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Loss

Losing a Child or a Loved One

By TarraPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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What the NICU gave me when I lost my son

Losing someone you love isn’t exactly what you plan on happening in your life. You can’t plan on losing someone or prepare your heart and mind to cope, especially when it’s your child. You always imagine that you would go before your child. That’s how our minds are programmed, right? Well, not for everyone.

I lost my child a month ago. Two weeks before that, we found out via ultrasound that he had a rare defect that effects 1 in 14,000+ babies. How do you wrap your mind around that? We asked the questions we needed to, such as: “what will his value of life be?” “What is his survival chances?” “Is it operable?” “Will he make it to term?” Well, our answers weren’t at all what we’d hoped for. It wasn’t operable, his value of life was zero, and his chance at survival was zero. My son wasn’t going to make it. I kicked myself. I was like, is this my fault? Could I have done something differently? Is this going to happen again?

Well, the doctors reassured me that this wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t prevent this from happening. It was just seriously an unfortunate thing. Whereas usually this would’ve been genetic, my son was just seriously unfortunate. Well, from that day we had so many people from all over the country praying. Praying for a miracle. For something... meanwhile, I was in denial that anything was wrong. I couldn’t bring myself to understand that something was wrong. I felt him kick. I felt him roll. I felt him stretch.

We had another ultrasound a few weeks later to confirm that he was most certainly not going to make it. I was so angry because the doctors said that besides what’s wrong with him, he’s completely healthy. And that if they could operate, he would be the healthiest baby ever. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for us or for my son. They couldn’t operate. And the chance of him even making it to term was very unlikely. And little did I know, I’d be delivering him a week from that day.

You really don’t ever imagine having your baby... and him being alive for just 10 minutes to send him to a funeral home that same day. You question everything; you’re even scared to try again because you don’t want the same thing to happen again. And even the journey to get through losing someone is so hard.

For those who have lost a child or even a family member or any other loved one, it gets easier. It may not look like it right now, but it will. You’re going to go through all kinds of stages. Me personally (only being a month out), I’ve gone through anger, sadness, uncontrollable laughter, crying, denial, and confusion. It repeats; some days I wake up not wanting to get out of bed. Other days I wake up feeling like I could conquer the world.

It’s OK to cry. It’s OK to be angry. It’s OK to feel confused. There are so many questions you’re going to ask yourself, there are so many things that you’re going to think you could’ve done differently. That’s OK, too. I constantly ask my self those questions and tell my self I could’ve done so much more. But I couldn’t; I couldn’t prevent the inevitable.

But I am here to tell you life will go on. You will be OK. You just now have an angel watching over you, rather then a human. I imagine my son untouched by this world, and perfect. And that he watches over me. I would view it in that aspect. It doesn’t make it easier, but it certainly calms me a bit more.

Till next time,

The grieving mother.

grief
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