To all my girlfriends who are grieving right now…please do NOT read this post. I am not having a good day and I just need to write about my heartaches or I will lay in bed all night thinking about them. This is how I get things resolved in my heart – I put my heart on paper and then often times it helps me start moving forward. The things I will write about though may not be good for you to read right now. The troubles that haunt me tonight do not compare to your heartaches. I don’t believe in apologizing for “lesser” pain as a general statement because we all hurt and it’s always valid to the one hurting. HOWEVER, at this moment I have several friends that are hurting on grand scales and I am afraid that this posting could feel very invalidating. I beg you not to read anymore of it. I am not real sure anyone should read this. There will be 3 types of viewers. Group A is grieving on a grander scale and this could be invalidating. Group B is not grieving and cannot relate so they may not understand AND they may not appreciate my graphic display of soul baring. Group C relates all too well and doesn’t want to go there. Is there anyone left? Maybe everyone should just skip this and recognize that sometimes this journal is simply therapeutic for me.

It started with the worry over the seizures. Before the afternoon was over though, there were two burdens I was carrying. One from today and one from four years ago. I’ll come back to the seizure issue later in the post but first I want to address the earlier story that is haunting my heart and robbing me of sleep tonight. This is going to be graphic. If you are still reading than you obviously ignored my previous warning. Consider this your last chance to bail out of this post.

Today I was talking on the phone with a friend. She is grieving a hurt I didn’t know she had until today. She had waited a few weeks to call and tell me because she couldn’t talk about it. I understand that. I won’t reveal her end of the conversation but something that we discussed has been causing tears to stream all day…with memories. (And to this girlfriend who has just figured out who she is – quit reading this).

Part of our conversation was a discussion over the loneliness of grieving babies that died before birth. Let me first preface all the things I am about to say with this. My intent isn’t to define suffering on a 1-10 scale. I am not saying that losing babies before birth is worse than after birth nor am I saying the opposite. I think it’s different grief. In one scenario you are mourning someone you didn’t get to know and you are mourning by yourself. In the other scenario you are mourning who you lost – someone you knew well – someone you miss every second of your day. Both are filled with grief but not the same kind of grief. My intent is not to compare. The thought of losing one of my born children is more than I can bare. Tonight I am isolating the first scenario because it’s what is on my heart. That is my only reason.

In discussing the loss of early babies, the conversation drifted into tiny little babies, where their spirits are, where their bodies are, how hard it is to not know where their bodies are. Why that is important to know. Why we mourn that.

Trying to be encouraging and uplifting, I started saying the first rational things that came to mind. I told my friend with complete sincerity that our babies are with the Lord. It doesn’t matter to them where their bodies are. They are healed and whole and safe. God will give them perfect bodies someday. The other mommy knew this already. I knew she knew that. She didn’t know that I was talking to myself though. She didn’t know that as I was talking I was picturing a four year old scene in my head. She didn’t know I was speaking from experience. Until I started to break. The conversation turned around on a dime. I had started out trying to comfort and ended up being the one sobbing my heart out over essentially the same issue that was bothering my friend (though our circumstances were different).

While I talked I kept seeing baby number six. Baby number one died as a result of being frozen. Baby number two died in my womb. This baby was absorbed by my body because his/her brother Tanner was still growing and my body knew it needed to continue the fight for Tanner’s sake. Tanner was baby number three. Babies four and five died in my womb in the second pregnancy – they died before my ultrasound. Baby number six was trying his/her best to hang on.

I was so excited to celebrate my second pregnancy. Once again my levels were so high and the Dr.s suspected that more than one of my three had survived to implantation. A few weeks later I started bleeding. The bleeding continued to get worse until one night I woke in a pool of blood. Jim took me to the ER and it felt like one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Jim and I walked across a dim ER parking lot and told each other that this was not supposed to happen.

I was bleeding heavily by the time I got there. The Dr. called a technician in to do an ultrasound and we were shocked to see one baby with a perfect little heart still beating. The Dr. told us that I had probably just lost one or two other babies that night but that this child still had a chance of survival. We left with hope. The Dr. said it would get better or it would get worse. It got worse.

Through the night and the whole next day I was writhing in pain in my bed. I was still bleeding. I was cramping terribly but I couldn’t take anything. It might hurt my baby. I pleaded with God and with my body. I felt that my body was killing my child. I cried and cried in bed because it felt like all the cramping was tearing my living child away from womb. I visualized the what was happening to my child with every contraction. In my heart I knew that the baby had endured too much. It couldn’t endure anymore. It was going to die. I felt that baby dying – ever moment of it. By 10:00 the next night, I was in my bathroom and I delivered that baby. I was only 7 weeks pregnant. You would think at that stage of pregnancy it would have been too early to tell. In this case it wasn’t. I felt the delivery of this one sac. I had probably lost the other two the day before but it was different. I wondered if they had died earlier and my body was expelling them later thus the difference. I don’t know.

