The end and the beginning

Everything changed for my family at about 12:05am on April 9, 2014. I woke up at midnight to roll over. At 32 weeks pregnant, this happened several times every night. Before I fell back asleep, though, I felt like something was wrong. I rushed to the bathroom as a large gush of blood escaped my body. I woke Marty up, and within an hour we were headed to the hospital. We were under the impression that our precious baby boy would be joining our family earlier than planned. We were wrong.

 Upon getting to the hospital, 4 nurses, 2 doctors and 2 sonograms spent an hour trying to find a heartbeat. Finally, we accepted the truth. Our baby was gone. Within an hour and a half, I was headed back for a C-Section to remove the lifeless body from mine. It all happened so fast, I don't think it really sank in.

Later that morning, we decided to hold our baby boy and spend some time with him. Before this, I thought it would be crazy to want to hold a dead body. But I'm glad we did it. I'm also grateful that there is a great organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep that takes professional pictures of babies in our similar situation. We will cherish these pictures forever.

We spent the next several days planning a funeral and trying to come to terms with the abrupt change in plans that had been dealt to us. No parent should ever have to bury their child, especially one whom they never got to meet. I don't know what color his eyes were, or whether he was a daredevil. I only knew what he felt like inside of me. Marty and Noah will never know him.

A friend of mine gave me some excellent advice that I think about every day. She told me that sometimes, all you can say is "This sucks" and it just does. It's not fair. We will probably never know the reason our precious Aaron Jacob was taken from us way too early. It just sucks.