If Love Could Have Saved You, You Would Have Lived Forever

My dearest, Ezra,

On a cold November night, after returning home from work, I found out that you’d be on your way. I was so excited. That was when we started to dream about who you’d be, what you’d look like, and the very first time we’d hear you cry.

All of my hopes and dreams hung on the arrival of one day: Thursday, July 9, 2020. Through all of the anxiety and fear that this year has provided, you were the bright light at the end of a very long tunnel. If I could get us all safely to that day, I felt like everything would be okay.

Today, we would’ve gone to the hospital very early, and you’d have been born just after 7AM via a repeat C-section. I was going to have something I never got with your sister: lucidity in your first hours of life. I would hold you close, and we’d head up to the eighth floor for two days of recovery.

I had it all planned out in my head. I tried so hard to do everything right. I was so careful to avoid getting sick. I did kick counts every night, and felt so much joy and hope every time I felt you move. Never could I have imagined that it wouldn’t be enough…that I couldn’t do anything to protect you.

I’m so sorry, my sweet boy. I can’t say it enough. Everyone constantly tells me that none of this was my doing. Regardless of what anyone says, I will never be able to convince myself that I didn’t miss something. Maybe I could’ve done something to save you if I had just been more astute. I failed you. My body failed you.

June 1st was never meant to be your birthday. If you’d ended up in the NICU, I could’ve managed that. Instead, I am, more often than not, at a loss for words. Your date of birth and date of death are the same day…engraved so permanently on your headstone. There are no answers to any of my questions, and the word “stillbirth” still haunts me.

Eight hours holding you will never be enough. We took 64 photographs of you that day. There are also a few photos and videos of me while I was pregnant, and your ultrasound images. These, and the memories I have of your short life, will have to be enough to last us a whole lifetime. I know it’s so much more than a lot of people get under similar circumstances, but I long for more — for the future that I envisioned long before you ever existed. I waited so long for you and your sister, and all of the hopes and dreams I had for you died with you.

I am so sorry we aren’t meeting each other today. If there was anything I could do to fix everything, I would do it. I would gladly trade you places.

I keep waiting to wake from this terrible dream. Every morning, the first thing I do is place my hand on my abdomen with the hope that you’ll still be there. And, nearly every morning, the emptiness I feel is just as immense as it was the moment you were born. I wait for a time machine, a wormhole, or a magic portal that could transport me back to a time when I could have done something to save you. Alas, no such magic exists, and I have to force myself to pick up the pieces of my broken heart and move forward.

Nobody can tell me why you couldn’t stay with us, and I don’t know what to believe, anymore. A huge part of me wants so badly to believe in a higher power, and a heaven where I will eventually meet you again. But, there are no guarantees in this life, as the last five weeks have so cruelly demonstrated, and no certainty in what happens to any of us when we leave this mortal coil. Wherever you are, I hope there is no pain, that you are happy, and that you can feel the immeasurable amount of love we have for you.

I will always be your mother. I will always be so proud of you, and the love I feel for you will never fade. Every day of my life, from this day forward, you will linger in my thoughts, and you will hold a special place in my heart.

Forever yours,

Your mama

I Would Trade 10,000 Days for One More Hour with You

*Trigger Warning: This post includes personal accounts of infant loss/stillbirth.*

It seems like the only time I feel inspired to write is when I am sad. It’s been quite a while since I last wrote anything, let alone a post to this blog. In the time I’ve been gone, I got a new job in the neonatal ICU downtown (I’ve been there for a little over 3.5 years, now), and my husband and I started a family.

Our little girl is two years old, almost three. In November of 2019, we found out that we’d be expecting another baby. We were really excited, but incredibly nervous. Then, COVID-19 happened. Home and work became very different places. My world shrank a little, and suddenly everything felt very scary, including my pregnancy.

