Saturday, August 28, 2010

Post Funeral

Last night was Wyatt's funeral. My whole life I've heard the saying "A parent should never have to bury their child". I always agreed, but never really knew. I'm tired of people who want to share some common experience with us so they tell us that they lost their great-grandfather. I'm sorry, but as sad as death is, that is not as sad. I've lost all of my grandparents. It was sad. But it was also the natural order of things. It happened and we all knew it would happen. I cried but I didn't hurt. I didn't feel like life stopped. Heaven was easy to believe in. Babies and children, however, are not supposed to die. Their bodies haven't suffered yet, they don't long for heaven. They still think earth is heaven. They haven't sinned against anyone yet, they haven't abused drugs or alcohol. They are pure and wonderful. This has made it much harder to believe in heaven. As opposed to the suffering of an elderly person, babies are young and vibrant and it's hard to imagine a place better for them than swaddled and loved by their family. The loss of Wyatt has left a hole in our family that will never be filled. I wish it wasn't there, but I can't change that. I can't go back and make him live.

I'm amazed at the turnout for Wyatt. Many people I had never met from the squadron and our church came to support us and love us. Some of the nurses who got to meet Wyatt in the NICU came. I'm the most amazed at the two couples we met who had lost babies as well. I don't know how they were strong enough to make it through the service, and then come share their stories with us. I find the most comfort right now from others who have survived this.

The hardest moment for me came before the service even started. My husband and I were alone in the church aside from a few others who were setting up tables. I set up the small table with his urn and pictures and some flowers in the front...and then I just sat there. Just me, Wyatt, and the hum of the building's air conditioner. It was the first time Wyatt and I had been alone and I wished like hell it had been me holding him instead of staring at his urn. For a week now I hadn't been able to get a good cry out-it was always burning behind my eyes or sitting in my throat but it wouldn't just come out. But right then it did and it felt ok. I cried the rest of the night. I'm sure I looked like hell, I didnt even bother with make-up, that would've been more of a hassle with all the tears. I'm proud of my husband who was brave enough to speak about Wyatt infront of everyone. I certainly wasn't that strong. I'm proud of my church who gave us a beautiful service. Many people told us how beautiful it was but I'm not sure an infant's funeral can ever be beautiful. Most of the night I didnt know what to say to people giving us their condolescences, or I said the wrong things, or I spaced out. I was constantly thinking of how much pain I was feeling and that I wished like hell there was a chair or couch around so I could sit down and take the pressure off of the stitches. For a few hours I was ok with my body being the victim of bad doctors. I was staring at my son and he was worth it all. He was worth me dying if I had to. The disconnect comes in the fact that he isn't here to hold and love. He isn't here as a constant reminder of why I am sliced to shreds. Only when I see his picture do I remember.

Last night was very much like watching a movie. I have been to other funerals where I see the parents or the remaining spouse and wonder how they are dressed and are eating and functioning. Now I can say firsthand that I know. It just happens. I got myself showered and did my hair and then wondered how the hell I was able to sit there and do my hair. It's like when you drive somewhere and then aren't sure how you got there because you weren't paying attention. Refusing to get dressed and go to the funeral wouldn't have brought him back, so I went. Thank God there were people to help do the footwork. Not only was I not physically able to do much, my brain certainly wasn't there either. During the time we spent at the church, for set up and the service and the clean up, I thought that maybe this would be it. This would signal the road to emotional recovery. We honored Wyatt, most of the sympathy cards have come and been put away in his baby box, the department of records has sent us the birth and death certificates....there should be nothing left really. No more constant reminders or work to do for our dead baby. With all the extreme pain that I am in I can only pray that I do recover and return to normal. I don't want my constant reminder of Wyatt to be that I can't breathe well or live in pain for the rest of my life. I'd rather just see a small faded scar and know that I tried to save him. Despite the funeral, however, this morning feels no different. I still look at Tyler and ask "What do we do now?" He just shakes his head. Niether of us know. So the question remains for me....What happens now?

