Choices

August 11, 2011

Mom and Dad came and picked us up this afternoon and we went with them and Billy and Betty to the funeral home to make the arrangements for Ezra.  Never when I imagined August 2011 did I think that making funeral arrangements for my baby would be a part of it.  The man who we met with was definitely not the most comforting person and kept saying things like “that’s gonna be an extra cost” or “those are expensive.”  I know his intentions were probably good, but he just didn’t seem to understand that this wasn’t just a baby to us, this was our SON.  Our son.  And we didn’t care what the cost was – we wanted the best for him.  This was one of the last acts of love we could do for him and we wanted it to be perfect for him.  When we were looking through casket catalogs I couldn’t help but remember back to March when we were looking through catalogs with cribs in them trying to find the perfect one for his nursery.  No parent should have to pick out a casket for their baby.  Crib, yes.  Casket, no.  It was all I could do to look through the material they showed us.  I was glad that Randall and both sets of our parents were there to help us make decisions because I don’t think I could have made them.

After we left the funeral home, we went to pick out flowers for the funeral.  We looked through books of flowers and finally decided on a beautiful spray for the top of his casket made from white daises, babies breath, and blue flowers.  My parents and Randall’s parents got white baskets with flowers that matched the sprays that we are going to put on either side of the casket.  I think they will be beautiful with the white casket.  Again, these last acts of love for Ezra I feel need to be perfect.

Our last stop of the day was the cemetery.  We decided to bury him at Mountain View Cemetery since it’s close to our house and we can visit him often.  He will be buried in Babyland, which is an area at the back of the cemetery just for infants.  It’s a beautiful area of the cemetery that is surrounded by trees and seems to be cool even on a hot day.  We went ahead and bought plots for Randall and I as well that will touch Ezra’s, so we will be next to him eventually.  We also ordered his gravestone.  It’s going to be beautiful and a sweet tribute to him.  It has a teddy bear on one side and a block on the other.  We have a little while to decide what we want to actually have written on it besides his name and birth/death date.  We want to find a sweet little quote to put with it.

Tired again, and grateful for a bed to take away my tears.

August 12, 2011-August 13, 2011

Before we went back to the funeral home today, Randall and I had the devastating task of writing Ezra’s obituary.  Another thing that a parent should not have to do for their baby.  We wrote and rewrote and finally came up with something that we thought was appropriately worded for our little angel.  I also had to finish crocheting the blanket that I was working on for him because I wanted him to be buried with it.  I started crocheting it back in March and I had put so much love in it for my little boy.  It was green with pink, purple, blue, and yellow picks through it because we didn’t know we were having a boy when I started on it.  I knew I wanted it to be with him.  It took me a long time to finish the line I was working on because I was crying to hard, but I finally finished it and folded it up to go the funeral home.  We also picked out the outfit that we wanted Ezra to be buried in, the monkey outfit that Granny bought him.  It was brown and white striped and it had a little monkey hat with it complete with ears.  We added a pair of white socks and we had our stack of supplies to take the funeral home.  I thought the days would get easier, but it seemed to be getting harder everyday with tasks like these to do.

We went to the funeral home and dropped off the things and then we came back home and began the waiting game.  We had a whole day and a half before the funeral.  Those hours are just a blur.  We picked out the readings that we wanted to be read at the funeral.  We watched some TV.  We cried.  We slept.  And we waited.

Going Home

August 10, 2011

I came home from the hospital today.  Yes, it was as hard as I thought it would be.  Dr. Mitchell came by to give me the okay around lunchtime, but I was in no hurry to actually leave the hospital.  That was because I knew what was awaiting me at home.  A house full of Ezra.  And a long ride from Kingsport to Bristol without Ezra with me.  Neither of which I wanted to face, but had no choice.  My sweet nurse, Pam, took me down to the car in the wheelchair and hugged me as she said goodbye.  As soon as I got in the car, the tears started flowing because Randall and I were in the backseat and there wasn’t a car seat in between us with my precious angel inside.  No, I had to leave him at Holston Valley.  I never again would hold his precious body on this earth.  I cried all the way back to Bristol.

When we got home, I picked up Cassidy (my cat) and held him tight and cried into his soft fur.  Oh, how I wanted to hold my Ezra.  While I stayed in the basement for a few minutes with him, Randall and Daddy went upstairs and put all of Ezra’s things in his nursery and closed the door.  The living room was filled with presents for him, things we had ordered, frames, and the letters that we had painted to put over his crib.  His bassinet was in our bedroom waiting for him to come and sleep the night away.  His bottles and all the things that went with them were on our kitchen counter waiting to be filled with formula.  When I came upstairs, all of these things were tucked safely away in his nursery.  I’m not sure how long they will stay there, but I know it will be for a while.  I can’t even imagine seeing them right now.

Tonight is going to be a hard night.  Luckily I am worn out, so hopefully I can sleep through most of it and prepare for tomorrow when we go to the funeral home.

Ezra's Birthday

August 9, 2011

The day started out much like the previous day ended.  Even with all the inducement medicine the previous day and all through the night, I was only 1 cm dilated.  Around lunchtime the anesthesiologist came in to begin my epidural because Dr. Mitchell wanted to go ahead and break my water to get things moving more quickly.  The epidural was painless and I was so thankful for that.  Unfortunately after that, though, I was confined to my bed.  When Dr. Mitchell broke my water around 1:30 he said that it was dark, which indicated there had been some kind of a problem in the past few days.  He started me on pitocin at the same time and so I just had to sit and wait…and think.  People kept coming by throughout the day, but the nurses limited it to two people at a time.  The nurses were so nice to set up a special room for all our family so they didn’t have to be in the normal waiting room, so they waited in there for their turns.

