It's obviously been awhile since I posted.
Holy shit...how much has happened? I moved...I got a job...I visited home...I lost my job...Alex got a job...I got pregnant...and then my world got flipped upside down.
It hasn't even been a week since I gave birth. It's been exactly 4 days since I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl Aurora Dawn.
I'm a mother with out a child. I'm a mother who goes to sleep not having to feed her child, change her child...take care of her child.
I was 21 weeks 1 day along and it all just blew up into a thousand little pieces. In hindsight...it was happening for awhile...I just didn't know it yet. Pains I thought were normal turned out to be so not normal. It's things like this I think about and it's things like this that make me place blame upon myself. It wasn't until it became unbearable...naked in a bath tub that I realized...holy shit...whatever I am going through right now isn't normal.
It was 5:40 pm....Alex was due home any moment. I got out of the bath and tried to make it upstairs with out dying...I then got upstairs. Laid on the bed and was crying. It felt horrible. The only thing I could think of was to go back down stairs to the toilet and sit on it. All of a sudden I felt something. My heart dropped and there she was....sitting in my hands. Breathing. Moving her mouth and furrowing her brow. I sat there with her in my hands. I knew she was too early. I knew there was something wrong. I knew there was nothing I could do but hold her. Stare at her. Feel totally helpless and let the five minutes tick down until I knew Alex would be home.
I heard the door slam. All I could remember was screaming his name. After that...all I could remember was seeing his face as he walked through the bathroom door. A sudden look of a disbelief....a sudden look of sadness...
He was a rock. I was a rock. There was no panic. There was just elements of shock. After he walked in first thing out of my mouth was...you need to call an ambulance. I knew she wasn't going to survive. I knew it was all over. I knew I had to go to the hospital. He called....he listened to every word and did everything they said for him to do. He got a clean towel. He instructed me to rub her back and I knew. I just knew that whatever I did wasn't going to fix what had happened. I knew the outcome was going to be us losing our child.
The ambulance came. The guy showed up. He gave me a smile....how do you NOT smile when someone shows up smiling? I was holding her in a towel and by the time he showed up...she was definitely gone. This is what made it look like a still birth. She was not dead when I gave birth to her. She was most certainly alive and Alex and I were the only people to see her alive.
I sat on the bathroom floor...two more paramedics showed up. One was a woman....she sat next to me...put her arm around me...and because she was a woman...it was like...she must know what the hell I am going through. I had to sit on the bathroom floor....they gave me gas and air...and I had to deliver my baby's placenta. It was an eternity. Because of the stupid gas and air I felt sick. I felt dizzy. At one point...I asked the paramedic if I was going to die. It was that much blood pouring out of me...and it was that much of me that didn't even want to live with out my baby.
Finally it happened. I delivered everything I was supposed to. They wrapped me up in blankets and took me down the stairs. Everything was in upheaval. Everything was fucked up. I was getting put into an ambulance with my niece outside.....neighbors wondering why the hell they couldn't get passed an ambulance. I was in all my glory...nothing but a Dave Matthews sweatshirt and a blanket to cover me. The silver Mercedes had the nerve to ask when we were gonna move as well...if you are reading this and know the silver Mercedes please let me know. Because the next time I menstruate I swear to god it is going on their fucking car.
We were called "stoic" in the hospital. We smiled. We laughed. We kept each other sane. At this point...we had NO idea what had just happened to us. Alex stayed strong for me. I don't even know how he did it.
They left her with us. They brought us a cold cot that would make it so she would be able to stay with us all night. The minutes ticked on and on and on in that hospital. It was 1am before I knew it. Alex pulled out the sofa bed and got hunkered down for the night. I couldn't sleep. I finally slept when I moved from my bed to his at 4:30 am. We slept on a crappy ass sofa bed. But we slept a bit.
The next morning we were informed we wouldn't be leaving until 2pm...when the people could come in and do a post mortem. 24 hours ago I was thinking about getting my 20 week scan....and now I am planning on how she will be taken care of...because she was dead.
We spent all day....watching movies...trying to laugh....but all the while having this lurking, impending doom. Once the midwife came in to tell us the people who were doing the post mortem were here...Alex lost it. I was losing it all night but finally...Alex lost it. It was there and then I knew neither of us would be the same. We made decisions as to what we thought was right for us and Aurora. We cried a lot. And we got the go ahead to go home. While we waited for his sister we just sat looking at her. We kept crying with the knowledge that as soon as we got a text message from his sister...we were going to have to leave Aurora and all we would have left is foot prints, hand prints and a few pictures of our beautiful baby girl. It was too much. Too much to the point where I said right....she'll be here any minute. Lets do it now. We kissed her little forehead a few times. Held each other, walked out hand in hand and let our baby go together.
I can't explain the feeling of watching the full term mamas walking passed me and Alex as we were grieving. Or the look on the couples face as they carried their twins out of the hospital. Or the stares we got when anybody walked passed us as they walked out of the hospital.
It was our nieces birthday. We got home....cleaned ourselves up...and did our best to not ruin her birthday. She was amazing. I thought my sadness would ruin her day...that she might not understand how bad I was hurting...but in one moment I knew my 11 year old niece was practically a grown up. She put her arm around me when she knew I was sad. She stayed so strong because she knew I was weak. I can't explain the love I have for that "little" girl.
That night was rough. I fell asleep at 11...woke up at 4:30. Woke my husband up crying at 5:30 and we talked til we passed out at 6:30. I finally woke up and realized it was 1:30pm. It wasn't a dream...it was real...and I didn't have my baby. I cried.
We decided we needed to get away. We never left the city. We just got away. I'm a weird with grief. I smile while others cry. I stay strong when others are weak. I never think of me first. I think of everyone else. This time I grieved first. I got away when I was weak. I let myself start to heal before I dealt with others. I could NOT have done this with out Alex. He's so amazing. I'm so much more in love with him than I ever could be. This whole weekend has been totally losing it....or totally keeping it together. Nothing in between. I'm grateful he knows me so well. I'm grateful he knows the right things to say. I'm grateful he smiles at me through my tears and makes me feel like it will all be ok.
If we learned anything from this is this...that our second child is going to be loved. It is going to be loved fiercely. It is going to fill our lives with joy and we're gonna make Aurora a big sister. We learned how much we wanted to be parents and it only took one day to cement that feeling.
If you are reading this...and if it upsets you...I'm sorry. I had to write this out because it's Aurora's story. It's her less than 10 minutes this side of my womb. This has changed us forever. It's part of our journey. We're parents with out a child. This is part of our story.
