Today

I'm not sure what it was about today, but there were "reminders" of Asher everywhere today. But they didn't make me sad. I am confused by this. I don't feel ready to not cry at every thought of my son. Grief connects me to him. So much of my memory of his short life is wrapped up in grief that if I unwrap it, I'm afraid I might loose what little I have left of Asher. I don't want to grieve less. I want to go on holding the sadness close like a favored childhood blanket. But slowly it is happening. Over Thanksgiving I sobbed through the days. Crying into the pumpkin pie.... wiping the tears away while I made the dinner rolls........ eating only because I didn't want to ruin the meal for others. But Christmas was different. It was hard to go shopping at first. Buying things for Vera and knowing I will never buy Christmas gifts for Asher. But then I started to enjoy myself. I smiled at the moms with babies that passed. And took joy in selecting just exactly the toys that I knew Vera would love the best. Joyously choosing items and knowing that only myself, her mother, would think to get this or that. And maybe I was a bit smug about it too.

During the days immediately leading up to Christmas my nerves were more raw than usual though. I know this because I managed to start several explosive fights with Nolan over dumb things. I was feeling more anxious than normal and felt attacked at every corner. Its a good thing Nolan has the patience of a rock.

Christmas Eve was good. I stopped to have a moment to myself to cry just before we began the evening festivities. That turned out to be a good move, mourning before the party, and not in the middle of it. I was pretty sleepy all evening, but I think God allowed that so I couldn't get too worked up. And looking back, I can tell that many people were praying for me because I was just very laid back. I also took every opportunity to smooch my husband or be close to him because his presents keeps me knowing that we are going to be ok. And (incase you wanted to know) kissing helps your body release oxytocin (the love hormone), which makes you feel happierish.

I slept in on Christmas and when I woke up we began opening gifts. I don't remember thinking about Asher while we opened everything. I only remember enjoying Vera's and Nolan's reactions to the gifts. And I remember how thankful I felt as Nolan read the Christmas Story to Vera and I from the Bible. It helped to much to focus on what God gave us instead of the son he took away. In the evening we went over to my folks house and I even sat and laughed while playing Apples to Apples (a card game) with my mom and siblings. Only a  month apart, Thanksgiving and Christmas... but oh the difference a day makes.

I frequently still shake my head in disbelief. Not understanding fully that I have two children and one of them is in heaven. Not understanding why. I don't know why God wanted Asher back up in heaven with him. And I'll probably never get an answer other than that God only does those things, that when completed, will bring Him glory. And so, I hope that through all of this I will act in a way that will ring out God's glory. That in the end people will not say "Why? How could a good God do this?", but "Wow. God is good even when he allows bad things to happen."
Christ is more real to me than ever. In the moments when I feel my head slipping under the water he sends someone to pull me back up again. In the times when I'm on the verge of letting go God reaches down and ties a rope around my waist. And when I'm sad the Holy Spirit renews my spirit with joy and gladness. When I'm angry God wraps his arms around me while i pound my fists and cry out that 'its not fair!' And when I'm happy Christ rejoices with me and reminds me that there is much to laugh about.

Even though I still shake my head I know I am healing. I'm not comfortable with less grief yet. I want to hold onto it. But slowly, joy about Asher is replacing the sorrow. Tears of gladness that he will never know the evil of this world sometimes find their way to the top and spill over. And I guess this is all ok.

Song #6 - Hallelujah

Sitting in my birthing tub riding each surge of energy. Feeling God's pleasure as I allowed my body to do what He created it for. Letting my body work. Taking myself deeper into my soul. Closing my mind to the rest of the world and bringing my son into my arms. Laughing as I caught him emerging from my body and into the water. Lifting him from the water and up to my breast. Crying with joy as I rejoiced that I had brought my son safely out. Hearing his first cries. Breathing in his fresh smell. Looking into the teary eyes of my overwhelmed husband and presenting him with a son. Breathing a sigh of contentment and relief.