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Relationships and life on hold

As the days go by I feel more empty and dead as I contemplate and think about everything that happened. I'm sure it doesn't help that I am trying to prepare for Wyatt's memorial service so I am constantly looking at his pictures and handling his few small belongings. If things weren't bad enough, today I received his social security card in the mail. It was like a knife in the heart. One more tangible thing to prove that he was here and yet I can't be with him.
As the days pass and I remain in intense pain I feel myself start to become full of hate. It's hate on a level that I have never ever experienced before. It's consuming which makes me nervous and yet I am unable to do anything about it. I hate the doctors who walked me through all of this. Not only can no one tell me what happened, no one could see it coming even with ultrasounds at 2 and 4 week intervals. I am still highly confused how a baby and placenta can be "perfect" at week 20 and have my baby be on the verge of death at week 24. Please tell me how that happens with all of the medical technology that we supposedly have today. I'm infuriated at the c-section and my lack of recovery. I have a massive, painful lump on my stomach and the same doctors are still scratching their heads, even though they were the ones who sewed me up. I'm starting to feel like no one wants to take any responsibility around here. I don't care about my scar, I care about my insides functioning. No one ever told me that I would be faced with weeks and possibly months of unbearable pain, no only at the incision site, but around my entire back and up my entire abdomen. Why does it hurt when I eat? Why does it STILL hurt just to walk. It's been three weeks and I cannot physically continue on with life...not just because I am grieving my son but because I just can't! And I am SO pissed about it. Too little too late but I've spent two days doing research on a classical c-section cut (which is apparently what I received because my uterus and Wyatt were small) and I've found no evidence saying that's what had to happen. Everything that I can find talks about how classical cuts aren't done anymore because of their danger. It takes away any shot of future normal births and- get this- increases your chances of the placenta tearing off the uterine wall! No kidding, so now I can go through this entire thing all over again and lose other children in the future because I happened to live in a place with uneducated medical professionals. I just took their word for it and I let it happen. My husband constantly reminds me that we thought Wyatt would live, at 27 weeks he should have. At the moment we were doing what we could for him. Now it's hard for me, knowing that he is not here. He died anyway and I'm left all torn up...physically and emotionally. It's easy for me to forget that it was for Wyatt when the pain never stops.
As guilty as I feel saying this, Wyatt is gone and I do have a small voice inside of me that wants to get on with life. Because of the surgery, however, that has been impossible and has severely hindered life at home and my own grieving process. I want to cuddle with my husband. I want to curl up like a baby and cry and have him hold me but I can't even fathom being able to get into that position, let alone have someone touch me. I want to get my daughter out of her crib from her naps and I don't feel enough strength or lack of pain in my pinky finger to do that. I want to play with her on the floor, I want to push her around the sidewalk in her coupe car but all of that hurts unbearably. I want to play soccer in the front yard with my kids and I can't imagine ever being able to kick a ball again. The family has learned after three weeks that mommy is in pain and no one asks me to play anymore. My toddler doesn't reach for me to pick her up anymore. As my heart breaks for Wyatt, it breaks for the rest of the relationships in my family. My marriage and motherhood are on standstill for the chance that maybe my body will ever be normal again. With every jagged pain and ache, with every sneeze or attempt at a chuckly my body reminds me that I've been torn open and carelessly put back together and....this is the worst part....I'll never be the same again. I don't care about scars but I would like to digest food without pain. I would like to laugh or go to the bathroom without breaking into tears from pain. I'd like to walk around and bend over to pick things up. I'd like it to take less than 10 minutes to climb into our car. I don't think any of this is too much to ask. The fact that I can't bring Wyatt back or change the course of the pregnancy is hard enough on my brain. Knowing I can't change a medical procedure that has negatively altered my life tops it off. I had known Wyatt was destined for heaven I would have given birth. I'd be perfectly healthy by now and at least the very least I would be physically able to attempt to continue on with life. I want my son back, but I also want my strength and health back. One look at my toddler makes me want to hold and hug her be the best mom that I can be. As it is, I can't even shower alone, let alone love her the way she needs. So I sit here, restless and depressed, wishing I had made better decisions, or lived in a place with better doctors, so that I could have a better outcome for the rest of the family. The hate for my situation, myself, my body, my poor decision-making skills, the Ob who did my surgery, the NICO doctor who couldn't manage to get a breathing tube into my son, and everyone else involved in the situation is poisoning. I am full of pure hate.  

