11 weeks today...

It has been 11 weeks today (Wednesday) since my beautiful angel came into this world silent. I have experienced multiple miscarriages in my life and I was devastated. I thought that life would end as I knew it. But when my baby girl 'Jenni' came into this world on July 8th, 2009 still, I no longer thought that my life would end, it did. I felt moved to make this blog hoping that in the end, I would say something here that would help here daddy understand why I have to talk about 'Jenni' and stillbirth. I try to tell him, but the words just don't come out like I want them to or like he needs them to, in order to make sense. He feels that this is a very private thing & that it should be kept between us. There will always be a certain amount of this that I will keep private, but I need to talk about 'Jenni' for many reasons. First I am so very proud of the nine months that we had with her growing inside of me. She was so perfect, a head FULL of black hair, perfect skin and teeny hands & feet. I feel that by not talking about her I am hiding her out of shame. You see 'Jenni' wasn't a planned pregnancy nor was she born in wedlock. In the eyes of some, she was an 'accident', but in my eyes she was never an accident, even if the act that got us there was questionable. Let me explain that her daddy & I are both real honest to goodness adults, as he says 'with our own credit cards and keys'. We are both in the over 35 crowd when she was conceived & older when she was born. For me, consenting adults do not make 'accidents' we make choices. 'Jenni's' daddy 'Chris' & I had a complicated time during the pregnancy. We met as friends and bonding in a way that most people are not blessed to find in their entire life. When neither of us were looking for a friendship as close as what we found, we also found that our hearts opened to a place that neither of us thought we'd even thinking for a long time to come (we were both healing from the end of marriages). We often tried to convince ourselves that we needed to step back, just be friends. There were even times when we tried to walk away from it all together. In the end, God, Fate, The Universe... whatever you want to label it, kept bringing us back together. But we are both quite the stubborn set of people and we often get in the way of an awesome friendship. We decided when we found out that Jenni was on her way, that we would focus on being friends and being the best parents to all of the children involved (between the two of us, there were already 4 other children involved). But even then, we couldn't always walk away from the intimate times. Not just the physical, but the emotionally intimate times. Those meant the most.

Time passed by, I 'grew with child'. His first Christmas without family around, he was with my children & I. I met his family briefly at Thanksgiving. I hadn't even gotten to the highway when my cell phone rang & it was him calling to find out what I thought of his parents (THEY wanted to know). I was blown away. I had wanted to know what they thought about me. Chris has been a great guy in many ways for my children and I. He opens his home when I need to bug bomb the house or when we had a small fire and a bigger fire and when I had two field mice move in when we were out of town for a week. The kids & I load up and move over. He was on the other end of a cell phone when my youngest had a tumor removed from her leg & it looked like she was going to be staying in the hospital. He was going to come over an hour away to the Children's Hospital to get my other two children & take them back home to our home or to his. Wherever I needed them to be to feel safe. When we got her biopsy results back, he was there standing with us, by my side at her leg. Thank God it was benign.

I shared that so that you will know that yes with some of this that you will read will make Chris look like some awful man. But he is not really. He is not the most thoughtful person, but thoughtfulness is something that you are raised with and if he wasn't taught that growing up, then I am not sure that at 40 it is something that he will learn now. I have also learned myself that men and women mourn very differently. Chris was not the most supportive during the pregnancy. When he was supportive, he was better than 'the Daddy of the Year'. Sadly those times were as erratic as my hormones were during the pregnancy. That lead to a lot of tension and doubts and in the end, it left me in labor and delivery ALONE. I gave birth knowing that our baby girl would be gone when I saw her and held her for the first time, alone with no support.

I guess I should back up a little. I had been kicked off of the 'natural induction' list 2x because of the number of emergency births and inductions topped the inductions where both mom and baby appeared to be healthy and not 'in stress'. So the third time I said the heck with it and I decided that I wasn't going in. Jenni would come when she was ready. Although by then, my original due date had me way over due. Chris was talking to his dad, his brother, his ex wife and such and they were feeding his thoughts that 'something wasn't right'. They were feeding his thoughts that 'maybe I had gotten pregnant on purpose'. That hurt me so badly when I heard that he thought that at any point. I would never intentionally get pregnant. He has since admitted that he has always known that but at the time, it didn't help. It only created more chaos between us. I finally went in for an induction, after having spent an awesomely incredible night with Chris. The plan was for him to sleep in just a little since we had been up late, I would go ahead, go by my house and spend the wee morning hours with them, then head over to the hospital. Once I was in the L&D room, I would call him and he could come on over, we expected that he'd be there by the time they started the epidural.

