The Perfect Husband

I talk a lot lately about how amazing my husband is but I've been thinking a lot lately about how perfect (for me) he really is. I married such a good man. 

Mike didn't grow up with the perfect examples of love and marriage to show him what to strive for. I believe that his parents loved one another so much that they couldn't be together- it was just too intense. They never stopped trying, but it never worked out. His grandparents, who he lived with alongside his sisters in the midst of his parents trying to figure it all out, must have loved one another at some point but it's very hard to see. It's like you know there are fossils of love doen where in that home but you'd be lucky to ever dig them up. 

My amazing husband is making it up as e goes along. It's easy for days to pass where we are just going through the motions and live in the house together. It's not until I sit and watch him carry himself around the house and see his face as he chooses his next move that I really realize how epic of a man he is. He has taught himself how to be an entire support system, how to figure out what to say in my moments of weakness and to choose what is worth arguing over. In the days where he began toove me he instantly became them that wanted to put a roof over the head of his wife, to hbe a family, to keep us safe and happy. We are his mission now just because he fell in love. 

I couldn't survive any of this without my sweet husband being all that he is. It's like we were to pieces of clay that were prepared but not yet molded and when we found each other we melted together and became solid. I just wanted to share how much he completely blows my mind just by being him and by being more than I could have imagined a husband could be. 

Viability.

My morning today was great and productive. About halfway through lunch the sinking feeling joined me once again. I was happy when Mike asked if I could bring lunch to the office, because I know it is good in those moments to get away from my own thoughts and to interact with others. 

As I was driving to grab him lunch, it occurred to me what has been bothering me for the last few days. I'm living my life as though I was never pregnant, it seems. There is no way to live other than the way I am- picking myself up and moving forwards, living for Landon and doing my best to find happy moments. But five weeks later it's all such a distant memory. I feel completely detached from my memories of being pregnant. I don't remember what it feels like until I feel a phantom kick, and it makes me feel like maybe I imagined them as kicks but that's not what they were at all. I can't recall the feeling of having life inside of me. The psych student in me has come up with two reasons that this is the case. First, it is clearly a defense mechanis for me to prevent a longing for the feeling it or a constant reminder of what I am missing or should be experiencing now. When I think about how my belly would have grown in five weeks, I am crushed. Secondly, I did not experience the standard or desired conclusion to being pregnant, so part of my mind believes I must have never been pregnant. Whatever the reason, it's miserable but I'm sure it's for the best. I am sure when I do become pregnant again, my memories will come flooding back to me. 

Tonight I lost my shit when a baby frog got in the house. I thought it was a cricket because we have been having issues with that, so I yelled at Mike to kill it. When I realized it was a baby frog I lost it. Mike swears up and down he didn't kill it, he was able to get it outside before killing it. But my sweet husband would lie to me a hundred times if he thought it would heal my heart, so I'll never really know. The moment I realized I told him to kill the frog, I thought if course I said to do that, I even told the doctors they could take my baby from me. I didn't think, I just reacted. 

Then it occurred to me that tomorrow is a day I have been dreading- tomorrow would have been 24 weeks and instead it's five weeks gone. We would have reached viability. I hate what-ifs, but I can't help it here. Thankfully my sweet Mike held me whoe I cried and helped me realize that even if we had made it this far, he may have been born early and suffered pain, and may have passed anyways. He was spared all of the pain this way, and it was our only option. We didn't choose it. Our angel went to heaven having never suffered. Most of the time I believe thatd and most of the time it brings me peace. 