This is what I pictured those last moments to be like. Blissful. Full of life and the hope of all that potential. Disappointed does not even begin to describe how I felt when those last moments came and how I still feel every morning when I open my eyes and every night when I lay my head back down.

Back in the shower at the hospital I felt myself go through transition. It was painful, but by that time I had surrendered to the pain. I think it took about 30 mins or so. I began to shiver and tried to position my body so that more of the warm water would hit my back. I felt nauseous and a little light headed. I could really feel my body opening up and the more I surrendered the more intense the pain became and the more my body readied itself for Asher's passing. I could feel Asher's head right on my cervix and my body was beginning to push by itself. The pushing felt good. At this point I was so exhausted that I could barely sit on my chair. About an hour before I asked the nurse to run some fluids in my IV incase I decided that I wanted an epidural. She did and just before the end of transition I asked for the epidural. (Now I wish I hadn't, but at the time it was the right choice.) The nurse checked me before they administered the epidural and I was 8.5cm (Normally they do not give epidurals past 7cm, but no one argued with me.) The nurse helped me to the bed and the anesthesiologist came in right away. I had 2 or 3 more contractions while he was pouring meds into my spine. These were by far the most painful contractions I had. I guess because people were in my face and touching me I couldn't concentrate on letting go of the pain. And then my nurse checked me again and said I was almost 10cm. And I told her that my body was pushing weather I liked it or not. She went to get the Dr. and said to try not to push. But I didn't have any choice. It didn't matter anyway because Doc showed up within about 2mins. Like I said before my Dr. was a resident so the head Dr. came in too. He began instructing the resident on what to do. Everything had just gone numb, so I was only numb for pushing, but I needed that relief. My mom and Marla held my legs for me. Dad started to walk out, but I could tell he wanted to be there for everything. I told him he could stay. He took a few pictures of me giving birth, but mostly just stood by my head and cried. Plus I didn't feel like it was my body anymore. It only took about 10mins of pushing to get Asher out. The nurse asked if it was ok if they placed him on my chest and I told her yes. The Dr. lifted him out of me and onto my chest. I wrapped him with the towel and held his lifeless body and cried. Eventually I looked up at the Dr and asked if he could tell what had happened. He then lifted the cord so I could see it and said there was a true knot in the cord. It then occurred to me what happened. When he was still small enough to swim around in my uterus, he swam through a loop. Then when my water broke he moved down into the birth canal and pulled the knot tight. That was the end.

I chose Hallelujah for this post for 2 reasons. 1 the melody is haunting yet soothing and makes me feel very fluid. I would have liked to listen to this while in transition. And 2 I feel it is a song about broken dreams. About how good things could have been, but how it didn't turn out the way anyone wanted. It is a song about despair. Also, I love it.

Song #6 Hallelujah - Alison Crowe

Money! Money! Money!

Even while I was in labor I was very concerned about the money. Nolan and I had budgeted for a home birth. Which, after the supplements I bought to help keep us both super healthy, the birthing tub we rented, our birthing kit, the prenatal care and the actual delivery round out to about $2,000. That is with out any insurance helping.

We did not however budget for a hospital birth. Thank goodness we have insurance. I just got the insurance statement in the mail and this is what it says. Total costs from Ball Memorial Hospital: $12,799.14. After insurance: $1,719.26. Now you have to keep in mind that this is without any prenatal care, any supplements, and this is only charges to me. If Asher had lived there would be approx. another 10,000 for him - minus whatever the insurance would cover.

