My Story Part 2

December 3, 2009. A day my life changed forever. A day that will forever haunt me. I still remember it like it just happened. After giving birth that morning we held onto our precious angel for as long as we possibly could. Having to let her go was horrible. I was eventually moved to a floor far away from the normal maternity floor. I attempted to eat. I was in a fog and running on autopilot. In shock from the nightmare my life had just become, angry that it happened in the first place, foggy from the stadol, and it was almost 2 days before I was fully able to feel my legs again thanks to hitting that epidural button so many times during labor. I was on anti depressants and sleep aids. That night in the hospital Jeremiah laid down on a couch in my room and got some sleep. Luckily we were given a private room. I knew I needed sleep but even with the sleep aid it just wouldn't come. I just kept replaying everything that happened in my mind and trying to figure out if it was actually real or was I dreaming? At one point in the night I couldn't hold in anymore and started bawling. I am not much of a cryer, but I couldn't stop the gut wrenching sobs, and I didn't want to. I just didn't care anymore. My crying woke Jeremiah up and he came and crawled into the hospital bed with me and just held me. I was finally able to doze off and he stayed there with me the rest of the night. The next day around lunch time I was released to go home. We made the drive back home. Mostly in silence. My mom and her partner, Mary, along with Jeremiah's parents were at our house waiting for us. I felt so helpless. So useless. Like I had failed my baby. I was numb and just wanted the nightmare to be over. The closer we got to home I felt what little grip I had on my control fading. We opened the door to walk into the house and I nearly collapsed with the grief. Just completely lost it. Luckily my father-in-law happened to be standing near the doorway and he grabbed me and just held on and let me cry it out. Opening that door, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was home from the hospital after giving birth, but my baby wasn't with me. What was supposed to have been an incredibly happy time, bringing our new baby home, was everything but. I was home, my baby was in a funeral home. That was not how things were supposed to be! Everyone always says it's horrible when a child goes before the parent and boy are they right. My child never even had the chance to take a breath. Let out a cry. Open her eyes and see her family. Something that also bothered me and still does? I don't even know what color my daughters eyes are. I will never hear her voice, her laugh. Will never see her play or watch her dream.  Nothing. My sweet baby girl is gone. All we have left of her are some photos and momentos the nurses managed to get together for us. A lock of hair, a pair of pants she wore in some of her photos, her headband, the blanket she was wrapped in, handprints and foot prints. The tape measure they used to measure her. She was 7 lbs, 7 oz and 21 inches long. The nurses were so amazing to us. They made a little beaded bracelet for her with her name on the beads and put it on her for some of the pictures and sent the bracelet with us along with a small heart pillow and a flower that they also put in the pictures. All of the photos were taken by the nurses because they couldn't get in touch with the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep photographer. They printed copies of the pictures and gave to us and put them on a cd for us as well. I don't know what we would have done without them. I was so out of it I wouldn't have thought of doing any of that stuff. The nurses cried with us. Ones that worked the overnight shift while I was in labor came back after she was born, on their own time, to see us and her. They all wanted to hold her and told us how perfect she was. My amazing doctor I talked about in my last post, well, she was off on her vacation the day I was released but sent another doctor from her practice to check on me before I was discharged. She said my doctor, Dr. Graves, had told her to check on me and then call her and let her know how I was. The day after I was released after we went to the funeral home and made all of the arrangements we bought a card and dropped off at the hospital for the nurses that had been there for us and and saw us through it all. December 3 was a Thursday, that Monday we had her funeral. My grandmother had bought extra plots near my paternal grandfather's grave and gave us a plot for Madilynn. Right next to my cousin's baby who had also been stillborn a couple of years before. The cemetery is about a 3 hour drive from where we live. We opted to make the drive alone instead of riding with family members. We needed the time alone. We had a simple graveside service officiated by a pastor I had known since I was in kindergarten. After he concluded my aunt started to sing Amazing Grace and all that were present joined in. Throughout the service Jeremiah and I just started at the tiny casket and cried. Another thing that will always stick in my mind from that service, my grandfather, who is in his 80's was sitting behind us. I could hear him crying. I had only seen him cry one other time and that was when my grandmother passed. He has always been such a strong man. He was a soldier, a horseman, a hunter. It killed me that he was taking this so rough as well. After the service the pastor's church held a lunch for us in the basement. We all visited and everyone wanted to see the photos of our angel. My mom had taken the cd and gotten multiples of all of the pictures for us just in case something should happen to any of them. We keep them along with the cd and mementos in a firesafe. My mom has duplicates of the photos and cd in her safe so just in case something should happen we have backups. I used another set of the pictures and started a scrapbook. Whenever I started to get down in the dumps I would lock myself away and work on it. I have pregnancy pictures in there, every little thing I could think of to document that it all actually happened. I finished the scrapbook on my first Mother's Day. I was having a horribly rough time that day and worked on it basically the entire day. I felt a rush of relief when I finished it. Like then I could begin to heal because everything was documented. I look at that scrapbook frequently. I have photos of her headstone I need to add to it, then it will be truely complete. I also wrote a poem that Mother's Day. Also of rememberance. I will share it in another post in a couple of days. For now, it's time for another nights sleep, tomorrow we will be celebrating my grandfather's 89th birthday. Sunday we are taking him home and since he lives closeby it, we are going to the cemetery to visit Madilynn's grave.