Survivor’s Guilt: The Psychological War After My Daughter’s Traumatic Birth
I thought I was out of the woods. But a sinister predator stalked about my psyche.
Since becoming a father, I’ve been asked numerous times by parents-to-be, those thinking about becoming parents, newlyweds, and even some of my bachelor friends, “What’s the most difficult thing about being a parent?”
I’ve given various answers: the standard stuff about letting go of control and the delicate balance between meting out discipline but not turning my children into robots scared to try anything of their own accord.
I’ve even told people it’s the lack of sleep, or the switch from putting my needs behind me to focus on the needs of my kids and family. Or maybe I said watching my children be sick or injured and having nothing I could do about it. All are good standard answers, I suppose. I would even say they are true for the most part.
But I haven’t been completely honest.
I haven’t been completely honest because I didn’t know how to put into words what my truthful answer is.
The hardest part about becoming a father for me has been survivor’s guilt.
“It is not unusual for the survivor to think that he was spared at the expense of another and feel a heavy sense of debt to the one who is gone. Some survivors… may feel some distorted sense of not being worthy.”
— Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
Let me explain.
My daughter did not come into this world in a normal fashion. The typical build up to the birth of a child in America — the smiles, Lamaze classes, the swerving through traffic when the contractions start, the push, the scream, the glow, and taking the baby home all bundled up a couple of days later — none of that happened for us when my daughter was born.
Nothing that anyone would consider normal happened at all.
Survivor’s guilt is something that people experience when they’ve survived a life-threatening situation and others might not have. It is commonly seen among Holocaust survivors, war veterans, lung-transplant recipients, airplane-crash survivors, and those who have lived through natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, and floods. — Dr. Diana Raab, Psychology Today
Six weeks into the pregnancy we were told my wife had a miscarriage. We were encouraged to schedule a D & C to get rid of “it.” A week later they found a heartbeat.
At that same trip to the emergency room, they discovered my wife had a tumor.
20 weeks in, my wife’s water broke. We were told that if we could hold on for another four weeks my wife could be checked into the hospital because then our daughter would be “viable”. We were consulted by one doctor to go ahead and “terminate” because most babies in our daughter’s situation have a hard time surviving. The doctor said statistically babies in our daughter’s situation had a 1% chance of survival.
At 26 weeks, after two weeks in the hospital, there were more complications. The doctor made the call to prep for delivery around midnight. I’m calling people on the phone to let them know, but no one is picking up. I’m all by myself as the doctor starts giving me a rundown of both real and hypothetical scenarios, some of which involve the deaths of my wife and daughter.
They cut my wife open. Pulled my daughter out, then I followed them back into a room where they stuffed my daughter full of tubes and hooked her up to a ventilator. She weighed 2 pounds, 2 ounces.
In the room, the doctor says there’s a good chance she’ll make it past the first week. They’ll re-evaluate after that. If she makes it.
I don’t get to hold my daughter for 8 days. I only get to stare at her through the glass and trust she’s going to be okay.
And the days progress. 149 of them. Teams of doctors. Countless nurses and nurse-practitioners. Countless plans, evaluations, theories, hours, sitting, waiting in limbo.
Finally, we get to come home.
Why did I get to come home?
During our time in Neonatal Intensive Care with our daughter, we saw a lot of babies, parents, and families come and go. Some were in and out. Some progressed more quickly than our daughter. Some did not.
Some of the babies never came home.
Want to know what the most gut-wrenchingly awful place on the planet is? The waiting room of a hospital with a family whose child has died.
Why me? Why us? Why did we get to live, come home and be happy?
That has been the hardest part of my journey into fatherhood.
Why do I get to come home and watch my now 6-year-old daughter’s face light up as she yells/laughs “I got you” when we play tag? I get that. We walked through death to get it. Why do I get to watch her and her brother cut-up, laugh, argue, and build their own imaginative universes in the backyard?
Why not those other families?
Sometimes there’s a tug at my heart because we saw families who didn’t get to take their babies home.
Still, there are others, today, that won’t get to take their babies home.
So I count my blessings. I try to take no man for granted. My wife tells others not to take their uncomfortable pregnancy nor their misbehaving child for granted (we have to tell ourselves this a lot when it comes to our son).
Count it good.
I have to do this because I know somewhere there’s someone else who would literally lay their life down to be in my shoes. There’s a parent who would change places with their child who didn’t make it. There’s a parent who lives a horror much worse than the guilt I feel for making it home safe with my family.
What was the hardest part for me becoming a father?
Getting to come home every day to a happy and healthy child and knowing others did not get to have this.
Survivor’s guilt.
A version of this article was originally published on Jesuspunk.com