And on top of worrying about hospital charges, I knew we were facing funeral costs. Which we had no insurance for. This is where I get to tell about God's provision and blessing in the midst of it all. When you have a funeral, you pay for the services of the funeral home and for the services/land for the cemetery. The total funeral home services (taking care of Asher, the casket, the guest sign-in book, transportation of Asher and flowers to the chruch, set-up at the church, transportation of Asher, Nolan, Vera, and I to the cemetery and then Nolan, Vera, and I to the dinner afterward.) were around $3,500 - ALL of which (except for the casket and the sign-in book) were taken care of. The funeral home donated the services. Then my mom and dad paid for the casket and sign-in book. We would never have had the money for any of this. We'd needed to be on a payment plan; for years.
then the costs for the cemetery (the plot, the vault, and the digging) were also all free. I don't even know how much it would have cost (either because no one said or because I don't remember that part of the conversation and didn't pay attention to the paperwork). I only know that the vault was supposed to be over $600, but something happened and they gave it to us for free. Asher was buried in Gardens of Memory cemetery in a place called "Baby Land". I think it is perhaps the most heartbreaking place I've ever been to. It is a space on the grounds of Gardens of Memory where only infants are buried.
The only thing that was left to discuss after the services, and burial, was the headstone. Nolan picked out the most beautiful one. It has a picture of an angle guiding some children across a bridge. You get the sense that the angle is also protecting them on their journey. It also has a place for a vase to be set so that I can take flower out there. The cost for this was $1,932.00. Our options were to pay for it monthly ($50 per month for 3 years) and then, when it was fully paid for, they would make it and put it over Asher's grave.  But we really did not want to have to wait 3 years for our child to have a real grave marker. So my wonderful grandma sent us the money to pay for it. It is important to Nolan and I to pay for this part ourselves. So we will be paying my grandma back over time. She told us not to worry about it...... but we need to do this, for us......for Asher.

I can't believe how God provided for those needs. If we would have needed to pay for all of this out of our pockets it would have been upwards of $21,000.00. God truly owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

P.S. I forgot to mention all the people who sent/gave us money. It made it so we could eat out, or order in and I didn't have to cook. It also helped with our regular bills since Nolan had to miss work. I am just amazed at God's provision for us.

.05%

According to http://www.marchofdimes.com/Pregnancy/complications_umbilical.html 5% of the 1% of babies with a true knot in their cord die.

Also according to http://depts.washington.edu/hswork/multnomah/ten/mom_baby/mchd02/005a.html there are about 133,000,000 babies born world wide each year.

If this is true, then 66,500 babies die each year by miscarriage or stillbirth due to a true knot in their cord.

That is .05% or 1 in 2000.

In your lifetime, your average chance of dying in a car crash is 1 in 83.

.05%

Depression

I have 1 and a half bottles of wine and some super cheap vodka in the cabinet. I haven't had any yet, and if I start, I fear I may not stop. 30 days ago I gave birth to my son. 30 days ago, at about 8:30 in the morning I handed my son over to the Man. The mortuary Man. He put him in what looked like a black duffel bag and I went to sleep.

Today, my plans were to go buy a party dress and some red heels I like very much. But I don't care about red heels today. I don't care about parties. I don't care about eating. I don't care about Christmas. I don't care about anything or anyone today. I feel like I can't breath. Or like I'm trying to breath in water. I inhale, but it does no good. My head still spins, my arms feel heavy and I know I'll soon die. I'm probably starting to scare some of you. Some of you are ready so jump on horseback and whip out your swords to save me. Thank you. I promise everyday isn't like this. Although as reality sets in, these feelings become stronger and  more frequent. I suppose this is normal too. I guess I have to travel the valley if I want to climb the mountain.

Yesterday I felt nothing. I was on even keel all day. No sadness, anger or fear. But no happy either. I don't know what's worse. How long does it take to accept and recover from loosing a child? How long until my heart isn't broken anymore? How long before I can go buy those red shoes without feeling guilty for feeling happy? How long before I want to cook fabulous food again? How long before I want to do anything other than lay in bed in the fetal position? How long.....?????

The other day I was thinking about what sort of things I want to do to celebrate Asher's life at the one year mark. Mrs. Barnard, would you mind terribly if we borrowed your sparklers idea? I like the thought of lighting sparklers. I also like the thought of drinking wine and releasing Chinese lanterns (the kind that are sort of like tiny hot-air balloons.) And maybe we'll bring a portable CD player and play some Aerosmith. And maybe, by then, I'll have started to feel happy with out feeling guilty. Maybe by then, we'll have decided to have more babies. Maybe by then I'll have surrendered my fears as well as all the hopes and dreams I had for Asher. Maybe by then I won't have to convince myself every morning that I really was pregnant and I really did have a baby boy and we really did name him Asher Benjamin Ritchie and he really did die. Really.

