there’s a danger in loving somebody too much

Because love isn’t always enough to keep them here with you.

Inside this folder is the picture the doctor drew for me on August 22, 2012.

I keep this picture in a folder, in the nightstand next to my bed. I haven’t opened it since the day she drew it. It’s a picture illustrating the complete destruction of hope (which comes in the form of a funneling cervix).

One year ago today, my mom jumped on a plane and only packed her purse (ok, this part is funny. She literally put her purse in a suitcase, drove to Lambert Airport and got on the next plane to Connecticut). I get it now. It’s what moms do.

Two days later, my friend Aimee sent me a box of chocolate covered Oreos. And while gravity and I (laying upside down) were doing our best to keep my son safe, I felt him kick for the first time. My sister came over that night, and with each Oreo bite, he’d kick. She felt him. My mom felt him. I felt him. My husband felt his son move for the first time.

I went into active labor the next morning. I grabbed pillows from the couch to keep me upside down in the car. I shouted directions to the doctor’s office at my mom who had no idea where she was driving or going. I cried into the phone when I told my husband what we thought was happening. And I screamed in horror when my doctor told me that over the past 3 days, I had already dilated 4cm. And as hot tears ran down my face, I reached for my husband’s face and I sobbed, “We’re going to lose him, LB.”

I spent two days upside down in a hospital bed while labor started and stopped. We shared one hopeful evening when another hospital told us they would be willing to risk an emergency surgery to keep him in place. I took one terrified ambulance ride on the way to that hospital.  And I spent 4 solitary minutes in a room before my husband could find me there, once again sobbing. My water broke and our chance at saving our son’s life was gone.

We held hands and LB cried on my shoulder as we listened to his heart beat a few more times. I couldn’t bear to hear him die during my labor and so we stopped the monitoring. I can still hear his heartbeat if I try. LB and I used to listen to his heartbeat every morning before we got out of bed with our doppler.  Worst of all, I couldn’t comfort my own son in the moments before his death.

He was born and died at 8:30 p.m. on August 27, 2012. I checked out of the hospital with no baby and I checked right out of my mind. I remember the sun shining the day we left and how angry I was that the world could even thinking about enjoying summer sunshine.

Leaving my son was considerably harder than losing him. Wondering if people were just shuffling by him. Wondering when they took the warming blankets away from him. Wondering how long he would be cold with no one to hold him or touch his hands or his tiny nose. Wondering how gentle the funeral home would be with his tiny body. Thinking about the moments before he was cremated and how long it would be before he was returned to me. “He has no one telling him that things will be ok. He has no one to hold his hand. What if he’s scared? He has no one to feel safe with.” Those thoughts occupied every single moment of every second until his remains came home to us. Burying your children is a special kind of hell that I wouldn’t wish upon a single soul.

I listen to Garth Brooks’ “The Dance” often. In particular, I listen to it on the days where I need to shake the sadness that’s under the surface to make sure it’s still there.

Looking back on the memory of 
The dance we shared beneath the stars above 
For a moment all the world was right 
How could I have known you’d ever say goodbye 
And now I’m glad I didn’t know 
The way it all would end the way it all would go 

I spent so many years being sad that I couldn’t get pregnant. I wished so hard for that pregnancy and it never dawned on me that the sadness wouldn’t stop once I achieved that goal. I laid in bed every single day worrying about him. Miscarrying him, losing him, losing our family and our chance to be happy and complete. I never enjoyed my pregnancy, except in the brief moments of ultrasounds where I got to see that he was alive and doing well. I regret not enjoying him, but I know that I worried for him because I loved him so, so much. And that I don’t regret. I think I just started being a mom really, really early.

It’s weird to think that if someone told me, “You will get pregnant, but you will watch your son slip away from you and this world and it will crush every part of you.” that I would agree to do this, and go through all of this, again–just to experience the brief moments I had with him.

Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain 
But I’d of had to miss the dance 
Holding you I held everything 
For a moment wasn’t I the king 
But if I’d only known how the king would fall 
Hey who’s to say you know I might have changed it all 
And now I’m glad I didn’t know 
The way it all would end the way it all would go 
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain 
But I’d of had to miss the dance 

Dziko is helping me remember that life is all too brief. He is forcing me to experience life in ways I would not have if he were here– He helped me find Sprout, a wonderfully tiny nugget who does nothing but love me when I need it. The opportunity to go through nearly 1,000 photos to choose ones for our adoption profile and, in the process, remember how many fantastic pieces of my life I have been able to share with the greatest people on this round spinning thing.

He also is helping me remember that I can not retreat into myself in the moments I am alone. And that my husband needs me and he needs me to love him more than I ever told him before. This has been the most difficult year of our 12 together– and this experience helps me remember on a daily basis that we don’t always get forever to tell people how much we love them and how much they mean to us. I love him an incredible lot.

Until we meet again, sweet baby. – Love, Mom & Dad