Monday, August 23, 2010

Guilt, pain, and second-guessing

It's interesting the more people we meet that have lost babies and tell us of their comfort and peace. I don't feel peace and I feel less comfort as the days go on. Things that I found comfort or had confidence in have slipped away.
On the Tuesday before Wyatt died we got a remarkable sonogram report: baby has grown, is practicing breathing, and blood flow studies are stable. Within two days there was no amniotic fluid and I could feel him moving less and not as strong. We took that as our sign to have a c-section so he could live but I wonder if we should have taken him on Tuesday, when all things were good. Would he have lived then? What if I had rested more? Eaten better? It seems God wanted Wyatt no matter what so now I find myself angry at having a c-section at all. Recovery is slow and painful and I've had infections, mysterious & painful bumps, trouble sleeping because of pain, and adverse reactions to medications. I've also lost the ability to give birth naturally again. Wyatt was so small I had to have a classical c-section which makes laboring again impossible unless I wanted to chance a ruptured uterus and risk another baby. While I mourn my son, I also mourn my body's natural ability to give birth as well as the thought of any more children. I cannot imagine voluntarily having a c-section ever again. With past children I've been healed and up and running after 48 hours. I'm going on 2 1/2 weeks with almost nothing to show for it. I can barely sit down. The only thing that does seem to heal is the scar itself, which makes me angry as well. I don't care what the scar looks like or if it ever goes away. It's a symbol that Wyatt was here. If it disappears I have no mark left to show that he was born. I don't understand it when doctors praise how nice your scar looks. I'm more concerned about having been put back together correctly on the inside, and that's the one thing that doesn't seem to have happened. Great, no scar, but your muscles were sewed up wrong and your bowels don't work anymore and there's severe pain when you eat and sitting and standing and walking are all excruciating. Grieving for Wyatt has been side-tracked numerous times by trying to physically heal and figure out what in the world is went wrong with my surgery. Most of my tears have turned into anger and fury that I still cannot function-even if I wanted to-for the children that I have here at home. All of this has led me to second-guess having tried to save him at all. It would've been better to let him pass in the womb and then give birth to him. I'd be recovered by now and the end wouldn't have been different. It looked to me like he suffered more at the hands of medical personel than he would've any other way. That is exactly what my husband and I were trying to avoid. Seems like it was all for nothing, so where did we go wrong?
I look at the pictures up in my house of days before I knew what this kind of pain was like. My bedroom is full of pictures of my husband and I dating and taking vacations. You can almost smell the naivete. We didn't have a clue what was in store for us. Our life together has been hard and this has been, by far, the worst and hardest thing ever. I feel like running away honestly, to live a life I did as a single mom. Maybe being married has brought me bad luck. But I suppose something like this never gets away from you. We could leave each other now and never have contact again and we would never be the same people. The damage is already done. I miss the days of being happy and confident in life with the ability to give love to my husband and children. I miss the days of my husband jumping and dancing around the house in lightheartedness that hadn't been disturbed yet. Life has hit us hard and doesn't seem to want to give us a break. I wonder why some people go through life untouched and others get pounded like we have? I wonder what we did in life to deserve this. I didn't appreciate being pregnant, like really appreciate it. Is God teaching me a lesson? Are we not good enough people that our prayers aren't listened to? Did we have to lose a baby? Do I have to have such an impossible recovery? What did we do that was so bad? In the past two weeks I've gone over the pregnancy a thousand times, the information the doctors gave us as well as all of my sins ever committed. I've come up with a million things that could've been different, as if I could go back now and change any of it. I feel like I can...it's the oddest thing. I get "ah ha" moments where I feel like I know where things went bad with the pregnancy and then I get disappointed that there is nothing I can do about it now. I admire my husband who is content to just leave things as they happened and accept that God has a better plan. This whole thing has just made me more skeptical and given me more questions that could ever possibly been answered. I look at the photos of my deceased son and I think to myself "I did that. I killed him". In exactly what way, I'm not sure, but I didn't give him life.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Faith...or lack thereof

