Dreaming

Was it all a dream?  It is a thought I keep fighting as I struggle with memories.  Days creep on and time grows further from when I last kissed my son goodbye.  The amount of days I saw his beautiful face is something I can count on one hand.  The amount of time I bonded with him, got to know him and felt his movement is about 4 percent of my lifetime, and grows less every day that I spend here.  As I think of the time I had with him memories slowly fade into a different part of my brain.  Now when I remember him it feels more like a dream, a movie I watched.  How has the precious time I spent with my son turned into something that feels more distant from my reality.  

I wouldn't say I moved on with my life. But I have continued it.  I lost my baby.  Said goodbye to my son.  It ripped me to pieces yet I am still here, it did not break me.  I continue to pursue a positive future for myself and my family and time races on and sadly that means my days spent without my son only grow.

I have his pictures throughout my house, I use to stand there and stare at them for so long, never knowing the amount of time that passed.  Now I am here running by them on my way to one of a million places.  My life is speeding on and I feel like I am leaving Emery in the dust.

Every night I think of him before bed.  I hope that pictures thoughts and memories will make me dream of him, but somehow my mind wanders in my sleep to much less satisfying dreams.

Looking at his baby books my heart breaks.  It is not fair that I have it all memorized, it is not fair I dont get to keep adding new pictures, and milestone dates.  It is not fair that I am the only one who ever looks at them.  

It is such an awkward world living in a place where you lost your child.  With my daughter people asked to see new pictures, to see her baby books.  But with Emery it seem like I am in a private world no one speaks about.  There are times when I feel like the only person in the world to remember him.  I am not unrealistic, I know that a mother will always care more about their child then the rest of the world, but I feel as though he never existed.  It is so funny how much it means to me when someone mentions him.  If they say they thought of him, or tell me about a dragonfly they saw.  If they tell me they read my blog or like a picture I posted.  I dont need him to have changed your world, but its nice to it be acknowleged that he existed.  Especially when I myself am feeling like it wasn't real.

I can never change the fact my son will never be back into my life.  I cant change that instead of making new memories I am praying the handful I have doesnt slip through my fingers.  There are pictures I cant share, memories I cant explain, its something no one will ever quiet understand.  Even in his baby book I had to edit out some of my favorite picture of him.  Having a baby with a physical deformity is a hard thing for an outsider to grasp.  In my eyes he was perfect from head to toe but I understand that he doesn't fit the standard for "normal".  If I could make my son be healthy and here I would.  But at the same time I would never want to change him, and make him something that wasnt who he is.  Because I think he was still perfect.

That is how I remember him, perfect.  It doesnt mean I imagine an alternate reality where he had the bones in his head, actually the opposite, I remember every curve of his face, every piece that was there.  It may not be what the world expected but every bit of him was amazing.  

I wish it felt real.

I wish that I had more time with him.

I wish time would have been different so he had been here more then a fraction of my life.

I wish forever wasn't so long.

I wish my son was here, crawling around my house.

I wish I could be cuddling him.

Carrying to term

Yesterday was when Emery should have been 5 months.  As the beginning of our 5th month since he was born starts I am starting to write a paper on fatal birth defects and on carrying to term.  I was so blessed to have someone mail me some books that I had wanted to read that would assist me in my paper.  I picked up a book last night and started reading. This book was called I Will Carry You.  It is a book written by the family of a singer of the group Selah.  This band had a song, named the same of the book that helped carry my through the toughest days of my pregnancy.  As I started reading the book, not very far into it was "diagnoses day"  As she started to describe what it felt like to be sitting in that room, to hear the words "your baby cannot survive". I was done.  What a total fail in making any progress researching my paper.
I read her story and was remembering my own diagnoses day.  I know the date, I know the time, coming up on almost a year after I can tell you exactly how each minute progressed.  It is a moment in time burned into my brain, the feeling of knowing that you are helpless at saving your childs life.  It is a time when you are presented with an overwhelming decision.  Do you let your childs life play out day by day until whenever their time runs out? Or do you take the doctors advice and either induce or terminate now.  Knowing that it doesn't matter anyway.  When faced with the decision, some people know from the minute they are asked what there decision will be.  For others though this is a tremendous decision, one that cannot be walked into lightly since the wrong one could be filled with a lifetime of regret.  For us when we heard the news my head began spinning.  In a way I felt like I failed.  I have never been one to handle failure well and when I felt like I had failed my child I wanted to run away and never return.  Problem was, how do I run away when what I would be running from was still growing inside me.  He went with me, every direction I turned he was there.  The other side of me was already completely attached, knowing he was my first son.  How could I end his life?  How could this decision be up to me??  As time inched on and our families all left, Randall and I had time to sit and talk about it, weigh the options.  Very quickly it became apparent that terminating had far less benefits then to letting the pregnancy play out.  As far as we could tell benefits to terminating were to end this tragedy much faster, and to not have to go through a pregnancy where the happy questions you get asked (when are you due?  what are you having?...) are ended with a sad reply.  As we looked at what termination meant, it was a very selfish option.  It had nothing beneficial for our child, it was all about us.  Carrying to term on the other had benefited us both.  I wont lie and say that it was an easy road to travel, and maybe it isn't for everyone.  But I know I made the best decision, one I will never grow to regret.  If we continued the pregnancy we got to hold our son, to see his face and take pictures.  We would be able to meet him, set our minds at ease about who our son was.  We would learn of his personality while I was pregnant, deciphering kicks and punches into opinions.  We could make his entire lifetime one filled with incredible love and strength, we could give our son a birthday.
I know now looking back on it that I would have regretted every day after terminating.  Holding my son gave me peace, gave me closure.  Though sometimes I look at our days and think about the things we "should" be doing right now.  I can say without a doubt I am proud of everything we did for HIM and so very proud of the fighter we were given.