To My Sweet Angel Baby

 

Today is National Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day.   I didn’t know until recently that this day even existed.  All 50 states have signed proclamations designating Oct 15 as a day to acknowledge that even the shortest lives have value and to honor their memories. This includes all babies who have died because of miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, or any other infant death.  Did you know that each year, approximately 1 million pregnancies end in miscarriage, stillbirth or death.  There are 1 million mommies out there without their babies.  That’s 1 million mommies grieving for the hopes, dreams and wishes that will never be.

I decided that I was going to use this day to write about my sweet angel baby.  This day I chose to publically honor the memory of him/her.  I have recently been introduced to a great blog, Bring The Rain.  The link is in my blogroll.  If you have ever experienced a miscarriage or infant loss, this blog is for you!!!  Start from the beginning and make sure you have kleenex!

Reading Bring the Rain has helped me come to terms with my loss in a completely different way than I have for the past 2 1/2 years.  To be quite honest, I’m not sure that I EVER really dealt with it at all.  Let me start at the beginning…

Brian and I got married in May ’05, and I moved a week later to NC, where he was stationed.  Two days of driving and 960 miles later and we were in our new home (some honeymoon!) 

Brian & Kelli sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…First comes love, second comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.

I think I was born wanting to be a mommy.  What I remember most of my childhood is playing house.  We played ALL THE TIME!  I remember always having to be “the mom.”  One instance sticks out in my mind the most.  I was 5, we had just moved to our new neighborhood and I was playing in the neighbors backyard.  She had a little playhouse, and it was perfect for the imagination.  First, before you play house, you must establish who is who.  I, of course, had to be “mom.”  Well, so did another little neighbor girl.  We fought for awhile, and then I did something I have only done one time in my life.  I punched her in the nose.  Scratch that, I bloodied the poor girl’s nose.  Needless to say, since I was five, I have been very passionate about being a mommy one day. 

So when the day came when I found myself married, those maternal instincts were on OVER DRIVE!  My clock was ticking, but apparently not to the same beat as my husbands!  So, “we” decided to wait.  9 months went by and we decided, ok, let’s try.  Then he got orders to leave for Iraq.  Several weeks later, on Monday March 13, after 2 tests, it was official….I WAS PREGNANT!  I will never forget that walk from the bathroom to the bedroom to tell my sweet husband that he was gonna be a Daddy.  The look on his face when the whole thing hit him will forever be a priceless moment to me.  We just layed there and basked in the miracle that we had created. 

Brian was leaving the next morning before dawn to go into the field for training until Friday.  We weren’t going to tell anyone until he got home on Friday, but I knew that I couldn’t contain myself that long so we called our parents and we told them they were going to be grandparents.  We couldn’t have been happier or more proud.  Life was perfect.

I kissed my husband, and baby-daddy goodbye that morning and went to work myself.  Later that day I started cramping and left work to go to the doctor.  I hadn’t even been to a doctor yet, I had only known for 12 hours.  They ran tests and told me to come back in 48 hours to repeat them, so they could compare the two.  They assured me that I was indeed pregnant.  Everyone told me not to worry, it could be nothing.  But, I knew.  I just knew that I knew that I knew!  I didn’t want my mind to go there, but I KNEW.  I had no way to get ahold of Brian.  I left voicemails, but they weren’t even supposed to turn their phones on in the field.  Luckily, he checked it later that night and hid for like a minute and a half, enough to call me.  The sound of his voice comforted me, but nothing was enough.

I think that moment was one of the loneliest and helpless moments of my life.  I wanted this baby more than anything I’ve ever wanted and yet I was losing it.  There wasn’t one thing I could do, my angel baby was slipping away.  Brian also felt so helpless in that moment.  He tried his best to comfort me, while I know he was going through his own fear and pain at the same time.  He could not leave the field, and so I had to sit alone.  I had no friends, didn’t know my neighbors, needless to say, it was a very difficult few days. 

On Thursday, March 16, after further testing, it was confirmed that I did indeed “lose” the baby.  I hate that term “lose.”  Because, I knew right where it was all along, I never “lost” it.   I had some people tell me that really it was a blessing because there was probably something wrong with the baby.  It was my baby, no matter what was wrong, I was it’s mommy and I wanted the opportunity to take care of it.  No one asked what I wanted!!  I wanted to hold it and love on it.  If something was wrong with the baby, and God saw fit that he take it back to heaven, then why did he send it to me in the first place???   It just didn’t seem fair!  Nothing made sense.  Others told me that I was lucky it happened now (after knowing for such a short time) then to have carried the baby further along and then “lost” it.    As if you love it less at the beginning.  I will never know which kind of loss is more painful, but I do know that my kind was, and still is very painful. 

I questioned everything!  I wanted it to make sense to me.  I just wanted to know what I did wrong.  I think I will always wonder if I did something to cause it.  Either while I was pregnant, or even in my past, I wondered if maybe this was payback for a wrong that I had comitted.  Like karma.  I felt like a failure.  All my life I wanted that baby, my husband wanted that baby…and I couldn’t keep it healthy.  I felt guilty that I had let my husband and our families down.  I felt like my husband had made a wrong choice in marrying me.