Faith is an odd thing at this point in my life. I've had the hardest time explaining death to my children. The concept that your spirit is not attached to your body is mystifying to a 6 year old. Sometimes they think Wyatt's body is in the urn, sometimes my daughter thinks a person doesn't go to heaven until they put their body in the ground. I had already explained cremation last week to my daughter but I had to endure that talk once again today when she looked at me and said "You didn't burn him, did you?!". How does a mommy answer that? What kind of a mom gets her baby burned down? I tried to explain souls vs. a human body using the analogy of a car without a driver, but that didn't work at all.
As if the conversation with my kids wasn't defeating enough I found myself hardly believing what I was saying at all. "Heaven is better than earth, we don't need our bodies there, Wyatt is in a great place...blah blah blah". It doesn't feel like Wyatt is in a better place. It didn't look like Wyatt was taken anywhere by anyone loving. He just looked blue. And bluer and bluer as the day went on. And did you know that ALL the bodily fluids come out after death, not just urine? So my poor baby continued to get a bloody nose throughout the day as we spent time with him. Who am I kidding? We're not spiritual beings. We're just smarter animals walking around the planet. Our bodies do very animalistic things after we die. We're just bodies, I've never felt it more. Following all of the tough questions from my children came out nightly Bible stories. My daughter picked starting at the begininng with Adam and Eve again. I've never read a Bible story and not believed it...until tonight. As I read to her about the serpent and the garden I thought to myself, "what a load". Seriously. Why would God stick a tree in the garden that the only two people on the planet weren't allowed to eat? Why even put it there? And then why punish them when you're the one who put it there? And if Jesus died so we could all go to heaven what happened to everyone in the old testament? That doesn't seem fair. And if he's such a loving and merciful God why would he put Job through all of the things that he did? he didn't have to strike a deal with the devil. He didn't have to send Jesus, he could've snapped his fingers and changed the rules. He only needed Jesus's blood because he made that up. I'm tired of hearing that God loves my dead son more than I do and that God lost a son, too. Well, only because he said that was the way it had to be. None of this makes sense to me anymore. I can't imagine not teaching it to my children because I can't fathom teaching them there is no hope.
On top of everything that has happened we've also taken three trips to the hospital for a uterine infection that went undetected. Focus on Wyatt and our family has been side-tracked by my difficult recovery. My milk continues to come in even though there is no baby. And although I can't imagine ever being pregnant again I get extremely angry thinking of the fact that I've lost the ability to give birth for the rest of my life. Due to Wyatt's size he required a classical c-section that prevents any chance of any other vaginal birth. It's all insult to injury. I've never had more support or more people praying for me and my family in my entire life and I've never felt more punished by God or fate or whatever it is exactly.        

