I lied.

I lied. Everyday get's worse. For a brief moment I thought that it was getting better, but it's not. I either cry, or I ignore it. Today I felt like I was in a daze all day. Nothing made me smile. I cry and I cry and I wonder where the hell all of these tears are stored! I don't know what to do with the horrible pain. I don't know how to process the facts, the memories, the dreams, the nightmare and the soul crushing sorrow that I feel. I don't know what to do with any of it. I cry and I don't even know for what. I just cry and cry and cry. I ache. My soul aches, my body aches. I feel helpless, lifeless and hopeless. My heart breaks every two minutes, over and over and over again. I eat and eat, and still I feel empty and hungry. I'm scared. I'm scared that I won't recover. I'm scared I'll smother my daughter and ruin her. I'm scared that David will die, or Aubrey will die. I'm scared that I might die of a broken heart, literally. My body quakes. My soul feels dead. I have so many other things to live for, to love and to be thankful for. I don't know why I can't accept this. I don't know why it happened, why God stole my son! And I beg and beg and beg, and I know it is fruitless. I am over come with such grief I feel like I am drowning.

Its been a week...

Saturday, January 31, 2009

It’s been a week since Logan was born. In and hour and 14 minutes from now. I woke up mad at the world this morning. I didn’t cry, not yet anyhow. I hate this winter. I hate the dreary days, I hate the sunny ones. I hate the cold and all of the snow. Logan was born on a very cold sunny day. One just like today. It didn’t seem fair to me that he should die on such a beautiful day. But I didn’t want him to be born on a dreary day either.

I can’t help but think of what happened the day he died, the day he was born. 6 hours later they released me from the hospital. They wheeled me to the door, and then David and I walked the longest most mournful walk through the parking garage to our car. Leaving the hospital was torture, but I couldn’t wait to get away from there. We picked up Aubrey from the in-laws. Just like any other time. No one mentioned Logan. I’m sure they said I’m sorry, but I know it was too new and raw for anyone to talk about. I appreciated it. Then we came home where my mom and the boys were all waiting, with their girlfriends/wife. No one was here, the house was dark, empty and a disaster…just like I had left it, except now you could tell there were other people around; bags, blankets and other things that just didn’t belong. With in minutes some of them came through the door. And, it was just like any other time. Except of course the uneasy glances and the sorry’s that floated through the air. Then, the evening went on. Games were played, there was laughter…no one asked about Logan. I wanted to just come home and curl up and die. Instead, I found myself amidst chaos. At the time it’s what I wanted. I wanted to ignore what had happened. I wanted to forget, if only for nano seconds at a time. David got involved, played the Wii and other games. I could tell he was relieved by the distraction. But now, now when I look back it seems weird and wrong. It seems like two different days. We had a baby, he was dead…life went on. And I didn’t want it to. I don’t want it to. I hate that one of my shows was on TV that day (which we recorded and watched last night), I hate that I still had a birthday to celebrate, I hate that I still had to eat. I hate that even though there is no more baby, I still bleed, my breast still got their milk, and they still flow with the life of a baby that I never got to share it with. I hate that his clothes still sit in a basket in my room. I hate that there was a book mark on the seventh month in my pregnancy book. I hate that there is a pregnancy magazine still sitting in Aubrey’s room. I hate that I still have to take my vitamins and an antibiotic to keep my body from getting an infection from something I love so dearly. I hate that I still have to go back to the wretched hospital for my follow up, and see the doctor who shattered my entire world. I hate that I want another baby and I want HIM now! I hate God. I hate that I can’t stop crying, and that I feel like everyone is looking at me, like I have some terrible disease that I am trying to hide. I hate that when I say “my children” I feel like I may puke. I hate that I can’t stop crying. I hate that I don’t know what David thinks of me anymore, what he see’s when he looks at me. I hate that I am so filled with such hatred.

