our baby

In some ways, I'm very thankful that this baby we lost wasn't a girl. I think that would have been harder on both Hubby and I. I'm also grateful that God gave me the sense to ask to see him. I don't think we would have remembered anything from the chaos of the emergency room.

However, I was a bit surprised by hubby's reaction - I hadn't realized how hard this was on him.

After the nurse left with the baby, I looked over to see him sitting in his chair with tears running down his face. (It was the first time in 15 years of marriage that I had seen him cry.) I convinced him to come sit on the bed with me and just put my arms around him. What a sad, bittersweet moment - not really knowing how to comfort someone who is feeling the same way you do, but grateful at the same time to feel more connected with him.

A loss like this is hard on a woman because she's been reminded or been thinking hundreds of time a day about the little life inside her and then it's somehow just gone. It's hard on a man because he has to deal with a death and then watch his wife go through some scary stuff on the physical side of it. It's also very difficult to kiss someone goodbye going into surgery, helpless as to what the outcome will be.

The same nurse came into my room later that afternoon with a little memory box. She took footprints of our baby and pictures of him in a little sac/cocoon. There were poems and pins of little hands and feet in the box, along with a little white blanket and the sac he wore during the picture. I'm not sure how many times I'll go back to look at it - it's painful to see, but I'm still grateful to have it.

Here is the little guy - he died at 16 weeks and weighed 1.2 ounces and was 4 inches long. The first picture shows how big he was in comparison to my lens cover. The second is the one the nurse took. The third is of his footprints.







I haven't been able to bring myself to naming him yet - that makes things so much more final for me and I'm not quite ready for all of that. The pain of this loss is too fresh and my emotions too unstable to go there yet. Soon, I hope.