That night as I entered the hospital the thoughts that went through my head were so willy nilly, so completely foreign, and I still felt like I was a totally different person. I am assuming that this is what people mean when they talk about an out of body experience. I just felt so divorced from the reality that it was me experiencing all of this. The nursing staff was so incredibly sweet. I was surrounded by an amazing sense of stillness. As the nurse that would take care of me that night started talking about what would happen (followed by a bajillion more questions that I had to make decisions about), and as she told me of the process that we would go through emotionally I remember saying... "just tell me what to do, what are the best things to do so that somehow I come of out of this emotionally healthy." I had seen so many people go through a traumatic experience like this and get stuck. I was terrified of that happening. I remember she was so kind as she said "You make the decisions that you can handle today, and you try to think of the things that you don't want to regret not doing." That my dear friends is a pretty tall order for someone who's life has just been devastated. But, as she talked me through, as she told me what other people had done or had regretted not doing, it helped me begin to decide how I wanted to proceed.
They started labor... the nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural. I said no. All I could think in my head was if I could feel the pain of this labor maybe it would somehow lessen the pain from my heart.... and I can bear it somehow. I laugh now.... only because when the first real labor pains hit, I begged for an epidural and got one. There was no way that the pain in my body was going to take the pain from my heart. At some point that night everything I had learned about grieving in my Death and Dying class in college started coming back to me. I remember saying to God... I am going to lose so much time dealing with this. Now, to be honest, I am to this day not sure what it was I felt like I was going to lose time from.... but, I knew I was going on an unplanned side trip from life for the next year at least. I remember thinking "How do I deal with this, and help my boys deal with this?" "How do I keep moving forward, because they need me to?" "God, right now I don't even think I can breathe." To say that in a situation like that your brian becomes a quicksand of random, irrational thoughts is the biggest understatement I have ever made.
As labor progressed I became violently ill. It was a long night. Early Tuesday morning, April 18, 2006 I threw up violently and during that time gave birth to my son. At first it was just my husband and I in the room. He was holding the trash can while I threw up. I thought that my catheter had come out. He went to get the nurse, and she realized that it was more than my catheter. As other nurses and a doctor came in (it was the on call doctor, my sweet doctor had taken his vacation that week) and all the normal pandemonium that ensues during a delivery came with it. There were points that were so normal, I had been in labor and delivered two healthy baby boys before. I knew what my body does, I knew what came next... and yet, this was such a monumentally different experience. I remember that I had struggled all night with can I look at my son or not. Can I hold him? Will I freak out? Will I cry? What will he look like, feel like, smell like... can I handle this? I had not been able to make that decision in my heart. I was terrified. The nurse kept saying "He is beautiful" and at that moment I knew I had to hold my sweet baby. As they placed him in my arms, he was indeed beautiful. He looked like he was asleep and was the spitting image of his older brother, Curt. All 2 lb. 15 oz of him was perfect. My sweet Owen Luke, the child that I was sure was a surprise gift from God sent to help our family focus on the positive, good things in life... and help us move forward from all the brokenness... was in my arms, but he was not alive.
We spent four hours with him. Owen's father and my mother bathed his little body and the nurse brought us some special little outfits that volunteers crotchet for mothers and babies that have gone through this. We dressed him, wrapped him in a blanket and held him. We took pictures with him (thank God for my sister who took pictures through her tears.) I made the decision to not let my boys see him or hold him as I was afraid it would be more than they could handle. I thank God now for those precious pictures. We all have those as a reminder of the child we no longer can see.
Finally, the time came for him to go to the morgue. And that is when my heart shattered completely. As I write this I have tears in my eyes... because letting him go and not being able to go with him was the hardest thing I have ever had to do... followed closely by having to actually bury his little body in the ground. In Part 3 I am going to tell you how surviving Owen's death gave me the strength that I would need years later to make another very difficult decision in my life.
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