Tears

I heard this song on the radio yesterday.

Tears, immediately. Lots and lots of tears.

Five Weeks

It has been five weeks today.  Five weeks full of exhaustion, tears, heartache and smiles. Smiles, because I picture my little man with his daddy’s nose and flintstone toes, and it warms my heart.

They say time heals all wounds. I don’t think this wound will ever heal. Instead, the pain will turn into a scar. It is part of me now. Joey is a part of me forever.

The days are slowly getting easier. I am thankful for the days that I don’t cry, the days that I think of him and smile instead.  

Our appointment with the doctor went well. They did not find any chromosome/genetic problems. This means the odds of something like this happening to another baby are very, very small. This is supposed to make me happy. It does, I suppose. The odds appear to be in our favor.

But the odds have failed us before. They can’t explain why it happened to Joey.  If they can’t explain why it happened, how can they assure us that it won’t happen again? And why did it happen this time?

I realize I have to quit asking this question. I am never going to have an answer to why. I need to accept that it happened and feel grateful that they don’t think it will happen again.

The doctor really put it into perspective, she said “look at it this way, I could be telling you that you have a 50% or 75% chance of this happening again.”  This is absolutely true and my heart breaks for the couples that get this kind of news. It is bad enough to lose a baby, but then to get results like that would be devastating.

Our news was as good as it gets for our situation. For this I am grateful.

Things You Should Never have to Do

Planning Joey’s funeral was one of the hardest things that we have had to do. (It seems like that has been a theme lately.)

Driving into work this morning, I was reflecting on our weekend and thinking about all the things that a mother and father should never have to do:

      -        Plan a funeral for your baby, instead of a baptism.

-        Meet with a priest to discuss the “appropriate” readings and psalms for your baby that died in the womb or before baptism.

-        Plan a wake.

-        Shop for a dress to wear to your baby’s funeral.

-        Make a scrapbook for your baby that you didn’t get to bring home.

-        Buy an urn for your baby.

-        Receive sympathy cards for your baby’s birth instead of congratulations cards.

-        Meet with doctors to find out if the problems your baby had was a result of something that you did, a chromosome disorder, or a “random occurrence.”

Speaking of, please say a prayer for us. We meet with the doctor today to go over Joey’s autopsy and chromosome testing results, as well as the results of our blood work.

My Angel

Joey’s funeral was Saturday. Wow, was it a really hard day. It was a funeral for my baby, not a baptism.

I am so very blessed to have the amazing friends and family that I have. I (we) would not have gotten through the day without the love and support of every single person that was there. Feeling the warmth of their smiles was exactly what we needed to survive.

Sitting in that pew and looking at Joey and his beautiful urn, on display for all to see, gave me a sense of peace.  Joey is an angel.

For reasons I will never understand, he was not meant for this world. This realization does not make dealing with his loss any easier, but it helps me recognize that we are going to be ok. Joey brought me so much joy for the 20 weeks that I had with him.

They were the best five months of my life.

Stunning

A dear friend recommended this website for parents who have lost children. This women takes requests and writes your child's name in the sand at sunset. The images are beautiful.

We put in a request for Joey, and I received the email that she wrote it yesterday. Words can't describe what I feel when I look at this beautiful picture.

http://namesinthesand.blogspot.com/2012/01/joseph-scott-menchen.html 

The woman who runs this website gives me hope. She took something as horrible as losing her baby and turned it into a way to help people around the world with their grief and suffering. What an amazing woman she is.

I look at this photo and know that Joey is ok. He is the light in every sunrise and sunset. He is riding the clouds above. He is safe.

They Say Everything Happens for a Reason

They say, “Everything happens for a reason.”

Normally, I am the type of person that would say this to a friend in distress. I mean, who hasn’t said this at one point or another? It is a way of reassuring this person that there is a bright side to whatever their situation may be. For that matter, who hasn’t said this to themselves? I have, probably a million times, in my 27 years.

Well, being on the receiving end of this (in my recent opinion, over-used) saying, I have to ask, what if there isn’t a reason for everything?

Ok, taking a step back, please understand that I am sad, angry and confused while writing this. Over the past few weeks, I have been reading about the stages of grief and what I can expect to experience. I have also read that while there are several stages of grief, you can often experience multiple “symptoms” of grief all at once, or within the same short period.

I AM THERE.

I spent most of yesterday with tears streaming down my cheeks. Nothing, in particular, triggered my outbursts. I would be in the middle of typing an outline for project implementation (thrilling stuff) and burst into tears. My makeup was cried worn away by 8:15 am, my eyes were puffy and red all day, and my nose swollen (for whatever reason, my already pudgy nose, tends to swell after a long bout of tears).

Today, however, I am mad. I can’t tell you who I am mad at, I am just pissed mad in general. How can this be happening to us? We spent months planning and preparing for our pregnancy and beautiful baby boy.

