The Nursery and Heartbreak

This weekend I washed, folded and put away all my baby boy's clothes and blankets.

It wasn't like last time. Last time, I had set aside an entire weekend to do this. I relished it. I washed the clothes, looked at each one, smelled them after they came warm out of the dryer, folded, re-folded, and organized them in my baby girl's nursery.

This time, I was methodical, detached, matter of fact. I barely looked at the outfits. I put them in the drawers, in no real particular order. There was no re-folding. I shut the drawers, and felt the vague sense of panic I always feel when doing anything to prepare for this baby.

Earlier yesterday, Dave and I went to Babies R Us and found some blankets, since of course all the blankets I had for Georgie were pink, purple or otherwise girly. We bought some nice little boy blankies, and some other gender neutral items.

I had on my list that we needed a GroEgg thermometer, which gives us the temperature of the room and tells us whether we're in the appropriate range for our baby. It was part of my small anti-SIDS item list, which I never would have conceived of if my first baby hadn't died.

As we were wandering the store trying to find the thermometer, we kept running across other items that we weren't sure if we needed or not. A couple of times Dave asked me if we needed such-and-such, and I just shrugged my shoulders. And I began to feel so angry. Angry that there I was again, at Babies R Us, buying items for a baby that isn't here yet. Panicked that he is going to die. Angry that my first baby did die. That I have to live with that everyday, that every morning I wake up to that reality. Angry that I can't use any girl items for a boy who likely never would have existed if his sister had made it. Angry that Dave and I aren't old pros at this whole parenting a baby thing, as we should be by now, with a 13 month old in tow.

Compound that with the fact that on the way to Babies R Us, I was checking my BLM blogs, and I read about a family in Alaska. A family in Alaska who had a stillborn little boy last year due to some defects. They were expecting their rainbow baby girl, and when I read the post, titled with her name "Evelynn Augusta Rasmussen," I read it with anticipation of learning her birth story.

But no, the post told me that their little rainbow baby girl died two days after she was born.

Heartbroken, shattered, for these parents doesn't even begin to describe how I felt, how I feel.

I have been reeling since yesterday. As I thought of what these parents are going through right now, again, I couldn't help but be brought back to last March, when all I could feel was death, the death of my child, and my own desperate pleading to God to take me too. The intensity of the sorrow, the horror, the pain, the darkness, it comes back to me even now. It frightens me to no end. I have told Dave many times there is no way I can re-live what we had to endure last March, what we still endure. It might be the fatal blow to any sense of hope I have left. To read of a family who has gone through what we did, and now goes through it AGAIN with their second child, and to also have no living children, just brings me to my knees.

I don't understand it. And it frankly pisses me off. Why? WHY would God let this happen again? What is the point of all of this? Yeah, yeah, I get it, we live in a fallen world, God doesn't control our choices, right. But doesn't God make choices too? What choice was made when my daughter's life support system was made with a huge flaw, when her umbilical cord was basically not attached to her placenta? Who do we blame then? What about here, when a stillbirth, which is one of the most horribly devastating things I can possibly fathom, happens, and then the next baby dies after only two days? What then?

And what about these parents, who are now enduring another funeral, burial plans instead of coming home plans for their rainbow baby? I HATE IT.

I woke up in the middle of the night sad, teary-eyed and panicked, thinking of this family. Reaching with my heart across the miles and wondering if this mama was awake, and thinking that she probably was. And I could feel her despair. My heart ached for my girl, ached for this mother and father, for their two children that are gone.

I am so sad and so angry for this family I can hardly stand it. It makes me want to scream and break things. It makes me want to yell at people who don't know anything of this reality that not only does it happen, but that it happens twice to some people. And these people don't deserve it, these people are good, kind people, who do everything right and only want to bring home their child, alive.




This is the kind of thing that just crushes my spirit. Please keep this family in your prayers, though I even question those right now.