In my hand I held a tiny sac. Inside it was a small form. Teeny tiny. I knew exactly what I was looking at though. My child. Most people wouldn’t have recognized what I saw. Most woman miscarrying a child at 7 weeks gestation would never even see the sac. I don’t know why God allowed me to see this child. I had been a crisis pregnancy counselor though and had pictures memorized of babies at early stages of development – including 7 weeks. It didn’t look like a baby yet but if I would have looked really close I would have identified more. I didn’t have the heart too. I called Jim in and void of emotion asked him if I was holding our baby. He said he didn’t know. It was a horrifying and surreal moment. Too much for either of us to take in.

I was cried out. My tears had run dry. I was in shock. I was in denial. If that was NOT my baby, maybe my baby still lived. What do I do with this tiny sac in my hand though? What does one do in this situation? I had to move past this moment somehow. I couldn’t contemplate all of it too long because my quandary would get worse. Not a single good solution came to mind. With a numb resolve, I did the unthinkable…I flushed my baby down the toilet. (Cry break).

Several months later I made the same decision again with baby number 9 or 10. Again I saw the tiny sac. This one was even tinier though and I couldn’t see the baby inside. I didn’t look real hard but I was pretty confident that again I held my baby. The babies died earlier though and I only saw one of the three in that pregnancy.

I almost never talk about that. I think it feels like my dirty little secret. I carry it that way. I tried to talk to Jim about in the car today and I just kept crying while trying to describe how I felt. He said “Someday you will have to forgive yourself for that.” (Not that he thought I NEEDED forgiveness…he was validating that I could not forgive myself).

I know that this isn’t an issue I “need” forgiveness on. I know God looks on me with compassion over this and I know my children will never think twice about it. It’s me that hasn’t gotten past that day. I didn’t know that it still haunted me so much until this past month. There has been a lot of grief in the lives of people I love lately and I have reflected more on my babies than in months prior. Each one of the babies I lost were equally significant but the child I saw put a face to death. Burned an image into my mind that has been slow to fade.

This evening I sat trying to determine why this hurts me so much. I think I know the answer. When you lose a child, as a mother you want to know in your heart that every moment you had to love that child, you loved to the fullest. You want to say good bye and I love you. You don’t have that opportunity when babies die before they are born. I have always grieved that I couldn’t even say good bye to my babies. That’s why I begged God to please let Ty live long enough for me to say good bye. I couldn’t stand to lose another child without saying “I love you, I’ll miss you, I’ll meet you in heaven”.

Baby number six burdens me with grief AND guilt though. With the other babies I didn’t have a choice about the resting place of their body. With this child I did. Flushing a baby down a toilet – even in its tiniest stages feels incredibly disrespectful and dishonoring. I am not saying it IS disrespectful and dishonoring – I am only stating how I FEEL about it. So I asked myself (and have asked myself) over and over and over…what could I have done?????

With my third pregnancy I asked Jim if we could have the babies tested should I “deliver” them again. I wanted answers. Jim about came unglued. No way would he allow that. It was his grief speaking. He couldn’t “dishonor” them by putting them in a container and taking them to the Dr. Ironic. I think part of my reason for wanting them to be tested was because taking them to the Dr. felt better than flushing another child down the toilet. As a matter of fact, I now remember screaming that across our bedroom at him one night. We were both mourning the same thing and didn’t know how to avoid it. I didn’t realize that then.

If I could redo that day, I would have put that baby in something beautiful. Maybe a silver heart box. I would have written a letter. I would have buried him or her on the mountain behind my mom and dads. I know this because I have imagined doing this many times though I have never told anyone that. The logical part of my brain tells me that it would not have made a bit of difference on the grand scope – on the eternal scope. Those babies aren’t suffering and God is not angry at me. I am still angry at me though. I think they should have had better. I know this isn’t reasonable. I could counsel myself about this too and tell me all the reasons I am being irrational. But when it comes down to it, two other mommies spent time this month telling me how they wanted to honor the bodies of their children and I didn’t want to understand that…because I understood all too well. Some things don’t have to make sense – they just are.

