I get a lot of jokes thrown my way for being on my cellphone too much while driving. I am going to be honest and admit a huge thing about my love for the cellphone while I am driving; I need noise. Music is not the type of noise that I am speaking about. Music makes my mind think and stray to thoughts that I am trying to push aside or squelch because they are too painful. If a song from Casting Crowns comes on the radio and I am in just the right frame of mind I know that the tears will start flowing and the rest of my night will be toast. It has been six years since I lived what I refer to as my living nightmare. I truly thought that I would live out the rest of my time on earth just "getting by" without feeling this kind of heart ache again, but you know what...it doesn't go away. I don't say this to make you feel bad or to discourage those that have dealt with loss, but to be real.
There are times that if I reach far enough into my memory bank that my breath literally is knocked out of me. There are memories that I have about the day of my boys' birth that I wish I could take a time traveling machine and do all over again and change. I wish SO badly that I had not let fear become the best of me and had demanded the nurse to clean up my son and make him presentable so that I could hold him. I have shared a few snippets of this horrific experience on my blog, but I don't know if I have ever mentioned that at one point the hospital was VERY fearful that Kyle and I were going to file a lawsuit against them. I just read this blog from a fellow preemie mommy and it brought so many emotions up within me. I really struggled and prayed about the decision before moving forward.
About a month after Bronson was born a wonderful NICU nurse that was taking care of Bronson found me behind a closed curtain in a pool of tears. For some reason the events of Bronson's birthday were coming to the surface and I was reliving all of the horrifying details. As I shared this experience she immediately began to cry and asked me if it was alright for her to share this with her supervisor. Within the day I had several visits from higher management inquiring about my experience and asking me what I wanted them to do. There were several apologies and many promises that it would never happen again. My inner struggle was that I actually had a great deal of respect for the nurse that assisted us that day and even though she orchestrated the terrible events, I felt strongly that it was not her intentions and just because of poor training. I repeated over and over again that I just wanted them to fix their system so that this would never happen to another set of parents again. I was promised that they already had systems in place and that it shouldn't have happened in the first place. This is where they opened themselves wide to the possibility of a lawsuit. If a system was in place for how to deal with the loss of a baby, then why did Kyle and I get our baby presented to us in a bowl vs. a blanket. Why do I still struggle with the thought of seeing blue medical towels, metal bowls, or anything that remotely resembles abortion? Why did I literally bite the head off of an abortion demonstrator outside of office because I had flashbacks from my birth experience? I did NOT have an abortion and my stillborn baby should have NEVER been presented to me in a fashion that resembled anything like that. Here is the clincher...much like the experience of Jenny, from Life with Jack, the nurse who was with us for several hours after the birth of our sons, who prayed a Jewish blessing as we cried in our hospital room, and came to visit me in the NICU before realizing the pain she had caused us could not even look me in the eye when two years later I saw her in the hospital room of my friend before delivery.
I feel bad that she had to be disciplined. I feel bad that she might harbor guilt because of me, but I also still hurt. This was my baby. This was my birth story. This is the reason that I can't drive down a country road listening to the sound of my own internal thoughts for fear that I might break. I still have a broken piece of my heart that is only being held together by love and the knowledge that my savior is saving a place for me in His Kingdom.
