Time will heal

Six weeks ago on a Tuesday evening my life changed in a way I could have never imagined. Six weeks ago I gave birth to my second son, and nothing went as planned. As my husband and I anxiously waited at the hospital for labor to progress, we were unknowingly approaching this life-altering moment. I labored for nearly 18 hours and in the last hour before my son was born, my uterus ruptured and my son was deprived of oxygen. I felt the pain. It didn't feel like the labor pains I had felt with my first son, but this only being my second birth, I had no idea that it wasn't normal. As the nurses and doctors were telling me it probably meant it was time to push, I think I began to feel deep down that something wasn't right. I could not push through this pain. Not only that, I was losing strength by the minute, and losing a lot of blood.

I was rushed into an emergency c-section, put under general anesthesia and my son was born not breathing. I believe that's when the doctors discovered my uterus had ruptured. They had to make a decision whether to remove it or repair it, and they were fortunately able to repair it. My son was rushed to the NICU and then later onto Children's Hospital Oakland where he was put under the cooling cap to try to reduce the inflammation in his brain. Unfortunately the EEG and another test that I can't remember the name of showed that he had no brain activity.

I woke up several hours after he was born after having surgery, a transfusion and several tests. The doctors told me what had happened to me and all I could say was "the baby?" I was told he was sick, but I was too medicated to really understand or feel anything. I woke up again several hours later in the ICU, where my doctors began to visit and the hospital's social worker visited and I began to understand that things were not looking good for him. I don't know if I understood yet that he might not survive. They told us they were transferring him back to our hospital so we could spend time with him, since there wasn't anything more Children's Hospital could do. I waited, still heavily medicated and not absorbing what all of this meant.

He arrived later that afternoon and I was finally able to meet him. It shattered my heart to see him. He was perfect in every way. He looked like a sleeping baby. Beautiful and peaceful. You would never know how sick he was except for the ventilator and the monitors he was hooked up to. I got to hold him, and just sobbed and sobbed. My brain was not processing what was going on, but my heart already knew. I was going to lose my baby.

We knew he had fetal acidosis and that was shutting his body down. We could do things to intervene, but the bottom line was that he was essentially brain dead so if we kept him alive, he would almost certainly live in a vegetative state with ventilators, feeding tubes and all sorts of support to keep his body functioning. That seemed so cruel to him, and selfish of us. We knew the right thing to do was remove the ventilator and let him go on his own, and we spent some time with him before we made the decision to do this.

During the time we had with him, we read him stories, held him, changed his diaper, snuggled with him and tried to show him all the love we possibly could. We brought grandparents by and his older brother Charlie to meet him. In a moment that broke my heart even more, I saw the pain on Charlie's face as he briefly held his little brother's hand. I would have never guessed that at 20 months old, he would have any idea what was going on and maybe it was just my imagination, but I swear he knew and he felt it.

We also finally gave him a name the first night that I met him. I felt so strongly that I just needed to meet him before deciding. Christopher had always been a frontrunner name, and as he lay in his bassinet his left hand was curled into a "C". The doctors and nurses told us that the way he was holding his hands and arms was all part of the posturing of a brain damaged baby, and maybe that's all it was. But it felt like a sign from him.

It was Friday night around 5:00 when we decided to take the ventilator out. He gave us nine more hours before he passed. He lived for just over three days. There are times when I still don't believe it, and there are days when my heart and whole body ache with the sadness and emptiness. You expect to lose your parents. You don't expect to lose your children. You don't expect to ever have to pick up your child's ashes or have a memorial service for them. I still don't know how to process this. I never imagined this would be my story, not in a million years, yet here we are trying to keep it together day by day and process this loss.

I'm also trying to find any possible silver lining in this. One is that I have Charlie. He keeps me looking ahead and laughing, even through the tears. If it wasn't for him, I don't know how we would survive. Another is that I actually lived--ruptures can be fatal to both mom and baby and I know I was lucky, even though we still have no idea why this happened. Lastly, the doctors saved my uterus and we can try to have another baby next year. Another baby will never "replace" Christopher, nor will it fill the emptiness in my heart. That spot that he carved out was always meant for him and will always be his, until the day I die.



There's a phrase in a book we read to Charlie frequently that captures everything I feel about both of my sons:

"I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living,
my baby you'll be."

Rest in peace, my sweet Christopher. My angel. Time will heal, but my world is forever changed.