Rallying Around Our Loved Ones

I've often heard it said that in times of need we rally around those that need us. While I understood what that meant as a basic idea, I don't think that I have ever really felt the meaning of the phrase. Perhaps there have been times in my life where I needed help but refused to acknowledge it, and in those moments I found my own strength and have been proud to pull myself back up and move on. This has not always been without the encouragement of friends and family, but in my hardest moments I have made it my mission to be my own hero. For the first time in my life, I know that I cannot rise up against the world on my own. Losing Landon changed me in a lot of ways, and this has been the first time that I did not fight the helping hands of others.
There are a lot of people that have offered condolences, love, and support, and those people do not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Every word has meant the world to me as they show how truly loved my son was and is. But I've seen the difference between offering support and truly rallying around someone that needs us. I have an image in my mind of how I feel right now. I lay in the center of the floor in a mess, and there are people in my life that I see surrounding me, keeping me safe, offering me love, and helping me up when I am ready. These people I see are the people I feel around me every day. Be them right next door or across the country, I swear to you that I physically feel the warmth of their love surrounding me. These are the people that you realize make up your world, and while others that love and care for you (and you for them) are important in your life, these are the ones that are your life. This isn't determined by blood or friendship or circumstance, but by the soul. Souls connect and nothing feels quite like that.
I am so grateful for those that have offered support and love as well as to those that rally around me. Today, my son would be a month old. In a few short days we will be at the "viability" mark, and the day when the textbooks say a baby may be saved. This is the hardest thing that I have ever experiences, and after three years of trying and constant struggles in other areas of my life, it's impossible not to wonder what I did to deserve this suffering or even how God could let this happen. Where was God when my son died inside of my womb? Wasn't it God that offered me the greatest gift in the world and then tore it out of me? This is a time during which it is difficult to keep my faith. I have never been a church-goer but I have always believed in God. The moment I discovered I was pregnant I knew he must be real. I had angels looking over me and God guiding me and offering me a chance to create a life and teach a child how to be good in the heart and share that goodness with the world. But now I don't have that and it's hard not to be mad at God.
The sole idea that keeps me connected with God is that he has provided me with the most amazing angels here on earth. I feel the warmth of these angels every day. Sometimes I get to experience that love with a phone call or a hug, sometimes a game night or crying together about my loss or the struggles of my friends. Whatever it is, I know that God has sent these people to envelop me in their love and to teach me how to do the same when they need me. I cannot imagine any explanation or understanding of why such a pain as I feel every day deep inside of my heart even exists in the world. But there is also no explanation for the blessings that I have received in terms of those that have rallied around me and to me that means there is something out there that is taking care of me and that brought these people into my world.
One day I hope that that force, be it God or the universe or the sun or anything, blesses me again with the chance to share my love with a child, and to share a child with the man that makes my heart beat every day. I will never stop hoping for that. But I know that there is something greater than me and tonight, after what I'm sure will be a day of crying and aching, I will go to bed with hope in my heart and the love of my earth-angels keeping me warm.

The Day It Fell Apart

Today it has been exactly four weeks since my little boy went to heaven. I've managed well all day, but typing those words knocked the wind out of me. Somehow this makes it all true. Some hours of the day I can go on not thinking about having ever been pregnant or so close to having the family that I wanted, and there is a bliss that I find in that distraction. When the distraction passes, there is a strong guilt. How could I want to forget him? Sometimes I feel I should be in pain every second of the day, because if I'm not, what the hell kind of a mom am I?

When I started this post I thought it might be appropriate to write a more detailed recap of that day. And maybe I will finish this that way or maybe I will write one later on. But now I feel reconnected to all of the emotions of that day and, while we lost our entire world, I feel connected to what really fell apart for the first time- myself.

I remember the second I realized that something wasn't right. I realized that I was not, in fact, pissing myself. I was so scared. The smallest amount of hope- maintained by my wonderful husband- allowed me to believe that maybe it was just a fluke and even more so I thought that perhaps I could be put on bed-rest. Surely as long as the baby was okay still there was something they could do. It is a knife in my heart to think if we had just made it a few weeks more we could have had a shot at saving him. I still wrestle with the guilt. Maybe I should have pushed to just see what would happen. But at my follow-up, the pathology report showed that I had already started to develop an infection. I imagine we couldn't have gotten very far without causing serious damage to both myself and my precious baby boy. Knowing that helps, some, but still when I begin to think about the difference a few weeks would have made....

When we made it to the ER about an hour and a half after my water broke, (still not sure that that is what had happened), the nurse found the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Later, the nurse at the doctor checked my urine for protein and searched for the baby's heartbeat as they did at every appointment. She found it. At 9:30 my baby's heart was beating in the 150's. He was still alive. He was kicking me as I registered at the hospital and as I changed into the gown. No amount of assurance from the doctor would ever be enough to convince me that my baby would have died on his own. The doctor told me with no fluid and with tissues he believed to be from my placenta, the baby would not have any circulation and would surely pass away before he was delivered. He did die inside of me, but I do not know when. I will never know if it was the induction that killed him- I'm afraid to ask if that's possible. If it is, I killed my child. I took his life. I was just trying to make the right choice. I didn't want to get an infection that could make it impossible for me to have other children, like my mother had later in her life, should it be true that Landon would never make it. But fuck, if we could have just made it a few more weeks....

