My Sweet Aiden

I have been dreading this next week just to be honest. Friday, January 23rd will be 2 years since I miscarried. When I say miscarried, some people just think of a minor passing of a baby, where the mother sometimes doesn't even know she's miscarried until she goes to the doctor and there's no heartbeat detected. That is a tragic loss in itself, and I don't mean to minimize the pain felt through it AT ALL. I'm just saying when I miscarried, I was the week before being out of my first trimester. I already had a little pooch and my jeans were definitely a little tighter than 3 months before. I had gained a few pounds and was looking forward to my morning sickness subsiding soon because the next week I would be out of the morning sickness period. I say all that to explain that I was far enough along that when it happened, it was the most AWFUL thing I've ever experienced, not an undetectable passing of a baby.

Little did I know when I woke up one cold Tuesday morning, while getting ready for work (where I now work again), my life would forever be changed in just a couple of hours. I woke up that morning with mild cramps. They seemed to get worse as I was getting dressed. My doctor's office wasn't open yet, so I went ahead and got ready and dropped Savannah off. As I was driving to work, I remember the cramps getting exceedingly worse. I planned to go on to work and then call my doctor at 8 am sharp and then them tell me to come on in then so they could check me and see what was going on. I tried not to panic is what I'm saying, and knew that I was right there close to my doctor's office as well.

I remember it being moments before 8:00 when I arrived at work and going up the elevator to the 3rd floor. I felt even worse by then. I thought, "I've just got to get to the doctor now." (My thoughts had changed this entire morning the worse I got to feeling, so yes, I was a little indecisive.) So, I decided to walk down to the second floor and tell the other secreataries that I had to go, but there wasn't time.

As I was huddled over walking down the hallway, because my pain had progressed so much by then (now knowing that it was contractions all morning, getting worse with time), my water broke. I looked down in shock and thought immediately "it is over." I knew my baby was going to die if not already. There is no way that a baby less than 20 weeks, not even hardly developed, could live. That was my first thought, that my baby was GONE: it was OVER.

I will never forget the horrific moments after that. I ran as well as I could downstairs (pardon the details, but it's apart of childbirth, so I'm over the modesty of it all) with amniotic fluid and blood continuing to come out, and crying, screaming, "NO! This can't be happening! I can't handle this! etc." I opened the office door and immediately told Deborah to take me to the hospital and we made our way to her car. We might should have called an ambulance, but we were right there near my doctor in Huntsville, and in a moment of chaos, she did what I asked and helped me into the car and rushed me there instead of arguing the point with me. (I am so thankful that she was there to help me that day.)

I've blogged about Deborah before and how special she is to me. We had gotten close while working there, but this bonded us immensely even more. I remember in all my crying and babbling in the car apologizing because her seats would be ruined! Even in all that, I was concerned about ruining her seats. She, of course, could've cared less. We got to the doctor and I had lost A LOT Of blood at this point. We had called my doctor on the way (NOT the one I go to now- Dr. Wheeler- he is wonderful!!) and told her exactly what had happened and she had me come to her office (which is connected to the hospital) despite all the blood loss and pain I was in. Deborah had to find a wheelchair and blanket to try and cover the blood, and wheeled me up. They took me back and I don't think they understood the severity of it until they saw me. They took me into an ultrasound room and the doctor came in and asked me some questions (by this time, I could barely talk because of the pain) and she simply patted my hand and said, "Well, this was just nature's way of taking care of a pregnancy that wasn't meant to be." If I would have had any strength in my body at all or in my coherent mind, I would have come off that table and given her a piece of my mind! Let's just I get in the flesh when I think back to that moment. How DARE you tell me that WHILE I'm laying here going through this, much less waiting til afterwards like it was no big deal.

So, she sent me over to the hospital and let me tell you in the nicest description possible (my husband and dad who had showed up by then, and Deborah, could vouch for me) that it looked like an animal had been slaughtered in that office. Looking back, I had lost so much blood and she said she still had patients to see and sent me over for them to prep me for surgery. By the time we got over there, I was passing clots as big as a baby itself and on the last one, the anthesiologist had enough and said, "Okay, put the doctor on the phone and let me tell her myself to get over here NOW." I am SO thankful for that anthesiologist! If he had not been there at that moment and made that call, there's no telling what the end result could've been. Nurses told us after I woke up that they see miscarriages everyday and even they were getting panicky and shaky.

