A baby named Nathan

   Sometimes I wonder why I keep this blog open, or even come back here to write.  I suppose this blog serves a purpose in that it is a documented testimony of my journey through the loss of a child.  The other part of me feels like a piece of my soul is just sitting out there exposed on the world wide web.  I know there are many readers that come to my blog, either intentionally or unintentionally. But whatever the reason, they come, they stop and read about a little boy who came into the world silent and still and took a piece of his mothers heart back with him to heaven.  Some leave comments about their own grief, others move onto the next story.  I remember scouring the internet that night for some story, someone similar to me that I could relate to so I wouldn't feel so alone.  I did not find one, but hundreds of stories like mine.  I could not believe that this happened to so many people.  That so many other women knew the gut wrenching cry a mother makes when they take your baby from you for the last time... So I sat and I read story, after story, after story.  I wept with these mothers and understood their pain.  Many of them much further on their grief journey than I.  I also remember reading stories of mothers who had just been in my shoes only a few days or weeks before me and I wanted to connect, I wanted to belong, and I wanted to be understood. These women became my sounding board, they cried with me, cheered with me, and have now become some of my best friends. I love each of these women for so many reasons, but more than anything I love that they accepted me in and allowed me to talk about my grief.  I was heard.

That brings me to today.  As I look at my Facebook news feed this evening it is filled with a beautiful,  but  very somber sight of candles, lit to remember our babies.  I am overcome with so many emotions, that I can feel the sorrow of losing and the joy loving and the strength of overcoming that we all have been through.  I am blessed beyond measure to know these women.  To share in their sadness and in their joy.  And had they not left their souls exposed out in the web I would not have ever known them, and I would have continued to feel alone.  I contemplated closing down this blog a few months ago, for personal reasons, and for practical reasons.  But I spent the last few nights pouring over this blog, reading what I have been through and overcome in the last three years and decided that I don't want to take his story, my story away from a mother who is frantically searching the internet tonight trying to find someone like her, someone who has been in her shoes, someone who knows her pain.


Happy third heavenly birthday my precious Nathan .  You have changed my life forever, and I love you.

No words I have could bring him back.

I know this because I have prayed them all.

Somedays I feel as though all of this never happened and it was just the plot of some very sad movie.  But then I realize I was a lead in that movie and it was based on a true story........ mine, and maybe yours too.

I spend most of my days busy rearing my other children, but at night when the house is quiet, I spend my time thinking about the one I didn't beg to finish his veggies, or brush his teeth.  The one I didn't get to read a bedtime story to.  I don't know what his day was like or what he wants for his birthday this year.  I'm not even sure what he would look like at this age.  Would he have my lips and his daddy's eyes? Would his hair be blond like his older siblings or red like his baby brother?

I don't know what it is about grief that can string together so many emotions that hit you like a ton of bricks when you least expect it.  I know that for the first few months after he passed I expected the influx of tears and heart gripping sadness.  I expected to ebb and flow through periods of sadness and normal-ness.  I have always been told that time heals all wounds.  But does it really?  Does the woman who loses a child EVER heal from such a loss?

 Sure,  I'm not walking around with the black shroud of grief over my head like I did in the beginning.  Now it's just more of a constant aching, longing, wondering for him.  I find myself longing for these moments that are missed as I watch his baby brother grow and learn.  It's as though the loss is more real to me now than it was then.  The reality of what I've lost and how deeply affected I am by it.

Then there are the days when I feel guilty.  All of the what could have been and how would my life be different.  I feel guilty for wanting him here knowing that E would not have been born, or for the fact that I can't imagine my life without E which means Nathan could not be here.   They both can't exist at once.  I feel guilty when I don't acknowledge him as one of my children to avoid the uncomfortableness of a conversation with someone new.  The questions that aren't asked for fear of my reaction.  Or the answers that aren't readily given without being asked, because no one wants to think about what it would mean to hold their lifeless child.  I certainly didn't. So I don't say anything.  But he is such a part of my story.  I am different now because of him.  Life experiences mold you, change you.

  So what could I say? What words could I use to honor his life and change someone else's?  I can't bring him back but he can still leave his impression on this earth... through me.

There are days like today when I am hard pressed to find adequate words for what I'm feeling, so I come here; I type out words on a keyboard to try to form emotion.  I was coming to the realization that it has been almost two years, and yet I couldn't understand where or how time has passed so quickly.  You see a part of me is stuck in that day. Life kept going on, but as for me; I was just going through the motions never really moving forward. Everyone thought it was sad, then they moved on and suddenly I was alone.  I have this beautiful family and I'm doing what I love and yet a huge piece of me, of us, is missing.  I wondered how I could possibly be sad or depressed having all I've been blessed with, and yet day after day I fell deeper into the sadness.  Suddenly the car I drive, the house I live in, the clothes I wear, the things I have don't matter at all because really I would give it all away in a heart beat to have him here. To have my complete family.
That's what life is about anyways, isn't it?  Family. The relationships we build, and sometimes destroy usually over something petty because we aren't big enough to own our emotions or live up to our responsibilities to one another.  We blame our upbringing or others on who we are and what we have become, and while I believe life experiences shape who we become they do not define who we are.  I could be bitter and resentful because I know what it feels like to hold a dead child. I know what it feels like to want to shake that child alive to want to shake yourself awake, to want to scream so loud and nothing.comes.out.
I suppose as long as we live in this world, full of sadness and disappointments, broken promises, and broken lives, we'll  never know true happiness. There are glimpses of it for me usually in my children's laughter, my husbands embrace, a sweet note from a dear friend, or someone saying his name.  Nathan. 
These are the things that get me through the days where life doesn't make any sense.  Where God seems just out of reach; where I let my life experiences speak for me.  I want to stand up and say, there must be something more.  More than just I had a son who died and it was sad.  I want his life to matter.  I want my life to matter.  I have known brokenness my whole life, I won't let it leave me empty.  I will choose to press forward, honoring my son, loving my family, and forgiving what isn't mine to be unforgiving of. I want to leave this world a better place because of him.