When the doctor confirmed my water had broken, his eyes were sorrowful. He was heartbroken to share the news and because of this I didn't even try to hold back tears. I couldn't look at anyone because it was such terrible news that no matter how nervous I had been in the beginning of the pregnancy I could never have prepared myself. We were so close to halfway there, everything had been so perfect, and more so my overly-intuitive dad and myself didn't see it coming. We always had a way of knowing when the other foot would drop but this time we didn't. The doctor said exactly this: "It is your fluid that you lost- and you will lose the baby. It is nothing you did, you didn't cause this to happen". I cried and he offered Mike and I a few moments to decide what path we wanted to take from here. He left the room and Mike shot up to his feet and over to me. We cried and Mike instantly told me that it would be okay, we would try again. I apologized over and over for not being able to carry his child. He held me and we made our choices. I called my dad and my best friend. I'll never forget the way my dad's voice sounded. "Oh sunshine", with the saddest tone I had ever heard from him. I couldn't really tell him anything else and told him as well as my best friend that I would text them when I knew what we were doing. I hardly held it together, in fact I lost it a few times, during the trip back to the house to gather some things and the hour long drive to the hospital. When we walked in I felt different- I was numb. I cried once after that, and then not again until I felt my son be born.

An Introduction

My husband Michael and I have longed for many years to be parents. We tried for three years to get pregnant, hurdling over various deployments and workups as well as the obstacle of mild PCOS. In May 2014 I took a test on a whim and discovered I was pregnant. I had never seen a positive pregnancy test in all my years of trying and I couldn't believe this was finally it. I was only 3 weeks and 3 days along, 9 days post ovulation, and this little baby wanted us to know it was there! I told Michael that afternoon that he was going to be a dad by wrapping some clothes I had bought just for this purpose and placing the positive pregnancy tests on top. We told my parents and set up a doctor's appointment- this was all finally happening and we couldn't have been more over-the-moon. We were finally going to have our family. I would grow rounder and feel kicks and get uncomfortable and finally bring our sweet child into the world and hold him or her in my arms and heart forever. Remembering my husband's reaction will always put a smile on my face, although now that smile is followed with a tinge of bitterness.
The day I made it to 19 weeks, we were going to have an ultrasound to determine the sex of our baby. I already knew how healthy he or she was because I was growing and thriving and feeling little kicks every day. Our excitement had led to the room already being prepared with furniture and we were so ecstatic to share with the world if we would have a son or a daughter.
I had trouble sleeping the night before because I was so looking forward to the early doctor's appointment the next morning. Around 5 am, I rolled over in bed and suddenly felt a gush. I was peeing the bed! But soon the humor and embarassment fled as it didn't stop, and I knew it was more than just a fluke of being pregnant. My water had broken at exactly 19 weeks. We were instructed by the on-call nurse to go to the nearest ER. There they showed us the baby's heartbeat and profile on an ultrasound and we relaxed some, although I could hear the doctor tell the nurse that I was "about a fingertip". This hospital had no OB services so they contacted our doctor and told us to sit tight and go to our scheduled appointment, as he would be able to tell us more about what was going on. We rested at home for about an hour and headed to the doctor. The nurse found the heartbeat on the doppler and it was strong, and I could feel baby kick as the machine rubbed across my belly. The doctor did a pelvic exam and tested the fluid in my cervix. He regretfully told us that my water had broken and we were going to lose the baby. At 19 weeks and with no waters left, there was no way the baby could survive. We searched and searched for alternative measures but there were none. We chose to have the baby in the hospital and were admitted not long after leaving the doctor's office. Everyone we saw was amazed that I was not experiencing labor pains as I was already dilating and passing tissue through my cervix, and my water had broken hours ago.
My contractions were helped along with medication and at 1915 I gave birth to the most beautiful baby boy I have ever seen. Landon Edward was born sleeping and went to be with his Grampa, my husband's father, in heaven. We didn't hold him but we looked at him and cried over how perfect he was. Later, I would feel guilt about letting him be born early, about not holding him and about letting him die inside of my womb. I would feel and experience more than I ever thought possible. The intention of this blog is to talk about it all, to help me heal and to put into words as best I can the terror of losing a child that you loved for years before they were even conceived and yet you never got to hold or kiss or raise. This blog will be about pain and healing and some terrible attempt and beginning to live a new sort of normal.