So that is the reason for some of my tears today (many of them actually) but not all. The seizure scare is making me cry too. See at first when I noticed the blank out’s, I laughed. It was cute that he got so absorbed he “left me a second”. Then they got a little worse and were more noticeable and I got a bit concerned. Then Barb educated me and I said NO WAY that is NOT what they are. He is fine. Then (as always) I researched. Then I stared wondering about the possibilities. Then I wrote about them.

This afternoon David took Zane and Zandi to see Ty’s pediatrician. While there, David and Ty’s Dr. started discussing Ty and David told him about the possible petit mal seizures based on the family rumor mill. David sent back word that I was to call the Dr. right away. I called him this afternoon and after describing what’s going on he said “Get him in to the neurologist right away. He is having seizures and we are going to want to get control of this.” I said “HOLD UP. I am not convinced of this. I think I might be able to talk him out of them therefore they may not be seizures. But on the other hand, sometimes I have to call more than once and sometimes they are short. If they are short how do I know if I called him out or if he was coming out anyhow?”. To this Ty’s Dr. replied “Exactly. And that is why you are going to go get him an EEG.”

That started to settle after I got off the phone. I still am holding on to hope that they are NOT seizures but right now I am less confident about this. Some might be thinking “why all the stress about MINI seizures” it could be much worse. And that is what scares me…if he is having seizures it COULD get worse.

I HATE the word “seizure”. I learned to hate it three years ago. The first memorial DVD I ever did for a child was for a little three year old girl named Leslie. She had a seizure disorder. The seizures progressed until her little body couldn’t function anymore. When I put the DVD together for her memorial service I cried and cried.

When Ty was born and I was told that he had a HIGH chance for seizures because of his birth trauma, hemorrhages, and PVL, I was soooo scared. How many times have I talked about NO seizures in these postings? Over and over I have pleaded for NO seizures. (And to Heidi – you KNEW I wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight over this. You have heard me say that no less than 1000 times).

The second memorial DVD was for Kambrie. Kambrie had Miller Dieker. Kambrie was doing well until her seizure activity heightened. Seizures started robbing Kambrie of many things. I remembered why I HATE seizures.

Then there is Landen…

So when I hear the word “seizure” right now it makes no difference what the context is. I see faces. Faces of children that I love. I hate what it has done and is doing. I don’t want this. I got a private email from a friend this week saying she was so mad she wanted to kick a wall. Not because she was angry at God, just angry at the situation. I get that way too sometimes and tonight I am just crying but if Ty’s EEG comes back abnormal I may kick a wall too.

There is hope. Ty may not have them at all. If he does, they may never get worse than they are right now and they may not cause him any difficulties. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to be medicated. The other scenarios though are haunting me tonight. I know too much about this and I know what to be afraid of.

So here it is… I feel sad. I feel discouraged. I feel frustrated. I feel scared.

God will not allow this without purpose. I know that. I trust Him. I have promised over and over that I will let God be God when I don’t understand and when it hurts. I plan to keep this promise. I am praying that God will give me courage if He says’s “yes” to this pain. I don’t trust me. I do trust God. God is good all the time. All the time God is good.

Lord – help me give this back to you. Help me embrace your choice as being best for Ty even if it is painful. I asked you to do what it takes in the lives of my boys even if it means pain. I won’t take that back tonight but I feel myself biting my lip because I want to discuss my agenda with you and this was not in it. Jesus be near. I just feel sad. I know that I shouldn’t mourn what I don’t know but it’s my way of honoring you…acknowledging worst case scenario first. I can live in hope after that…after I know that I won’t dishonor you with bitterness or anger if you say “yes” to pain. I feel like a weak and wretched woman tonight. I want to tell my baby I am sorry – I loved him or her and even though I KNOW he/she doesn’t need to hear I am sorry – I need to say it. I want to be stronger and not worry that your plan is going to be painful. I want to trust that it is good irregardless and leave my anxiety at your feet. I hate to fail and at this particular moment at 12:24 AM I see quite a bit of failure. I need to be humbled too apparently. If I am going to fail, help me fail forward Lord. Help me be like Ty. Amen

Psa 121:1 A Song of Ascents. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
Psa 121:2 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.
Psa 121:3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
Psa 121:4 Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
Psa 121:5 The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
Psa 121:6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
Psa 121:7 The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
Psa 121:8 The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

P.S. To those of you who I told NOT to read this and you couldn’t help yourself and read anyways. I am so sorry. I am publishing this hoping that it will help another mom but I take risk that it could cause grief too. I realize that I am ridiculously transparent but I think that is why people know they can share their grief with me – I’ll cry too. I am not ashamed of tears.