THE WIND PHONE
Missing My Son…Today and Every Day
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Three and a half years ago, my second son died on his birthday. It wasn’t anything I could have ever anticipated or prepared for, and it is still something I cannot believe I went through many days.
Today, in particular, is a day my heart is actually aching in pain. It is the first snowfall of the year in the Northeast. I can’t help but think I will never see my three-year-old boy throwing snowballs with his brothers and sisters. There are many “nevers” when you lose a child.
During the height of the Covid pandemic, I was about halfway through my pregnancy. Amidst the chaos and uncertainty in life, I decided a home birth would be the best option for our newest addition. I floated the idea past my husband, and he was overwhelmingly supportive.
I found two wonderful midwives who decided to take me on despite me being a “geriatric” pregnancy (insert eye roll here), going beyond my due date with each previous pregnancy (there had been three), and this delivery being a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean section).
There was no reason to believe anything could go wrong with this delivery as I had two previous easy, so to speak, births and one c-section, which they attributed to “failure to progress.” I blamed my fried nerves for the c-section. I was constantly interrupted in the hospital and, therefore, was not able to relax and labor efficiently.
A homebirth would be my dream come true.
The whole family was on board, and we eagerly awaited the baby’s arrival and enjoyed the homebirth preparations. I had a list, and I checked it twice. Towels, burp clothes, new baby outfits, hats, diapers, and all the other essential new baby supplies. I dreamed of birthing my sweet babe and cuddling up with him or her and my whole family in my bed right after birth.
A dream come true.
Baby’s gender was unknown, and as the summer heat started sinking in, my due date came and went. I began to have ultrasounds every other day to be sure baby was moving and growing and there was enough amniotic fluid to keep baby happy. Everything presented perfectly. Nothing to worry about. I had been here before. I was one of those women who holds their babies in their wombs just a bit longer than the rest.
People joked… “Baby is just too comfortable in there.”
I was beginning to worry. I decided to purchase a ring with our little one’s name and a star inscribed on it (we had chosen a name that would work with either gender.) I told myself, “If anything were to happen to baby, he or she would be my little star in heaven.”
Crazy how shit like that works. Intuition. Gut feelings. God’s preparation. Whatever the fuck you want to call it. The feelings inside we carry that make us know something will happen before it does, but we don’t realize the power of it until afterward.
Two days before my babe’s actual birth I went into labor. It lasted a few hours, and I was certain it would end with a baby in my arms. I was wrong, but looking back, I truly believe in my heart this is when my son died or was severely injured. He would never be okay again. His movements were different after and I just had an off feeling.
My intuition was telling me something was wrong, but the Fetal Doppler was showing a heartbeat. “It's okay,” was what I was told.
It was so not okay, nor would it ever be okay again.
Two nights later, on August 11th, 2020, the real painful labor began. I had gone through two unmedicated births. I knew what to expect. This labor was unlike the others I had experienced. It was brutally, horrifically painful. The baby wasn’t working with my body. The baby wasn’t twisting and turning with each contraction as the others had. The baby wasn’t moving down.
I kept laboring, and after five hours, I was ready to push. I wanted this baby out of me more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. I squatted on our beautiful oriental rug and bore down. Out came my perfect, gorgeous, quiet son. I scooped him up in my arms and pulled him to my chest. He was silent. I suspected a low Apgar score as my first daughter had had. He was just tired from the labor. I patted his back. I rubbed him.
No cry was heard. Our home was silent.
My midwife grabbed him from me. I will never forget the look on her face. “Come on, buddy,” she kept repeating. She began CPR. I laid there on the floor, legs open wide and covered with a blanket so as not to see the CPR being pumped onto my little boy's chest. My husband crouched over me, praying to God. Begging Him to save our boy.
“What is going on? What is wrong with him? What is happening?”
My husband was just crying.
I watched the hands on the beautifully inscribed clock on our wall — the clock that was a wedding gift from my family and is now in the garbage dump somewhere as my PTSD would be triggered every time I looked at it for months later — tick tick tick away. It went from 3:45 am to 4:05 am.
Every minute was a lifetime.
An ambulance had been called. Lights were blinking outside our home. Sirens were blaring. My son was dead. What the fuck was an ambulance going to do?
They took him out to the ambulance. I didn’t watch any of this. I stayed behind and birthed my placenta. The placenta I would later learn was an absolute dead piece of shit that had long passed its expiration date. The placenta that was no longer feeding life into my perfect 8lb,15oz son.
We were driven to the hospital in a police car. We all wore masks. I sobbed aggressively through mine. The police officer said nothing. I am sure he remembers that ride well. Someone wheeled me into the hospital. I sobbed so loudly at the desk. Everyone knew who I was.
The woman with the dead son. The homebirth gone bad. The dead baby’s mom. The empty-armed mother.
They wheeled me down the hallway to that God-forsaken, awful, small room. The one where they deliver “the news.” If you have been through a tragedy and it involved the hospital, you know “the room.” If you have not, I hope you never know “the room.”
“I don’t know what happened to your son prior to his entry into the hospital, but when he arrived, he was dead. We tried everything we could to save him.”
Sobbing. Sobbing, no one knows unless they lose a child.
I entered the room where my husband was already with my son. I kept repeating, “I just want to feed you my milk and be your Mommy. Please. I just want to dress you in your clothes and love you. Please.” Sobbing. Screaming. Gut-wrenching crying. Full body shaking.
It was as if I were a little girl, and my dolly was missing, and I was hysterically trying to find him. Except this was real life, and my “dolly” was in my arms. He was completely perfect. Every single finger and toe and ear and eyelash had been perfectly formed. The most luscious thick head of curls you could imagine. The roundest, most angelic lips you could ever know. Chubby, beautiful cheeks and long arms and legs like his Daddy.
During my entire pregnancy, I hoped that my baby would have green eyes like me.
I never saw his eyes open. I never heard his voice cry.
The other night I looked up in the sky. In my head, I said, “Send me a sign, buddy. I miss you, and life is so hard right now. Help Mommy out.”
The brightest, fastest, boldest star shot right across the dark night sky. Like any shooting star, it was so quick I wondered if it was actually real or imagined. My fourteen-year-old daughter was with me.
“Did you see that, Mommy? Was that a shooting star? I never saw a shooting star!”
“Yep. It most definitely was.”
