Today is my 6 year anniversary. It also marks a week since I handed my son over to the nurse to be taken away forever. This has been the hardest week of my life and I am amazed by how life can literally change in the blink of an eye.
Last Saturday, August 6th, I spent the day on the couch like normal. David was at drill 5 hours away and I was online reading about baitcasters so that I could order him the perfect one for our anniversary. I ordered a card from Hallmark and was amazed by how much I could accomplish on bedrest. It was about 9 pm when I stood up to go to the bathroom. I felt a big gush as soon as I started to walk, but thought nothing of it since I typically gushed amniotic fluid every time I stood up. When I got to the bathroom and realized it was blood I was a little disappointed but was so used to bleeding that it didn’t seem like a big deal.
When I realized it wasn’t stopping I started to get a little nervous. I texted my mother-in-law and my husband a little precautionary heads up, but figured it wouldn’t turn into anything. Suddenly I had a horrible cramping pain in my back and then I started gushing blood. I knew instantly that something was wrong so I told my sister to get Nathan dressed. I tried to reach my husband but couldn’t get a call to go through so we raced out the door and off to the hospital which was about 5 miles away. About 2 miles from the ER I started having contractions. I tried to stay as calm as I could, and tried telling myself it wasn’t really labor pain. I still hadn’t talked to my husband and I told myself this just couldn’t be happening.
My sister dropped me off at the entrance and took the SUV to find a parking spot. By the time I got in the front door I was gushing blood, it was running down my legs and soaked through my pants. I was contracting harder and harder. They rushed me up to Labor and Delivery and hooked me up to monitors and told me that yes I was having contractions. They were less than 2 minutes apart already by that point.
A doctor came in and asked me a few questions than told me that I was going to need a C-section immediately. I begged him to please wait until my husband could get there but he told me he wasn’t going to wait for anything. He said there was no time to wait because I was going to bleed to death. They were only waiting until they could let Marshfield Clinic know to send over a NICU team by chopper. They couldn’t transfer me they said because I would crash in the ambulance. Then my doctor was gone, at that point my mother-in-law showed up and my husband called. I didn’t know what to tell David other than that this was it, I was having a baby at 24 weeks. I just remember being heartbroken that he was 5 hours away and knowing that he was going to miss this. Just then my doctor showed back up wearing scrubs and they started wheeling me away. My mother-in-law and son walked with me and he gave me a kiss then I was brought into the surgical room.
They transferred me onto a table and it suddenly hit me. I was terrified. I have this fear of being put under and I was scared that I would die, and my baby would die and that I would never hold my sons again, never see my husband. I regretted how nonchalantly we said goodbye to each other the day before when he left for drill. The anesthesiologist was explaining to me the risks of my breathing tubes flooding my lungs with stomach acid since I had a full stomach and suddenly I couldn’t see.
You know the feeling you get when you stand up too fast and you get tunnel vision for a second? That happened over and over. Everything would fade into a little pinhole, then back out so that I could see again, then back into a little pinhole and back and forth it went. I couldn’t breathe very well and they had a mask strapped over my face, my arms were tied down and I panicked because I felt like I was suffocating and I couldn’t get the mask off my face. Suddenly I was being poked from every angle. They inserted a catheter and started scrubbing my stomach, I was being stuck with needles in my arms and legs and had a team of about 15 people around me. Then I heard a ringing in my ears, it sounded like a school bell. It was so loud I could barely hear anybody talking around me, I couldn’t see anything. I heard my doctor yelling to put me under now and the anesthesiologist told me to count to three. I barely said “one” and that’s all I remember.
The next thing I remember was hearing someone call my name over and over. In my head it sounded like she was singing my name, although I know she wasn’t. I struggled to open my eyes and when I did there were bright lights shining all over me, but the rest of the room was dark. I saw my mother-in-law standing there and she immediately told me that Noah was alive, and that he had been alive for just over two hours. She told me that surgery went well and that they didn’t have to do a hysterectomy and that David was on his way. My heart soared when I heard my baby was alive. They told me he was such a strong little fighter. I remember in my groggy stupor thinking that someone told me to nurse him. I started begging that they bring him to me to be nursed.
As I slowly started coming to , I realized that him being alive was not the good news I thought it was. They told me later it was a miracle he lived as long as he had. They had done a chest X-ray that showed no lungs. They had somehow managed to keep him alive for 2 hours but his heart rate was failing and he only had a heartrate of 35 bmp. They said all they could do was chest compressions and that wouldn’t save him, but would keep his heart beating until they stopped. My husband had told them on the phone not to do that, his tiny little frame couldn’t handle it and they were scared they would break his ribs. David told them to bring Noah to me.