As I lay awake in bed not able to pinpoint this aching, gnawing feeling I'm having it hits me that I  cannot remember his face.  I am suddenly filled with such immeasurable sadness that my sweet baby boy, who has not yet been gone two years has become so distant a memory that I cannot recall the curve of his face, the fullness of his lips, nor the shape of his nose.  I quickly look to photos of my other children trying to draw up some semblance of an image of him but I have lost it.  I am reminded that he is not here to see all that has happened.  That he is not here to celebrate in the joys our family has celebrated.  He is not here for me to kiss goodnight and tuck in bed.  Life has become so busy and scheduled that I seem to have let him slowly slip away from me, as if it were all a bad dream.   How could I have let his memory fade as if it were the last bit of light burning from a candle to dim to light a room.  A memory that once filled my every waking thought.  How quickly I have settled into being a mother to three children.  BUT I HAVE FOUR CHILDREN I wanted to shout for so long, but that has now been drowned out by the need to be accepted and to keep things clean, without a need to explain and burden someone else with such a sad story.  Why have I let my sweet boy go, how could I move on without even noticing he had ever left my thoughts.  I speak his name often but cannot recall his face.  What a painful feeling it is to love your child whom you cannot hold.  And even now as I watch my sweet baby E's chest rise and fall with each breath I am reminded how truly amazing this life is we have been given.  How sweet and short the time we have here is.   How one day I will see my precious Nathan's face again, and when I do I will know it right away. I carry his memory in my heart always.

editing....editing......
 

editing.... editing.....

    It was not until I joined the community of baby loss, that I realized how true this is.  I have known too many that have suffered tragedies, not once, but twice, and sadly sometimes more.  I surely felt protection that night as we were blissfully unaware that anything was wrong.

    I had been in labor for two days, contracting strongly but not close enough together to warrant a trip to L&D.  So I went to bed only to wake up the next morning picking up were I had left off the day before.  Contractions coming about every 15-20 minutes apart.  My husband began to insist that we go to the hospital just to get checked out, but I didn't want to go, only to be sent home.  I asked him if I could walk to see if they would come closer, so for a walk we went.  At around 4 pm my contractions were about 8 minutes apart, so I finally agreed to go and get checked out.  When we arrived the floor was packed and they didn't have enough nurses to even see me in triage right away.  By the time they got me on the monitors my contractions had spaced out to twelve minutes apart.  I just knew that wouldn't keep me and I had already resigned myself to going home.  The nurse came in and checked me, told me I was 3cm but not having contractions close enough together to warrant keeping me.  She told me to walk the hospital for an hour and come back at 6:30 to see if I had made any progress.  After an hour walk I had managed to get my contractions to 6 minutes apart.  I went back up stairs and they put me back on the monitors, I was contracting every eight minutes at this point, the nurse checked me and to her surprise I had dilated to 4. Still with contractions not close enough together to consider me in "active" labor.  Then it was shift change.


    I knew that with it being as busy as it was, and with my doctor not being on call that day, that I was going to be sent home.  My new nurse came in, an older more seasoned nurse.  She checked the monitor, checked my cervix and then left the room.  She came back and told me that she had spoken with the doctor on call and that she really felt that they should keep me, and the doctor said okay.  I couldn't believe we were actually being admitted.  Once they got me to my room. put in my I.V, and had me fill out paperwork I began contracting every 5 min, then every 3.  My husband went down stairs to give my parents some things for the kids only to come back and find me getting an epidural.  I was now dilated to 6 and feeling much relief.  In fact at one point I had asked the nurses if they could turn my epidural down because I couldn't feel anything!  They kind of snickered at me and then within minutes I told them I was feeling lots of pressure.  I was dilated to 9 with just a little bit of cervix left.  They called the doctor and the nurses began to fill the room , the heater that I had been staring at all night was on and prepared for the living baby I was about to deliver.  There was such a surreal feeling in the room that night as my husband and I watched everyone go into delivery mode and prepared for the arrival of our baby.  It was time to push, and with two contractions, he entered this world with a robust cry and I instantly fell in love.  I sent my husband over to warmer to make sure everything was okay with baby.  The doctor waited patiently for my placenta to make it's way out, and within minutes It was out and I was done.  She looked at my placenta with a look of fear and relief.  She then turned to me and said, "I am glad we didn't send you home, your placenta had already began detaching itself, there was a clot the size of your baby's head on the outside of your placenta were it attaches to the uterus."  "You're lucky mom." If only she knew......


      After all the excitement in the room dwindled down, my husband and I were left all alone with our little miracle, thanking God that He had saved this little one. We couldn't believe how close we had almost come to losing another child.  I'm not sure what would have happened if we hadn't gone to the hospital when we did, if we hadn't had the nurse we had that insisted on keeping us.  She came to our room later that night to see the baby and I thanked her with tears in my eyes for keeping us and that it saved my babies life.

     Not a day goes by that I don't feel blessed for all I have, and that even in losing Nathan, I have so much to be thankful for.