And now I'm going to go get that bottle of wine and learn some self control and have just one glass. Temperance in the Midst of Tragedy. That's what I'll call my book.

Monday will be 1 month.

I'm sitting here crying. Its been an exhausting day and I feel really overwhelmed. Vera has been sick and I fought with Nolan all day. Piddly stuff. Little things that take over and make mountains out of themselves. And I just want my baby back in my arms. Right now I never want to have another child. Ever again. I want to go out to the cemetery and lay down next to where he is with his album and the lock of his hair I have and cry. I want to just lay there forever and cry. I sound like an insane person. I just sit and stare at the  piles of Asher's clothes in my room. I smell the last clothes he had on. I touch his hair. I stare and stare and stare at his face. His slackened bluish face. I try to understand what went wrong. Over and over I play the "What if ....." game. What if I'd lay still more. What if I'd jumped up and down more. What if I'd just chosen to do things like everyone else and scheduled a C-section. I could have saved him. If I hadn't been so stubborn. Why was everyone but me so terrified those last 3 weeks, but I had no clue. Where was my mother's intuition? How can a knot in the cord kill some babies but not most? Why did it have to be mine?? I never opened his eyes to find out what color his eyes were. Every mom should know what color her child's eyes are. I just want to hold him again. I wish I could go back and hold him more. I wish I'd have told that Dr. not to give me the cervidil so my labor would have lasted longer. Just a few more minutes with my son. MY SON. my son. Right now the part of my brain that makes sense says that this is not my fault and that no one blames me. But the unreasonable part of me that aches and craves to have a baby boy in my arms says that this is most certainly my fault. And that everyone secretly blames me. They all thought you were crazy to start with...... what else could possibly have happened??? Of course you signed your child's death warrant. NO! No! This is not your fault. This was a random act of nature. Something that cannot be predicted or prevented or helped in any way. My brains are arguing. All day they argue.

The other day I lay in bed holding Vera's baby doll to my chest and talking to it. I'm surely going crazy. I'm really great at hiding it, you'd never know from the outside. I don't let people see me act crazy. I don't want people to know I'm loosing my mind.

Monday will be 1 month. 11 more months and it will be the anniversary of his death.

Song #5 Down in the River to Pray

About 10 minutes later my nurse came back in with the morphine. Nolan was sitting by my side and we were talking. Anne went around to my left side where the IV was and started unpackaging the pain killer. I remember my mom was sitting a a chair to my left and my dad was standing across the room in front of me. Next to him was my pastor. Then it seems like Jim and marla were across the room on my right. I asked the nurse what this was going to do to me and she said that it would make me feel kinda drunk. (Now I've honestly never been drunk so I still don't really know what to expect) I say, ok, and I turn my head over to Nolan and we keep talking. I suddenly feel a cold sensation travel up my arm, around my brain, and then back down my right arm. I remember telling Nolan that I felt something funny. And then I remember people laughing at me and being concerned that I was going to make a fool of myself in front of my pastor. I also remember looking at my mom and seeing her so sad, but feeling a sort of hazy happiness, and wishing she could feel it too. Mom told me later that I kept telling her that she needed to get some of this and that if she asked nicely the nurse would hook her up. I also remember my dad laughing at me and saying how 6mms of morphine was nothing. (I also remember wondering how he knew what 6mms of morphine felt like in comparison to more than that. But I think that might be a story for another day.) I guess I was pretty funny considering the circumstances. I don't remember a ton about those minutes, but I do remember that medicine didn't do a darn thing for those contractions. I got up a few more times as the contractions began to get stronger and longer. After about 3 or 4 I was lucid again and it was as if I'd never had the morphine. Marla or my mom would follow me into the bathroom and stand there with me or rub my back. Anne (my amazing nurse - this is not sarcasm, she really was amazing) asked if I wanted a body ball and I told her that would be nice. But I only got to use it for like 20 seconds total, because at this point the contractions were coming at about 30 seconds apart. But don't get any ideas that this was close to being over, because it was a good 4 hours before Asher was born.

