Memories from Birth Suite 315: My Little Sister

November 25, 2013

*I've been working on a memoir and I'll use this for it.  It's one of the many memories I have from the birth of my son and it's a sweet story of the power of family and my younger sister Heidi. 

I slowly woke up from surgery, my world a fog.  Was this a horrible nightmare?  Am I magically in my bed and it was all a bad dream?  I see surgeons and nurses surrounding me.  I black out again.  Then I remember seeing Darren standing over me.  “Did you see him?” I ask.  I hear my voice echoing every word I said.  “I held him,” he replies.  “Did he look normal?” “Yes.” Although I don’t remember it, Darren told me we had this same conversation over twenty times and that each time he said my reaction was the same.  I would hold his glance and smile and say “ya?” in a really soft, surprised, and happy tone.

Before I was fully awake, they brought my dream, my hope, my love to me wrapped in a tiny white blanket with blue strips.  His face was perfect.  His 1 pound 3 oz body was cold, but everything was there.  I held his hand. I stared at his face.  I saw my husband in him and I saw me.  My biological child that we had endured over 11 fertility treatments for, that we had prayed for, that we had celebrated and rejoiced for.  Dead, yet overwhelmingly beautiful.

I know all moms feel the same.  They look at their creation and admire and "ew and ah" and are convinced their child is perfect and cute and wonderful.  But Jude was.  Yes, he is my son, but yes, he truly was the most precious little face I had ever laid eyes on.  Different family members visited throughout the day and some held him while others handled the situation the way I would-out of respect they took a peek at Jude who lay lifeless in his cradle; but holding him wasn’t the right choice for them.  I would have responded the same way.  His little body quickly turned red as 21 week year old infant’s skin is still transparent.  Death is ugly and uncomfortable.  I was okay with how each family member responded in their own comfort zone.

But, there is a memory etched in my mind that will never ever leave me.  It involved my sister.  Heidi has always been my best friend and I adore her.  Often times in this infertility struggle we can’t talk much about it-she has a beautiful son and was careful during her pregnancy to treat me tenderly.  Many times my sadness is too much for her to bear and hear and she herself shuts done in sadness for me- while other friends can allow me to talk about things forever and discuss it.  It hurts Heidi too much so we don’t go there often in our conversations.  But what she did the day Jude was born was the most meaningful gesture anyone could have ever done.

Upon hearing the news of his delivery, her and her husband rushed to the hospital.  I was in my bed, in the room with my parents and Heidi came bursting through the doors, almost in a sprint.  Many people had tried to offer me their condolences, tell me “how sorry” they were, touch me, check in with me.  But not Heidi.  Without question she went up to my child and picked him up like he was a normal baby.  She carried him to a chair and held him close to her face and stared at him through sobs.  “He is perfect” she cries.  Since he was so young and fragile I had been treating him like a piece of glass.  Not her.  Heidi flopped him around like he was her own child, a real child,  and cried over him.  “He is my nephew,” she cries, “he could have been mine.”  Heidi was loving Jude with her whole heart as I carefully watched from my bed.

Anyone who is a mom understands the high one gets when someone else compliments your child.  All moms want their child to be loved and adored by everyone.  Here I am, completely desperate, rock bottom in a sterile hospital room with a stillborn and my sister, who hasn’t even acknowledge me yet, is in the corner, loving my son.  She wasn’t scared of him.  She wasn’t distant.   She wasn’t weirded out by his small red body.  She held him close and admired him in a way that I knew was purely from the heart.  As Jude’s mom, this did wonders for me; although is time with us was cut way too short, for the first time in my life I got to experience that feeling moms live for-someone to praise your child. I got to feel pride in my son.  I got to feel the high of someone else telling me he was wonderful.  To me, my child is beautiful.  To me, he is not scary.  He is not just a dead body, he is my son-and Heidi expressed that to me in a stunningly way.  Her whole visit wasn’t about poor Holly, it was about the loss of a beloved baby. She didn’t attempt words of encouragement or stories of people that overcame this.  She just loved him. After crying, she laid him back in the crib and left, still without saying anything I remember to me.   I have never loved her more.

I keep replaying so many scenes from that wretched day that my healthy baby boy was forced to be born.  There are so many things that happened that no mom should ever have to hear, see, decide, and experience.  I’m haunted by the horror of what went down; but then the memory of Jude’s aunt, her tenderness, her untamed cuddling, her tears of genuine love and deep sorrow over my son?  I will never forget that.