They hooked me up to monitors and more and more nurses came in. Then the doctor came in and then I was told that my daughter was 'gone'. But they wouldn't allow me to see the u/s at the time. I got mad, got my clothes on and insisted that I would get a second opinion. I came home, crawled on the couch and cried. I finally touched base with Chris the next day I think (although it could have been that night). He was angry. He thought that I was just blowing him off for our daughter's birth. I asked if I could come over, he said not if I didn't tell him what was said. I just couldn't bring myself to tell him over the phone that they were telling me that our angel was gone. He asked if something was wrong and I said yes. But that was all that I could say. We hung up. An extremely short time later, he called me back and asked me if I still wanted to come over, I said yes and he told me he thought that I should.

I went over and I stayed for a few days (3 or 4) and made calls but before I called my primary doctor, she called me. The decision was made that the only OB that they had in their practice would take over & delivery Jenni with my doctor's hand holding. I went into her office, they had already gotten the paperwork & were waiting for me. They listened for a heartbeat & found none. I left feeling completely defeated. I went to Chris' and just feel into his arms and cried and cried and cried. My baby girl was an angel. I had to have a few days to process it all & plan so I took a few days before we scheduled the induction. In those few days I had used WAY to much internet and read stories where this had happened and the doctors were wrong, the babies were born healthy. My mind shifted gears. I was 110% certain the day of delivery that she was going to come into the world screaming that it took so long. I thought that I had convinced Chris that my feelings, my mother's heart was right. That our Jenni was ok. So here we go again.... I leave his house on Tuesday & his ex brings over their son so she can go to work & instructs him that she does NOT want this son to go to daycare the next day because he has a cold. It's just a cold, no fever, very minor cough and felt fine. But that meant that on that Wednesday, on THAT July 8th, Chris would have to stay at home with his son until his ex wife was off of work at the end of the day and then the hour to get to the hospital before he could be there to support me or for the delivery of Jenni knowing that the doctor's believed she was gone, even if I didn't. So we had a HUGE fight on the phone Tuesday night and I told him to forget it. NOT to come. If he couldn't make the choice to send his barely coughing child to daycare so that he could be at the birth of his last child & only girl, that he had named (when he was 8 y.o btw), then he had no right to come to the hospital after all of the work had been done. Wednesday past and at 8:03pm Jenni came into this world weighing 7lbs 7oz 19 1/4 long with a lot of dark hair. She was perfect. The two things that were missing were her daddy and her heartbeat. Quickly my heart left too.

It still has not come back. Jenni is gone and my life is completely wrecked and I feel like a hamster on the wheel. I can't get off and even if I could, I am often afraid if I did, that Jenni would begin to fade in my mind. I NEVER want her to fade.

The Beginning...

This blog will be multifaceted in nature. It is to honor all of the angel babies, it is to share the stages of grief & it is to educate others! I believe that knowledge is the key to a better future. When a person has experienced a loss of any sort, many people will not understand. Grief may have the five common stages, but we all suffer differently. Some people never sincerely experience grief because they choose not to. It will be these people that will suffer the most extreme loss someday, because eventually it will all come to pass; for everyone. Death is not something that we can hide from forever.

I also hope that with the information about miscarriages, stillbirth & early infant loss; that it will improve the odds for the future of those yet to be conceived. Knowledge is the key to prevention. If this blog helps to save one baby from joining my angels to soon, then it will somehow in some strange way, make my loss(es) make sense.

I speak from the heart of a wounded & broken mother, not as a therapist. The information I share will be personal or information that I have found in my journey towards healing. I welcome the KIND wisdom & input from anyone that reads here. And PLEASE share this blog with anyone & everyone that you know; spreading the word & spreading the knowledge can save a baby's life.