I stood for what seemed like hours in that bathroom. The counter was just high enough for me to grip the far edge of the sink and snarl into the basin. I started out on the balls of my feet for every contraction. In the beginning I never came down off the balls of my feet. All I would do is grip the sink, grit my teeth, stand with my feet apart, and growl. It was the angry growl of a wounded mother wolf trying to protect her cub, but knowing she is powerless. So full of sorrow and anger and fear. I suppose that sounds corny, but it's true. As time wore on and I began to get tired I started hearing Lori's (my birthing class instructor) voice in my head; keep your feet flat..... keep your voice in low tones......keep your bottom loose........ say "OOPEENN"........ride a wave in your mind with each contraction. So I started by putting my feet flat on the ground and moaning instead of growling. It became the guttural moans that come from a power deep down inside that no woman knows she has until she goes through labor. This moan was not like anything you can stop from coming out. It has to come out. This moan reverberated in the sink of that bathroom and off the walls. It vibrated my whole body from the inside out. It gave a release to my pain. If I were to stop that sound..........well, I don't know, because I could no sooner do that then keep the sun from rising. With each contraction the moan would start soft, and as my uterus tightened the decibels would rise to what seemed like thunder in my ears. As the contraction eased off so did the roar of my voice. It felt good. It also felt like I was dying.

(This is a totally random side point which I never want to forget, so I'm putting it in here now) As I was growing up, my dad used to make comments about how I needed to be tough as an Indian squaw. He used to say that they just went off by themselves and squatted in the woods or a field to give birth (this is actually true for some tribes, I have a book about it). At some point he came in and said one of the most encouraging things to me. He said "You sound like a squaw." Now I know this sounds like a ridiculous thing to tell a laboring woman.... but it was honestly a compliment of the highest order. Later he came in and said "Come on! Tough it out!" Again, unless you know my dad, you'd never know this was him cheering me on. Letting me know he'd do anything in the world to take this pain away from me. Telling me he loved me and that he knew I was a strong woman. That he was proud of me.

At some point the nurse came in and asked if I'd like the dr. to check me (that is check my cervix for dilation), to see if there was any progress. I asked if she could just do the checking, and she said yes she could. I squatted a bit and she reached up inside me and said I was 3-4cm. I got really disappointed at this point. I felt like I'd been in that bathroom for hours. At this point I decided to get into the shower. This is when the real magic began to happen. If I'd have been smart, I'd have gotten into the shower right off the bat. That is where I'm the most relaxed, in the water. They would have let me in the birthing tub..... but the Cervidil was still in my vagina. So the shower it was. The contractions became stronger, harder, like someone was going to pull my body apart right down the middle. But there was Lori's voice again in my head..... keep your butt loose....... low tones......... keep your jaw muscles loose..... say "OOPPEEENNN".......... ride that wave! it took every ounce of control in my body to relax the muscles of my butt and cervix and vagina. It was like pain from hell itself when I would begin to relax, but after the muscles were unclenched the pain became tolerable; and so I learned a pattern.

A contraction would start, I would stand up (Anne had gotten me a chair to sit on while in the shower), I would consciously plant my feet firmly on the floor, grab the railing and clench my hands with all my might while at the same time moaning "open", unclenching my bottom and envisioning myself riding a gigantic wave. As the wave would fold itself into a giant curl, the contraction would be at its peak; as it crashed to the shore the contraction would come to an end. Then I would sit down again. Exhausted, I'd sleep for the 30 seconds or so until the next one came on.

This song reminds me of my time spent in the shower. The fellowship I felt with God. The kinship I felt with every mother giving birth who had come before me. The closeness and support from my family. And the prayers for me that were said that night. I choose this song back in May.

Song #5 is Down in the Rive to Pray by Alison Krauss