Noah

Some days are just hard.  Some situations I just can't understand.  I'm sure I will never know why we are the ones on this journey, why our pain continues as I buckle under the weight of it all.  Some days, it's just too much.  So many questions, and no answers on this quiet night.  Now, that number of heavenly babies has increased to 10.  I don't quite know what to feel, what to think.  I don't feel surprised or shocked.  This is what I know now.  Loss.  Death.  These are my new normals.

The day started like any other, completely normal.  No  pain, no sign anything was going wrong.  As we're walking out the door for church, I start feeling pain.  Enough that Andrew thought I looked bad and probably should stay home and rest.  Before they even got out of the neighborhood, I had to call him back home.  I knew something was wrong.  We called the doctor, who said go to the ER. We called the fertility specialist, who said go to the ER.  We waited it out a bit, but things were only getting worse.  I needed that confirmation.  We knew from the boys that it was possible to have bleeding and continue being pregnant, though this seemed different.  Much more painful.  I didn't want to cling to hope only to have it ripped away tomorrow.  So, we headed to the ER, where we spent long periods of time waiting before I ultimately delivered our tiny baby in a plastic kidney dish.  Which they then sent off to pathology.  The whole process is terribly cold, unfeeling.  Not a lot of compassion in the ER.  A stark contrast to labor and delivery, so at least I have that to be grateful for with Reagan and Lucas.  A few more hours of waiting, ultrasound confirmation, and we were sent home.  That was all.  I think there are some ways perhaps Reagan's Garden could expand to help with this, though I haven't thought into what that would look like just yet.  We just deserve better.  Our children deserve better.

Overall, I'm numb.  I'm still very much grieving Lucas and working through the raw emotions of that.  I didn't expect pregnancy to change the grief I felt for our sweet boy at all.  I knew it wouldn't, because I lived that with Dean and Warren after Reagan died.  I knew this baby would never take his place.  I just don't feel like there's space in my heart for more grief, to process another loss.  But I know I loved this sweet child.  I know that, no matter what I told myself, I had hope.  I'm telling myself I expected this, and to some extent I did, but deep underneath it all was a hope that all my fears would be for nothing.  Tonight, Warren asked if next time we could have a baby that came home to live with us instead.  How do I even respond to this??  How do I help them understand when I cannot myself.

Today is the start of infant loss awareness month, it's the month of Reagan's birthday, and now it is also the birth month of a child we will never know.  A child we have 4 single images of, and will never get a new one.  A child I never even got to feel kick inside me.  A child we have known about for 5.5 years and laid eyes on for the first time exactly 1 month ago.  A child we call Noah.