no one else can. He whispered, just like he did at Asha's birth when I was screaming at the mid-wife, “Just agree to what he says, then we’ll get out of here and cancel the appointment.”

​I get caught up in the injustice, the fight, the principle, the need to MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND that there are other options, methods. But it rarely works. So I stopped arguing, agreed to the D & C, and we left. The minute I got home I cancelled the appointment and called my friend Anne, a midwife. She assured me that my body would let go of Sammy Kai when the time was right and I could call her if I needed to. From that point it was just a waiting game.

​In the next days I felt between worlds. To walk around not pregnant any more. To walk around with a dead baby inside you. To not know what to say to people cause you know they will not know what to say when you tell them.  It was living in twilight.

About three days later my body was ready to let go of the baby. Mentally I was not ready. I had contractions and fairly quickly delivered Sammy Kai. I was surprised at how tiny he was, like a little pink frog, with little hands and frog bent legs. There was a beautiful purple eggplant shaped placenta. I was alone the whole time, calling Anne when I became fearful about the process, but she continuously assured me that it was all normal and natural. I have mixed feelings about being alone, the feeling that I had to bear it and deal with it myself. I didn't reach out to anyone besides Anne, and yet I felt unsupported and lonely. 

We buried Sammy Kai under a Japanese maple. It was very quiet and sad. No adults talked about it. But Asha had to have a burial over and over and over until she played it out of her system. I wondered what past life memories Asha brought with her, because at age 2, she said for a funeral we needed to put a peppermint scent in with the baby, have a certain type of cloth, and kept talking about fish along with the burial.

Months later I want to Lynn for an astrology reading. I owe Lyn so much gratitude for the gift of not just insights, but how she delivered them. In this reading she got a surprised look on her face and said,  "Wow! You avoided something here!” I asked what she meant and she said that in my chart, it was shown that I would have a stillborn, not a miscarriage. She said that would have been much harder to bear.  

In the third third of my life, many healings are happening, many things are making sense, or I am able to come to terms with them. Some kind of weight has been lifted where I am able to see the pain I was in, but I am no longer pressed down by it.

I never had a boy child, I never knew Sammy Kai, and yet who we thought he was never left.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9M4XJXnCcw Graceland by Paul Simon