All Cause Wounds: Infant urns and keepsake boxes and pottery plates

There seems to be no end to the amount of wounds that are caused after the official one-that one that really matters; the death of my son, The urn that we picked out in the hospital was shipped to us....but it was not the right one. SOOOOOOO then we spend hours on the computer trying to find an infant urn for Wyatt to be in. The act itself is psychologically odd. We are picking out the materials, statues and emblems that Wyatt's remains will live in forever. Making this choice is the most painful choice I've ever made, since everyone knows Wyatt was supposed to live with me...in the house. There are thousands of urns to pick from, mostly by style; teddy bear holding a small urn, shiny, pastel "ABC" blocks or a blue baby booties. Generally you need one cubic square per one pound of body weight. Wyatt required 2 cubic squares of room. We decided on a urn with a picture that brings peace to my heart whenever I look at it.The urn itself was a little larger than the one Wyatt needed; It was 40 cubic squares, but is small and beautiful. It's a mohagany wood block and that has an applique on the front depicting two angels tucking in a baby to sleep. This is the only picture I could fathom on my son's urn and I am so thankful that it's there. It shows me someone else is taking care of Wyatt in the same way that I would have. Not that I wouldn't take those angel's jobs any moment; I'd take my little son back down to earth and into our home where he is supposed to be. Then again, if heaven really is that great, maybe I'd just stay up there with him. We could cuddle every night and I'd talk to him all day. I still have some milk, too, I wonder if he would nurse. I know there's no hunger but I'd really like to nurse Wyatt. This train of thought has me dreaming of being in heaven with Wyatt. I've always believed in heaven but it doesn't seem like a great place with Wyatt being alone. I take comfort in the thought of being there with him-just me and my boy up in heaven....*sigh* Just the thought of cradling him again lifts me like a butterfly. But here in reality we sat in the cremation society and handed over our carefully picked wooden urn. I was shocked when in just three minutes the urn was handed back to us with more weight to it. Wyatt?? My heart dropped. His body doesn't exist anymore. Even his lifeless body isn't there to go pick up if I wanted to. It was all right here in our box on my lap. As we left my husband and I nit-picked over fingerprints in the wood and how to carry it. He kissed the urn but it didn't look as nice as kissing my son's golden head. Carrying Wyatt home in my lap was heart-wrenching. No one ever wants their son in a box, I would rather have strapped him into an infant seat. As we left, the lady who worked there told us that she had lost twins and knew how we felt. Well, there's one more person in my club. I'm slowly losing faith in the durability of the creation of life itself.
A week before Wyatt passed I purchased an infant keepsake box for him, just like his sisters have. In the girl's boxes I have put their hospital hats and clothes and bracelets and all the cards and well wishes that we had received. Now that things have changed, in Wyatt's I put all the sympathy and condolence cards that we've received, plus thoughts and prayers and well wishes from a large network of people who were praying for him. Wyatt also has a hospital hat- it's half the size of the others, bracelets from the NICU and two small cards where there are beautiful Wyatt hand and foot prints, Another small card states the date and time of birth and death. One nurse gave us the picture off our door-the leaf with the tear and a poem on the back. That will go in there, too. A friend crochet an infant hat for him when we thought he would live, but he did get to wear it for one day. That hat will be safely stowed away. I didn't know what closet to put his keepsake box in. The girl's boxes are in the girl's closests. Wyatt would have had a closet as well. I suppose for now it will go in my closet.
I received a box a week ago from a friend down in Florida. The kids and I had taken a trip down there and stopped at a pottery store. We painted two large plates for the parents and four small plates for the kids. We got all the plates painted and then put all of our handprints and names in middle. They looked super. Since my husband and Wyatt were not there those two plates were taken home with paint so that Tyler and Wyatt could do their hand prints and finish the set. We were very proud of our new family project. These colorful plates were a sign of our family and would be displayed around the house. There was nothing but more pain as my husband and I opened the box to see the plates several days after Wyatt had passed. All of the plates had come out beautifully, but then there was Wyatt's plate, blank and wrapped up all alone, just waiting for a handprint and name. It was one more sign of the emptiness.We piled the plates on top of the fridge not knowing what to do with them. We are still redefining who are family is and how many of us there are. How much Wyatt is included in household decor seems to vary based on where we are in our grieving. Put up pictures everywhere? Write Wyatt's name on the plate anyway and put it up? How do you cherish and remember a baby that you lost without decorating the house in a way that's as if they are physically present all the time?

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

All over the place...

Today I have begun to panic as I realized that I am not crying every moment of the day and have gone minutes without thinking about Wyatt. I haven't recovered well from the c-scetion and feeling this ill has started taking up some of my thoughts. Can it be that I've put Wyatt aside so soon? What kind of a mother does that? There is so much to plan for the memorial...so much at least for the level of functioning that I am at, which is almost none at all. I find that I am all over the place; I get mad when there are too many people calling or stopping by but then I am upset when I feel like we are forgotten or when people are not coming to the memorial. Don't they realize Wyatt was a person? Last night my husband rocked our toddler talking to her about how she looked like her brother. I see him so much in her, I don't know whether I should be happy or cry every time I look at her face. At one ultrasound the technician looked at me and said "they have the same profile, they'll look a lot alike". It's true. They were identical.
As with any other stressful time in a family, the fighting has begun. Just as my husband and I clung to each other around Wyatt's death now we seem to push each other away. Everything is fight: who said what, who feels worse, who has to cry and why someone suddenly doesn't have to cry, who has changed for the better, who is functioning more etc. It makes me feel even more alone.
We received another token of loving friends today- an edible arrangement that was just gorgeous. I observed the neighborhood kids pointing to the truck and screaming "they're lucky!". Yes, that's us. We're so lucky. I used to be the homemaker babysitting kids and making dinners. Now I find myself the recipient I never wanted to be. My husband took the statistics of infant deaths and figured out the odds of this happening. This happens to 1.5 babies per state per day. That's not much when you realize how much hospitals there are per state and how many women are giving birth in them per day. The hospital that I just left played a lullaby chime every time a baby was born. That stupid thing went off three times in 15 minutes one morning that I was there. Who was the tacky person who kept playing it and why didn't at least ONE of the nurses point out that there was couple here who had just lost a son? Maybe we could shut that off for a few days, huh? It was sickening when we realized that our door had been decorated with a painting of a leaf with a tear drop in it as a "sign" to people entering. I didn't want that label. It was like being dirty and not being able to wash it off. I almost took it off but I knew it wouldn't bring Wyatt back. The only hospital worker I didn't mind was a lady in charge of bereavement. Apparently she had lost twin girls at 30 weeks sometime in her past. Why she would want to surround herself with this kind of pain by having that job is beyond me, but when she cried with us I knew it was genuine. I knew that she knew. As much as I appreciate support and love from everyone around us, it's a different kind of tear that they cry. People look at us with a face that says "I don't have any idea what you feel but that must be sad". I don't like that look. Fear of that look has kept me away from phone calls and visits. I want to still be on that other side-with people who are ignorant of this kind of pain.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Dreams