I hate that this next part is so groggy to me and that I will never really remember the three minutes I spent with my son. I remember them handing him to me, I couldn’t believe how tiny he was. He was 1 lb ,7.6 oz and 11 ½ inches long. He had suffered IUGR (growth retardation). I couldn’t believe how much he looked like Nathan. It was almost like they handed me a tinier version of the same baby. I took a few pictures with him then the neonatologist began removing his tubes. I didn’t realize that signaled the end of his life. Had I known that I would have held him closer and told him how much I loved him but instead I just held him in the corner of my arm and stared at his tiny little face in disbelief. David was on the phone and he asked that we put the phone up to Noah’s ear so that he could say hello and goodbye. Then the doctor put his stethoscope up to Noah’s chest and I asked if he was alive and the doctor told me that he wasn’t.
I will never forget that feeling. It makes me nauseated to even remember it. I felt like I was in a horror movie. My son, my tiny, sweet, precious little baby had just died in my arms and there was nothing I could do. All the dreams I had for this little boy, and the hope I had the past months that if I just tried hard enough he could beat the odds, everything just disappeared and was replaced by the most empty feeling I have ever experienced.
I had heard losing a child if the most severe grief a person could ever experience, and I had tried to prepare myself for it. But what I thought it would feel like, and what it actually felt like weren’t even close. I just imagined the deepest sadness imaginable. What I was feeling was a desperation. I realized that everything else in my life that was ever hard or a struggle was temporary; that if I could just wait it out it would get better. I can’t wait this out. My baby will never be brought back to me. This will last forever.
I crave for my little boy like a drug addict. There is this anxious empty feeling in the pit of me that sucks the breath out of me. People keep saying that at least I still have Nathan. I almost think makes it worse. I now know what kind of love you are capable of as a parent. I know what Noah was capable of bringing into my life. The joy that he would have been to me. And instead he laid there cold in my arms.
I don’t really remember much else about that night. I know that David got there about 90 minutes after Noah died. I don’t remember anything between the moment that the doctor told me he was gone and when David walked in. And it pisses me off that I can’t remember it.
I kept Noah with me all night. After everybody left, and David took my sister home , I was left there alone in the dark with my little boy. I cuddled him up in my arms and held him to my face. I wanted to keep him as warm as I could. I know that sounds stupid but feeling him get colder and colder was nauseating to me. I just wanted to be able to imagine for awhile that this didn’t really happen and that my perfect little boy wasn’t really gone. I laid there until the sun came up and my doctor came back in. He told me that I had suffered a placental abruption. 50% of my placenta had torn off in half an hour and I was bleeding to death. Everybody told me to get some sleep but I couldn’t sleep. The time I had with my little boy was precious to me. I didn’t have the rest of my life with him, I had a few hours and I couldn’t sleep that time away.
A professional photographer came in that morning to take pictures of us. Nathan decided that he was just smitten with his baby brother. He kept trying to wake him up which broke my heart. He held him and kissed him and we told him that Noah was with Jesus now. I wanted to spare Nathan of the sadness. We told him how Noah was such a big boy now and he wasn’t sick anymore and that he was playing with Jesus now. Nathan just loved the thought, he still talks to me about what he thinks Jesus and Noah do all day. According to him, they spend a lot of time playing with cars.
I kept him with me for 12 hours. I would have kept him longer but I wanted an open casket funeral and since he was too small to be embalmed, if they didn’t take him soon I wouldn’t be able to have an open casket. Saying good bye to him was so hard. I knew that it was the end of our time together, and that I would never hold him again. I just wanted to hold onto that time with him because it was all I would ever have with my son. Finally I was able to hand him to the nurse, she put him in a carrier and covered him up, he looked like he was sleeping. Then she wheeled him out the door and he was gone. I cried and cried. There was nothing I could do to make it better. I wanted to get out of the hospital so bad so I decided to put all my efforts into proving I was ok to leave. I got up and walked as far as I could, a stupid CNA walked me past the nursery though which was the end of my walking for me. I sobbed all the way back to my room. I took a shower, even shaved my legs and tried to fall asleep. My doctor came back in at 6:30 am. He told me I could go home that morning. I was so happy that in just over 24 hours he was letting me leave. I had to wait until after noon though until my mother-in-law could come get Noah and take him to the funeral home. I had to fill out a birth certificate and funeral home information. Seemed so unfair. I got packets of information on surviving stillbirth but this wasn’t a stillbirth. I had a baby who was alive in my arms and was now dead. I really felt like nobody understands how that feels.
When I had Nathan I felt really robbed that he had to be transferred to the NICU in Neenah and that I had to walk out of the hospital empty handed with no baby. What I wouldn’t have given now for that to be my situation. I had to walk out of the hospital and leave my baby in a freezer. The whole thing seems just sick to me.
This blog has gotten pretty long though, and I really just want to make sure that someday I can remember all of this. I will update more later about the funeral but for now I am signing off.
So very sad *hugs*
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