The night before last I woke up in the middle of the night. I couldn’t go back to sleep, as usual. David was finally getting some sleep, and I knew he didn’t want to be bothered with me. I think he just needs me to leave him be sometimes. I grabbed one of the onsies that was intended for Logan sitting in a laundry basket by my bed. It was so soft. It smelled nice. I held it against my face until morning. I could tell that David was concerned when he was it in the morning, but I just needed to feel like Logan was with me. I miss him with a ferocity I have never known. Every night I beg God to give him back. Every morning I wake up disappointed all over again. I keep hoping, praying that this is all just the most horrible nightmare ever. But it’s not. It’s all very real, and permanent and I will never feel my little Logan move again, I will never see his tiny precious little face and all of the fantasies and dreams I had for him are all just a cruel reminder.

We took back the double stroller that we bought just days before his birth. I sat in the car and cried. None of this is fair, and I am trying so hard to believe that God was saving my little baby when he took him away. But I can’t figure out why God won’t/didn’t stop or change the things that were trivial. Like, why didn’t he stop us from buying that stroller? Why couldn’t it have been out of stock? Why was it on sale?

My cousin sent me a word art print that she made for Logan. It has the verse 2 Samuel 12:23 “He shall not return to me, but I shall go to him.” I loved seeing his name in print. I loved the verse. Something so trivial, that had such a profound impact on me.

Everything happens for a reason?? Did you just say that?

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Yesterday was by far my hardest day since we got home. David had Jury duty so I spent the morning reading blogs of woman in similar shoes, far worse shoes perhaps, and waddling in my self pity. Bed time seems to be the hardest time. I couldn’t shake it last night. I lay in David’s arms and cried my eyes out for what seemed like hours.

I’m tired of hearing “everything happens for a reason” and crap about God.

This morning we took Aubrey in for her well baby and OF COURSE there was a woman in there with a baby boy. It hasn’t even been a week since Logan died. You’d think God would give me at least a week of some sort of peace!

On a funny note, Aubrey thinks it’s hilarious when I bawl, which cracks me up. Her smiles and David’s love are the only lights I have right now.

David and his mother went through Logan’s memory box this evening. I’m concerned about them seeing his pictures. Even David hasn’t seen them yet. They’re so hoaky. They posed him with props and tried so hard to make him look like a live baby. I wish I had taken pictures on my own, but who thinks of that sort of thing? I wanted to remember his back, and his belly and his elbows…

The hardest week

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Aubrey turned one year old yesterday. I just survived the hardest and most terrifying week of my life. Everyday I cry just a little less. Today though, my first day alone as David got called in for Jury Duty, I seem to find the tears easily. They’ve flowed pretty steadily all morning. Aubrey laughs when I really start to bawl. I guess she thinks the noises and the faces I make are funny. But her laugh, if even for a brief moment, makes my heart swell, and through my tears I actually laugh with her. I wonder if she feels my sorrow. I am relieved and happy that she will never have to experience the pain of Logan’s death. He will be an enigma for her, a strange curiosity about a little brother who was here for such a brief moment while she was still a baby herself. For the lack of her pain, I am grateful. Dr. Moses speculated that Logan died last Wednesday evening. So this evening marks a week since my precious little Logan left us. David and I are trying to cope, and if you ask either of us we’ll tell you we’re healing and dealing…but today, today I wonder if I just want to heal so bad, and to have it all be over that I say those things more so to convince myself than out of fact. I can not be sure. I’ve been reading a woman’s blog whose situation I have to think is worse than mine. Two miscarriages, a full term baby boy who was brain dead and died 20 hours after his birth, and then two years later she miscarried twins at three months. Pain, over and over and over. Her baby boy was alive when she met him. He had normal coloring, he moved. My baby boy did not. I had found out that morning that Logan had died in utero. I knew as I labored that Logan was dead, and I knew as I pushed him into this world that he had already left it. His body was warm, and I was able to move his limbs about. He was not malformed. He was just not there. I never got to meet my precious little boy. I never got to have him feel my breath, my warmth, my touch. I never heard his cry, or a coo. I never had deceptive hope to cling to. And though I ache in a way I could never have conceived of before, and I wanted to meet my little boy, and I wanted to know my little boy…I do not have to deal with memories of him in this world. I barely ever felt his kicks. He was there, but I was distracted with Aubrey. And for that, I am a little thankful. Perhaps it would have been harder had I known him, if even for a moment.