Around 6pm things started moving more quickly and I went from 1cm to 7cms very quickly.  It made me panic as I begin to realize that my sweet Ezra was going to be leaving my belly very soon and I would have to begin the process of saying goodbye.  While he was still inside me, he was alive to me, even if he wasn’t.  Dr. Mitchell came to check again an hour later and I was ready to give birth to my little Ezra Gryffin.  It only took about 20 minutes for him to enter the world.  There were no cries that filled the room like there should have been.  The nurse asked if I wanted to hold my baby and even though it scared me because he seemed so tiny, I reached out my hands for him.  He was so beautiful.  His precious little skin was blotchy and brittle, but he was beautiful.  He was wrapped up in a blanket, so all I could see was his little face.  His little nose looked just like his daddy’s – tiny and turned up on the end.  He had sweet little red lips that were full like mine.  He was definitely a combination of the two of us.  The moment seemed so surreal because anyone looking from the outside would have thought that it was just a new mommy holding her baby.  But on closer inspection, those weren’t tears of joy running down my face – they were tears of agony.  Agony because I knew that I could only hold him for so long before they would be taking him away from me.  I wouldn’t get to feed him.  I wouldn’t get to change him.  I wouldn’t get to anticipate the minutes until I got to take him home with me.

I held him for not nearly long enough and then they took him to measure him, weigh him, and clean up his little body.  When the nurse brought him back in, we asked our parents to come in so that they could see their sweet little grandson.  We all told him that we loved him.  We looked at how perfect he was.  We cried together.  Around this time a lady from the group Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep came in the room.  We had contacted her so that we could get some photographs of Ezra.  This group also did family photographs, but I wasn’t sure at this point if this was something that I wanted or not.  The lady took Ezra into the next room and Randall went with them to help with the photographs.  They took about 10 pictures of him, some with our wedding bands on his little toes.  When they brought him back to me, we decided to go ahead and do some pictures with Randall, me, and Ezra.  I can’t wait to see them.  I got to see him for such a short time and I feel that I’m already starting to forget the little features about him that I thought I had memorized.  I miss him so much.

Everyone left the room again and let Randall and I have some more time with our little Ezra.  Again we told him how much we loved him and how we had longed to have him as part of our family.  We told him that he was our son and would always be our son.  And then we let him go back with the nurses.  That was the last time we saw our precious angel here on this earth.  The next time we saw him he was in a casket covered with daisies and blue flowers.

The Doctor's Appointment

August 8, 2011

Sunday was just like any normal weekend day.  We went to church, had lunch with our family, and prepared for the coming week where we would start back to school.  We had big plans for the week and lots to get accomplished in our classrooms in anticipation for taking maternity and paternity leave at the end of the month.  We had an OB appointment on Monday morning and instead of a normal checkup, our world came crashing down.  Ezra, our baby who had grown inside of me for 36 weeks no longer had a heartbeat.  They checked with portable device and then they sent us for an ultrasound.  When the technician left the room to go get the doctor, we knew something was terribly wrong.  Dr. Mitchell came in the ultrasound room and did a check himself.  By this point, tears were flowing down my cheeks and I knew that the carefree life I arrived with would not be the one I was leaving with.  He said that Ezra had no heartbeat.  I wept and held onto Randall and Dr. Mitchell left us alone.  I don't know how long we held each other and cried, but I just couldn't seem to make sense of the news I was hearing.  Just two weeks ago I had seen his heartbeat strong and beating on that same ultrasound monitor.  How could it be different today?  I had felt his little body moving inside of me just last night.  How could this be?

Dr. Mitchell came back in the room and asked if we had any questions.  What do we do now? was all that I could come up with.  He wrote up orders for us to go to Holston Valley that afternoon to begin the procedure of inducing labor.  I began at that moment wondering how in the world I would go through the act of labor for this beautiful baby and then not be able to bring him home with me when I left the hospital.  Randall and I came home and gathered up a few things to take back with us, met with our pastor, and then my parents drove us back to Kingsport.  I was completely numb.  I had envisioned this high speed race to Kingsport when Ezra was to be born, but instead it was an OJ Simpson-like ride.  I held onto my Ezra-bump all the way down  the road sending silent prayers that maybe the ultrasound was wrong and that my baby was still alive inside of me.  I found out later that Randall was begging God for the same thing.

When we got there, we went up to the Labor and Delivery floor and I handed my orders over to the nurse behind the desk.  She nodded at one of the other nurses and they took us back to a room that already had my chart laying on the table.  She told me to go ahead and change into my gown and get in bed and she began the process of admitting me.  I noticed that laying on the counter across from me was a tan-colored teddy bear and I thought, "why didn't they get that out of here before I got here" thinking that it would have been for a baby.  Later I found out it was actually for me.  The nurse asked me a million questions and couldn't seem to understand how I was there in this situation when everything had seemingly gone so well with my pregnancy to that point.  In between questions I cried and felt the numbness continue to cascade across my body.  It felt like I was on the outside looking down on a situation that couldn't possibly be me.  No, I was the one who had been blessed with the perfect pregnancy.  I was the one who had an entire nursery ready at home.  I was the one who had wanted this baby more than anyone ever had before.  I couldn't be the one talking to the nurses about how they were going to make me "comfortable" during this "process."

Visitors came in and out during the day and evening, but I slept a lot because of the medicine.  When the time came for us to go to sleep, I hadn't made any progress with my inducement.  They had to continue the medicine during the night, so I got little sleep that night.  Secretly, I was glad that things were moving slowly because that meant I could keep my little Ezra with me, inside me, longer.  Every time I rubbed my stomach I was met with an ache that soon my little one would be on the outside and I would have to deal with his death.  Even though I knew that he was no longer alive inside me, just the fact that I could feel the hardness of his little body when I touched my stomach comforted me.  But reality would make it's appearance the following day.