Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Trish

Mom to Michael

Born and died December 22nd,2007

Canada

It was Dec 22^nd 2007, we were 24 weeks pregnant… and I’d been having some spotting off and on thru out the pregnancy… We have an older son, who was the dream pregnancy… I mean, so dreamy in fact that I didn’t even know I was pregnant for the first 4 months of it! Scary I know, but I’ve always been a little off when it came to the whole regular period deal… and low and behold, came to find out we were preggers!! (A side bar note… we didn’t really think we could have kids! My hubby had childhood leukemia) 

Anyway, all is well, Brady is happy and healthy… and so when we thought to start trying for a sibling for him, we didn’t really think much about it…we just jumped in, and started having some fun! It took us a while, but finally, we learned we were expecting again! This time though, I just didn’t feel the same, I mean, I know I’m older, and I thought it was because I was working full time, and chasing after a very busy little boy… but something was bugging me about this one. – So much in fact that I talked to my Doctor about it, and scheduled a CVS (Chorionic Villus Sampling). I had to fly down to Vancouver to have this done, as Prince George, doesn’t offer it up here, so off I went, I had my mother meet me there, and she doted on me the whole time we were there… and enjoyed our time together, seeing how we live so far apart these days! So, had it done, had the normal spotting afterwards, and chalked it up to the testing… so I took it super easy, and tried to rest and relax, but still something wasn’t right. 

This went on for a couple of months, so the Doctors assured me it wasn’t from the test, but I often wonder… as does my hubby, we’re we wrong to do the test? The results came back, he was healthy, no Downs, and I tried to get into the whole pregnancy bit, but for some reason, I just didn’t feel the same, as I had about Brady… my hubby didn’t either. So, I took some time off work, tried to get the spotting under control, I mean, I was feeling him move around now, and that part of it was exciting, but I finally told my Mom and Sister In Law, that I was having some bad feelings about the pregnancy, and they told me it was my hormones, to relax, and everything would be ok. 

So, it’s Christmas time, and now I’ve been on bed rest for a week, and my father in law is staying with us for the holidays, my mother in law was due to come up in a day or two, to make the holiday festivities…. I went to bed that night, with a wicked headache, and really sore back, my hubby had stayed downstairs to give me some peace and quiet and keep our son busy, and get him into bed…. They both fell asleep on the couch, and the horrible nightmare began for us. I had no clue what was happening, you see I ended up with a C-section for my first pregnancy, so had no clue what true labor was like, only to learn that dreadful night, what it was all about. 

I went into the bathroom, and saw that I was bleeding quite heavily now… as well as passing some very large clots. I know, gross right…. But it all seemed to be happening so fast, but at the same time, it was like time had come to a standstill. I kept going back and forth from the bathroom to my bed, with really bad back pain, cramps, and I finally clued in to what was happening. As I was laying in bed, I was crying, and just wanted to die. I had no idea of the time, or how long this had taken, but I had lost a lot of blood. I thought, well, no problem, I’ll jump into the shower, and get cleaned up, and I’d get my hubby up, so he could to take me to the hospital. 

Yeah, that didn’t really work out, when I got in there I felt the need to go to the bathroom, so I moved onto the toilet, and it was there, after only a couple of pushes, and a lot of blood, I pulled our baby, Michael into my arms. He was covered in blood, but so perfect. He had 10 fingers, 10 toes, and I swear he had my father in laws nose!  - But he was too small to live at this point, and he was gone when he came out. I didn’t know what to do, I was losing so much blood, and at this point, I’m now completely out of it, and woozy… and don’t even remember screaming, but my father in law woke up, and ran and got Mike to come upstairs to help me.

I don’t remember the bathroom, or that I had bled all over the floor… I do remember Mike coming in, and seeing the chaos, and me crying, and holding Michael, and I’m covered in blood. He tells me, I was grey, the then color of our bathroom. Mike didn’t even have a chance to really see Michael, he jumped right into helping me “mode”, and quickly came to realize, he couldn’t do it by himself. So I was the lucky winner of an ambulance ride to the hospital! I will say, the EMT’s that came to the house were absolutely wonderful. She took Michael, and wrapped him up in a blanket, and told me how beautiful he was, and that it just wasn’t his time to come into this world… and then they got to work on getting me stable enough to get to the hospital.  I have no memory other than that, the rest my hubby has had to tell me, like the Ambulance having to pull over to work on me because I’d gone into shock. Or that my father in law, had to spend 4 hours cleaning up the bathroom, cause it looked like a murder scene. (Man, I love that man for his total love and support) – plus take care of Brady who, he’d had to stay home with, as they took me to the hospital.

When they got me stabilized, and more coherent, I finally got to see how this was deeply impacting my hubby, because he’d been thrown into support, and help mode, he hadn’t had the chance to even process what had happened. Then it hit him like a tonne of bricks. Our world, our future life, with the two sons that we had been planning, came to a screeching halt. In one evening, our family dynamic would never be the same.

The nurses at the hospital were great, they brought Michael back to us bathed, and dressed, and we got to hold him, and say our goodbyes. We had a blessing done, and said a short prayer, and named him after his Daddy…  Man, he was so small… then we had to make some arrangements for his cremation. Mike had to go and make the calls to our families, and let them know what had happened, I truly don’t know if I could’ve been the one to do that, even thinking about that today, makes me thank my lucky stars for him.

I was released just in time for Christmas!! Can’t say that I was really in the spirit of things, but for our son’s sake, Mike and his Mom and Dad worked hard on making the holidays as normal as possible. I slept most of the time, and tried to recover, and grieve… why does God let things like this happen? I wish I knew his plan?? I like to think that Michael was so special that God needed him for much bigger purposes than this world did. There has to be some reason why this would happen, why I would have to make cremation arrangements for my son?

I got the call from the funeral home about 2 weeks later that the Michael's remains were ready for pick up, so I went and picked him up. What a surreal moment, I took the box into my hands, and walked back out to my vehicle, and I’m not sure why, but I belted the box into the front seat. Thinking back on that now, I have no idea why I felt the need to put the seat belt on the box, but I did, and I called my hubby to let him know that I had picked him up, and that I didn’t know what to do now? I sat for about an hour in the parking lot, trying to will myself to drive home, but I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing? What do you do now, with the ashes of your dead son? After a lot of talk, and some thought, we finally decided that we would spread his ashes at my hubby’s favorite place in the whole world. We did that the next summer, we made it a trip, and we took both our son’s, and we did a family trip. I wish I could say that I don’t grieve anymore, but I do. In fact I swear he comes to visit once in awhile! Just to check on his siblings.. and I say that cause my son, not long after the loss, he came into our bed one morning, and he’s laughing, so I asked him what’s up, what’s so funny… oh nothing mom, I was just playing with my “brover” for a while, but he’s gone now. I took one look at my hubby, and burst into tears… 

Our story does have a happy ending…. We ended up getting pregnant again, and on Feb 5^th, 2009 we welcomed Madison into our family, a happy, healthy, chunky little girl… Tankalina as her bro lovingly refers to her! There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of Michael… but I wear a beautiful angel pendant on my neck in honor of our short time together, and am happy to say I’m the mother of two great kidlets, and one angel baby.

Trish blogs at http://trishfouquet.blogspot.com/ 

You can contact her at trishfouquet71@gmail.com