David and I decided to send Logan’s body to The University of Michigan for a complete Autopsy. The doctor thought this was the best way for us to find out exactly what happened. We feel that we need to know, for out own sanity, and also so that we can decide if we would like to conceive again. But I can’t help but have this “in limbo” feeling about Logan’s death. Like those two days were a nightmare, but didn’t really happen. There was no formal goodbye, they just covered his tiny little body and wheeled him out of the room. There is no place that his body is, and I can’t help but feel odd about the whole thing. I want a physical place where my baby is. I want to know exactly where he’ll be when U of M is finished. I may never go visit his resting place, but I need to know that there was some sort of finality to it all. Not that his body is being passed around, pawed at, mutilated and eventually burned into ashes.

The flowers are getting easier. Flowers were one thing I was not prepared for. When the first flower delivery arrived my first thought was one of appreciation. Then I opened the bag and broke down. They were funeral flowers. The ones people send for funerals. I had just had a birth, and a death at the same time. People don’t know what to say, how to react, what the right thing is. Neither do I. But it’s getting easier. With each new arrival of flowers I am better to cope with their appearance.

Yesterday was the first morning I didn’t cry while lying awake in bed. But then, I didn’t lay awake in bed. I got up. Last night I fell asleep for the second night with out any tears, and I actually slept till almost 9am. Then I only cried a second before I got up. But today, today has been pretty hard being alone with my thoughts. When David is around I think it is easier for me to hide from them.

In Memory of Logan David

In Memory of Logan David

On Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 10:07am David and I gave birth to a stillborn baby boy. He weighed 1 lb 7 oz and was 11” long. He had Aubrey’s mouth, Daddy’s hands and Mommy’s feet. We thought Logan looked just like his older sister. David and I had Logan Baptized.

The facts:
At the routine 18 week Ultrasound, just before Christmas, the doctor thought I had a “low placenta” and requested that I have an additional Ultrasound done at the next monthly check up, just to be sure the placenta was migrating upwards. To our knowledge nothing else was detected. On Wednesday, January 21st, I went in for the additional Ultrasound where the doctor discovered some physical abnormalities with the baby and scheduled me to have a “more advanced Ultrasound, and more advanced opinions” done at the hospital on Friday morning. During the advanced Ultrasound the new doctor found that the baby had developed Hydrops Fetalis (a severe accumulation of fluid) and had passed (he believed sometime Wednesday evening). The doctor told us that the condition was a fatal prognosis, and it appeared that the baby had had the condition “for sometime”. We were then told that I would have to deliver the baby immediately. The induction process started around noon on Friday. I received an amniocentesis and had blood drawn for lab work. Logan was delivered Saturday morning at 10:07am. The delivery was quick and fairly pain free as I was given a strong Epidural on Friday. David and I were able to hold our baby boy for almost two hours. Logan was not malformed. David and I were advised to send Logan’s body to The University of Michigan for a complete Autopsy. The results of the autopsy could take months. There are literally a thousand reasons for Hydrops, and the doctor wouldn’t even speculate on what may have happened. Hydrops is a “symptom” of a larger problem. There is a possibility that the Autopsy may not reveal what went wrong. David and I were advised to wait for the results of the Autopsy and emotional healing before trying to conceive again. At this time neither of us can answer the question about future children. U of M holds a Memorial Service for parents in this situation, which David and I will be attending. Logan will be laid to rest in the Memorial Garden there.