We did everything right. While I will spare the details, I can tell you the exact day I got pregnant. We planned every step of what was supposed to be the next wonderful and exciting stage of our life.

We were ready to start a family. We took a crazy lovely couples vacation this past summer filled with all of the things you can’t do when you have children on vacation with you. I started taking prenatal vitamins five months before we got pregnant, I took extra Folic Acid to ensure that our baby’s brain had all it needed to develop properly and be smart like his/her daddy. We even picked out our babysitter before we got pregnant. You name it- we planned it.

So back to my original topic- If everything happens for a reason, can someone please tell me why two people who loved this baby more than anything, who love each other as much as we do and who have the means and stability to bring a child into this world, just got their world ripped apart?

To Joey

They say there is a reason
They say that time will heal
But neither time nor reason
Will change the way we feel
For no-one knows the heartache
That lies behind our smiles
No-one knows how many times
We have broken down and cried
We want to tell you something
So there won't be any doubt
Your so wonderful to think of
But so hard to live without

If we could visit heaven
Even for a day
Maybe for one moment
Our pain would go away
We’d put our arms around you
And whisper words so true
That living life without you
Sure is hell to do
No matter how we spend our days
No matter what we do
No morning dawns or evening falls
When we don’t think of you

Time spent with you
Was so very precious
Even if only for a very short time
I hold a special memory
Close inside this heart of mine
To us you were very special
Much more than words can say
We still love you little angel
And we’ll remember you every day

My Story

I have jumped on the blogging bandwagon, headfirst. I have never had the urge or desire to blog before. Prior to the week of December 19, 2011, I had a normal life with nothing extraordinary that I felt I needed to share with the world, or that I felt the world would be interested in hearing.

But, my world changed forever and I need people to know that. If you have ever experienced something horrible, you know that there is a period where you want everyone to know your story, but you don’t want to have to tell them. In fact, you dread telling them. You want there to be this magical way of sending out your horrific news to everyone without opening your mouth or having your family have to open theirs. You want people to know your story, understand it and for a brief second feel your pain. I say that loosely, I would never EVER want anyone to experience the kind of pain that we have, but you want people to understand that you have this inordinate amount of pain looming in your mind and body, that you cannot escape.

My husband and I found out that we were expecting our first bundle of joy in the summer of 2011. We were overjoyed, excited and terrified! We were looking forward to the future and starting our family. We had no idea what the next few months would bring.

 

Monday, December 19th was the gender ultrasound, the one where we would see our growing baby and discover if we were welcoming a baby boy or baby girl. However, it was not the joyous occasion we expected. Shortly after the tech began she told us that she needed to bring the doctor in and I knew immediately, whatever they were about to tell us what not good. We found out that the life we had been planning with this beautiful baby boy was not going to be. Words cannot describe the pain and heartache that we felt. We were devastated.

On Thursday, December 22, 2011 we walked into the hospital knowing that we were going to have to walk out without our baby boy. Our family was there almost immediately, for this I will be forever grateful. Our family is, without a doubt, the best and most loving family two people could ask for. I am so blessed to come from an amazing family and to have married into an equally amazing family.

After about 22 hours of labor, Joseph Scott was born an Angel Baby at 5:16 pm on December 23, 2011. He weighed 12.5 ounces and was 9.5 inches long.

The first time I saw my beautiful baby boy, I realized what life is about. He was absolutely perfect. He was beautiful. He was an Angel that would never suffer or feel the pain that life, all too often, brings.

Rik, Joey and I were a family in that hospital room. Those moments, I will treasure with every breath that I take for the rest of my life.

Saying Goodbye

Rik and I spent that night and the following morning with Joey. But then, the dreaded moment came. The moment when they asked if they could take him for the autopsy, the moment that I had been dreading since I first laid eyes on him, the moment that I had to say goodbye.

How was I going to find the strength to say goodbye, knowing that would be the last time I ever got to see my son? I looked at him as long as I could. I studied every feature on his tiny little face, held his tiny hands and feet and kissed his sweet face over and over.

I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t. I repeated over and over “How can this be happening? This isn’t fair? Why don’t we get to take our baby home? What did we do wrong?”

It was Christmas Eve and we weren’t celebrating. We were mourning the loss of our son and trying to understand what had happened over the past few days. We were discharged from the hospital at 6:30 pm on Saturday, December 24. We had to walk out of the hospital without our Joey.

The days and months that followed were the worst of my life. You can never understand how devastating it is to lose a baby until you experience it.

 

I have moved mountains of grief since that day. I will never be the same person that I was before we lost Joey. I have learned that no matter how “planned” your life is, it can be turned upside down in an instant.

Through all of the pain and grief, I came back to one thing for comfort, Joey’s footprints. He had his Daddy’s flintstone toes. They were so tiny and so perfect.

 

My baby boy’s footprints are forever engraved in my heart (and now on my foot).