I keep dreaming about you, Wyatt, the same way I pictured you would be in life. You're a sweet toddler running around our yard in a baseball jersey that's a little too big. You have a big heart and are emotional, like your dad. You love baseball but you're calmer than your older sister. These are the visions I had of you when you were inside me and these are the dreams that haunt me now. Not so much that the dreams themselves are terrible; they usually interchange between the beautiful but too-silent baby that you were at the hospital to this image of you in a jersey. I wake up feeling the emptiness as if it were brand-new everyday since it seems that I have just interacted with you, when infact I cannot even touch you. You're spirit was here with us and it was felt very strongly. We already knew your personality and you were already a member in this family. Just because you weren't born yet didn't mean you weren't here. You had a bed and a room, some clothes and some toys. You were part of our everyday conversations and our entire future together as a family included you. Some of the most painful realizations after you passed were that I would never hear your voice, know what your favorite ice cream flavor was, or celebrate your birthday with your friends- whoever they would be. All of these things that should have been were suddenly no more. I would never say "I have four children", now I am back to having three. That's not my family. I have four children. I have a son named Wyatt, and he is beautiful.

Monday, August 16, 2010

August 16, 2010

Ten days ago today I lost my son, Wyatt Gabriel Stef. That is an almost impossible sentence for me to write down and believe. Four weeks ago I was happily pregnant and busy taking my life for granted. How can ultrasounds every week for 24 weeks show a perfectly healthy baby boy and suddenly he "isn't growing"? How is there such a large hole in the medical field? Or, what would happen so suddenly to cause my baby to not thrive? I've hated God and myself for 10 days now. It is so needless...it didn't have to happen. Either my body failed my son or my God failed me. Now I sit, feeling more emotional pain than a body can handle. My uterus is empty and my arms should be full. My son is gone and I can't protect him, or swaddle him, or feel his soft hair against my cheeks. I watch my husband cry with such torment it almost parallels the pain I have for my son. Not us. Why us? Doesn't God know I cannot survive this? I guess He's not really listening, though, is He?
After the news our son wasn't growing we made the decision to keep him inside the womb and wait it out. We prayed for a miracle. After two weeks Wyatt has mysteriously grown, much to the doctors disbelief. His heart rate was good and his blood flows were stable. Three days later there was almost no amniotic fluid to speak of. We went in right away for a c-scetion. He never took a breath. He died thirty minutes later, for other "unexplained" reasons. "Something" was blocking his airway, some "other things" might have been wrong with him...not very settling answers. I want to know how and why. What caused these things and why did he recover just to turn around and perish? Did he feel pain? Why wouldn't God take me instead when I begged him to? Why couldn't I have willed Wyatt to live? Why couldn't I produce a placenta that functioned? I'm still so close to the life before my son died that I can hardly believe things. I've had to endure the unspeakable; posing my son while his pictures are taken, picking out a funeral song, creating memorial cards, opening the package on our doorstep containing an infant urn, explaining cremation to my six year old, and sitting here waiting for a c-section wound to heal as a constant reminder of my loss.
The pain is unbearable. I want to be with my son. I want to give him life. I want to hold him on my chest again. He is somewhere without me and that's not right. I can't bear this trial. Thanks for nothing God.