And then came the part that I carried with me for 1 full year.  WHAT IF I CAN’T HAVE A BABY?   This question consumed me…and I mean CONSUMED!  Looking back now, that I have a happy, healthy 11 1/2 month old baby boy, I can see that alot of my fears of not being able to have a baby came from the fact that I didn’t have the opportunity to try again for 7 more months.  Now, that seems like a short time to wait.  But, it was an excrutiatingly long 7 months, full of lots of questions and doubts.

 

 

Two weeks after my sweet angel went to heaven, I drove my husband to the base, kissed him goodbye and watched him leave to go Iraq to fight for our country.  Once that bus drove away, I stood and sobbed until I couldn’t anymore.  That feeling of complete and total emptiness, it was all consuming.  I couldn’t even bring myself to go home because it was already packed and in a storage unit.  I was leaving the next week to go be with family for a few months.  When I finally did come home, it was completely and totally empty.  I was completely and totally empty.  That was the most gut wrenching night of my life.  I was so scared that I would ”lose” my husband too.  To be quite honest, I felt abandoned.

Thank God above, Brian came home to me, safe and whole!  But, those 7 months all run together for me in my memory now.  I can just remember feeling so alone, even when surrounded by people that I loved and loved me.  I should have been with my husband in NC grieving for our child together.  Instead, I was in the Midwest and he was in the Mideast.  The last thing you want to do when you get to talk to your husband when he is at war is talk about sad things, or stressful things.  Part of a military spouse’s role is to uplift their soldier and keep their head where it needs to be to keep them safe.  So for 7 months I tried with all of my might to not let it be the center of attention, to not let it “bring him down.”  All the while, it was all I thought about, besides his safety, of course!  I can remember telling people that I honestly did not feel like I was going to be able to have children.  I just felt that there was something wrong with me.  I had myself prepared for adoption by the time he got home.  I had no doubt…I can’t have children!  Boy, am I glad that I’m not always right! 

One year and 3 days after my baby met Jesus, I found out I was pregnant again.  For the most part, I had an uneventful pregnancy.  He was born 5 weeks early, but was born healthy on November 1, 2007.  15 days shy of what would have been my first baby’s 1st Birthday. 

 

When I look at my son I realize how much we have missed with our first baby. We’ll never get to see him/her ( I like that much better than “it”) roll over, cut teeth, crawl, pull up.  I’ll never rock him/her to sleep, singing Jesus loves Me.  I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.  Blue eyed like Mommy, or brown like Daddy?  It just breaks my heart all over to think of what could and would have been.  I will never understand why God took our baby.  But, I will always, always, always be eternally grateful that he gave me a second chance. 

Reading Bring The Rain made me realize something that any person that grew up going to church 3x or more a week should have thought of right away.  It actually suprises me that I never thought of it, and NO ONE ever mentioned it to me.  Here it is…I WILL GET TO HOLD MY BABY ONE DAY.  For 2 1/2 years I have mourned the right to hold and kiss my sweet angel.  It was literally like…Holy Cow Kelli, someday, you are going to get to hold your baby.  Someday he or she will finally be in their mommy’s arms for the first time.  I don’t know why it had never dawned on me before that my Grandpas are up there holding and loving on my baby for me, that I have loved ones that are holding my sweet baby until it is my turn.  I feel so “SPIRITUALLY STUPID.”  I mean seriously, this isn’t some BOLD revelation.  But, the peace that washed over me the instant that I realized this, is unexplainable.  March 16 has always been marked as “the end” to me.  But, again I WAS WRONG!  God spoke to me through Angie (Bring the Rain) and showed me exactly what I needed to see.  His loving arms are always around me, and around my sweet angel baby.  He also reminded me that he too loves that baby and I know that he is watching over him/her until the day when He decides it’s time to bring me home as well.

 

So to my sweet baby, I love you and I miss you everyday.  I know that you are in loving arms and I cannot wait until the day when I can feel you in mine.  I can’t wait to see you run and play on streets of gold with your little brother.  I can’t wait to see you sit at Jesus’s feet, please save a good spot for Mommy.  I’ll be there in a twinkling of an eye my sweet angel baby, I promise.  I love you so much.  Love, Your Mommy.

I found this poem on another blog and thought it summed up my feelings nicely.

“An Ugly Pair of Shoes”

I am wearing a pair of shoes.
They are ugly shoes.
Uncomfortable Shoes.
I hate my shoes.
Each day I wear them, and each day I wish I had another pair.
Some days my shoes hurt so bad that I do not think I can take another step.
Yet, I continue to wear them.
I get funny looks wearing these shoes.
They are looks of sympathy.
I can tell in others eyes that they are glad they are my shoes and not theirs.
They never talk about my shoes.
To learn how awful my shoes are might make them uncomfortable.
To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them.
But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.
I now realize that I am not the only one who wears these shoes.
There are many pairs in the world.
Some women are like me and ache daily as they try and walk in them.
Some have learned how to walk in them so they don’t hurt quite as much.
Some have worked the shoes so long that days will go by
before they think of how much they hurt.
No woman deserves to wear these shoes.
Yet, because of the shoes I am a stronger women.
These shoes have given me the strength to face anything.
They have made me who I am.
I will forever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child.

Author Unknown

 

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