I always have the worst-case scenario playing in the back of my brain when I’m expecting, but hope that it’s all in my head. In the very early morning of June 1st, I went in to labor and delivery triage for decreased fetal movement. At 2:20AM, and 33 weeks and 5 days gestation, I found out that my son’s heart had stopped beating. At 6:42AM, he was born asleep into a silent OR. We still don’t know what happened, but the wheels in my brain haven’t stopped turning since then.

On Father’s Day, I was offered a glass of wine at dinner. When I said “no thank you”, I was further encouraged to take it. I was a little dizzy and dehydrated from low food and fluid intake (because, I’m just not hungry, anymore, and a huge part of me feels that there’s no point in caring for myself now) and excessive crying, and all I could think about was that I should still be pregnant. Taking that glass would make all of this more real and make me feel physically worse, and that’s the last thing that I want.

What I really want is a time machine. I feel so awful, because I am a mother. I am a nurse. How is it possible that I didn’t know that my son might be in distress? Why did I go home from work that previous night? I should’ve gone in to triage after I didn’t feel him moving while I wrapped up my charting. A mother’s basic responsibility is to protect her children, and I couldn’t even do that for my son. How could I not have known something was wrong sooner?

So…that’s where I am. I am encapsulated in a silent world full of sadness. I can’t read, watch, or listen to anything without thinking about my little boy — without remembering how empty I feel. Day-to-day tasks are triggers, too, but they’re getting to be more tolerable as time passes. It’s only been 20 days, though. I had a baby…20 days ago, I had a baby, and without him here, it feels like the world keeps moving while I am stuck in that moment. Nine days ago, we buried him. None of it feels real. Every moment feels excruciatingly long. Whole days feel like an eternity, and then I have to wake up and do it again.

We’ve taken our daughter to the park a couple of times in the last week. I can’t stand to go, because I see pregnant mothers with their toddlers all of the time (that, and I’m terrified by the possibility that my daughter could contract COVID-19). I watch my daughter playing with my nephew. It makes me happy to see them smile and hear them giggle, but also sad because I will never get to see my children play together. I will never know what color my son’s eyes are, what his smile looks like, or the warmth of his tiny body against mine. There is a giant space in my daughter’s room, and at our bedside where a crib and bassinet, respectively, should have been. Two weeks from today, we would be headed in to the hospital for a planned C-section…I would be meeting him for the first time. And all I want is to hear him cry.

Most new mothers get birth certificate paperwork, infant and postpartum care discharge information, baby clothes, balloons, and messages of congratulations. What we got, instead, were: just short of nine hours to hold our son (our medical team was incredibly kind and considerate of everything we needed), stillbirth paperwork, a weighted teddy bear meant to help me sleep after my son was taken to the morgue, the option to have an autopsy, bereavement packets, post-surgical care instructions (including weight limitations…usually no more than the weight of your baby, but my son was just shy of five pounds), 32 condolence cards, 12 flower arrangements, meals from friends and family, a burial plot, a graveside committal, and the responsibility of designing a headstone. The outpouring of love and support we’ve received has been overwhelming, and there is no way we could possibly survive any of this without our family and friends. The circumstances are so incredibly unfortunate, but there are so many people surrounding us…helping to lift us from the floor.

All of the bereavement novels we’ve been gifted say that every feeling I have is completely normal. I suppose that sleeping with that weighted teddy bear every night since my son was born must be normal, too. My ninth wedding anniversary is in four days, and I wish that those babies who were wed in 2011 knew that their adventure would lead them to an unspeakable heartache. Maybe they could’ve prepared for it, anticipated it, prevented it…

When I shared that my son had passed on social media, a few people said I was brave to share that painful information. The truth, though, is that he exists. He is a person. I had already told everyone he was on his way at 24 weeks gestation. His birth did not at all go the way any of us wanted or expected, but it is his story, now. And I would be doing him a great disservice by not acknowledging him. I want the whole world to know how incredible he is, how much we love him, and how his short life has touched our hearts and changed our world forever.