There were 5-6 nurses working on me before the D&C and one I know was a Christian. During all the trauma, she had slipped out for a moment and then came back. Before they took me away to the D&C, she grabbed my hand and slipped something in it. It was a compressed nickel with an angel on it. She said she lost a baby, too, and she wanted me to have that because it had brought her comfort and that she would be praying for me. WOW is all I can say. "Thank you, Lord, for putting these people in my path as I look back and reflect on it all! You never left me or had forsaken me! Your presence, comfort and reminders that you would be there were there all along the way!"

So, after such a detailed post, that is where the name Aiden comes in. We felt with all our hearts that it was a boy, although they said the tissue was so thin, he didn't come out as a whole baby so there was no way to know. If it was a girl, though, we figured Aiden could be a girl's name, too, but I just loved the name and wanted to give him/her a name so they were real, and not just a fetus that some people might say you lost. He was a real, human, just too small, but with a heartbeat and body forming (Jeremiah 1:5).

I can't believe it's been 2 years, because honestly, that's when my story starts I feel like. Before that point, we were "normal" people. We had a daughter, good jobs, nice home and no real tragedy or problem had ever struck before. We thought, "that would never happen to ME." After January 23, though, life didn't seem so gentle and kind. I began to look at it as the RAW, painful thing it could sometimes be. The worse pain would came only months later, after I found out in March that I was pregnant again.

I hadn't even gotten back on birth control yet and was shocked. We didn't think it would ever happen like that. I remember being very SCARED, though, but after changing doctors (a MUST) we talked about the statistics of it happening again and I felt better. I did have some early on scares when I was pregnant with Tori, and they suspected I had actually lost a twin because of how severe the problems were and yet I had not miscarried Tori. I came to grips with the fact that I had lost 2 babies, but I had to still be strong for this other baby still inside my womb.

I remember praising Jesus, thanking Him for this life after our 20 week ultrasound revealing that all looked great and that we were expecting a baby GIRL!! It was Labor Day of 07 when we spent our day off painting the nursery. I knew I would be getting even bigger those last few months and wanted to be able to help with some things, so we painted and got it all ready that Monday. We already had the bedding from when Savannah was a baby, so it was easier to complete Tori's nursery this time. Little did I know that 3 weeks later, I would give birth to Tori 3 months early and so Tori's story begins there.

So when I say the last 2 years have been tiresome, trying and difficult, this is why. It seems like a whirlwind at times, and then when I journal like this, it seems like just yesterda and it is all still so clear again. There are MANY things I've questioned to God along the way like when I miscarried, I was 7 days away from having new insurance coverage so they didn't cover a dime of my surgery, hospital stay, nothing. We had been trying to get ahead financially, so not only had we lost our child, we have thousands in medical bills that racked up that we still make a monthly payment to. The same with Tori. She was a $3 million dollar baby. :) Now, I am very well aware that money is not the most important thing here, I'm just saying for a young couple who's trying to make it and get their finances in order, not only have we been hit with the blow of losing 3 children, but all the financial pressure that comes along with it. Hope that makes sense....

I KNOW, KNOW, KNOW God has a plan for me, though. There is a reason why I didn't bleed to death on January 23, 2007. There is a reason why I didn't die on September 20th when they were worrisome for my life and had to do an emergency c-section. Our worship leader said something last week that made me think about this time in my life and what God has in store for me. He said, "It's not so much about the destination sometimes, but about the journey along the way."

Maybe its not how many children I will or won't have or what I will have accomplished at the end of my life, but how I've used tragedies, flaws and struggles along the way. Will I use them for good in ways like encouraging other mom's like Reed's mom, who lost her son? Will I agree to minister to other ladies who are faced with some of the same things I've experienced? I want the answer to be YES. I want to be so sensitive to what God wants and how He can make a materpiece out of what seems to be a mess.