Author: sarafaithlawson

What used to be my favourite month and time of the year

May.

It used to be my favourite month of the year. Not just because it is my birthday month, but also because it is spring and everything is new and fresh and it just brings forth a positive vibe. The grass is growing, the flowers are blooming, and the weather is warmer.

Now I dread spring, and I dread May.

It is the time of the year that is now full of sadness and tramatic memories. Memories that I both cherish and dispise.

Two years ago, I knew that Hunter was not doing that well, but I didn’t know that less than a week later I would have to say goodbye. We had a few close calls, but he always came around.

This time we were not so lucky. This time we had to say goodbye. This time my heart broke. Now this time of year is no longer my favourite. I am miserable and angry at everything.

I wish that for the month of May I could disappear and not have to face the world.

Due Date

April 13th, 2016 Baby #3’s Due Date

I know that I never would have made it to my due date but the date was still marked in my calendar and it was still a reminder this morning that I have another angel in heaven. 

You might not have a name, and you weren’t big enough to know your gender, but you were still wanted and still loved, and for you my heart is sad. 

I want to be a big brother Mommy

I want a baby brother or baby sister. I want to be a big brother. 

You will always be a big brother to Hunter sweetheart. 

I know but why did he have to die? 

He was very sick. 

But he was in the hospital. Why didn’t he get better?

Because he was just too sick and they couldn’t make him better. 

A conversation I wish I never had to have with my five year old son but have had it more than once in the last almost 22 months. It breaks my heart over and over again every time that we have it. Tonight was no different. 

I wish with all my heart I could make his wish to be a big brother come true. It just seems like it is something that might not happen. 

Happy Birthday to my Angel

This post is a day late, but I just wasn’t up to it yesterday. 

Two years old is how old you should be. Instead of celebrating with you we celebrated without you. This will never be good enough and never be easy. 

Xander and I spent the morning baking birthday cookies. Last year we made cupcakes. Then we all went to visit your ashes, sing happy birthday and eat your cookies. 

It is not how we wish we were spending your birthday. We wish we were watching you open presents and run around all excited like a regular two year old. 

Last year I wrote a little poem for you and thought that I would carry on tradition and write another verse. 

2015-1st Birthday 

Today we should be celebrating and watching you smash cake,

Instead we visit your grave and think of your unfair fate. 

What we would give to see you just one more time,

To hold your tiny hand and look into your bright eyes. 

Our lives are now incomplete,

Until that day where we will meet. 

Rest in peace sweet baby boy,

Today we will try and celebrate your joy. 

  
2016-2nd Birthday 

Happy Birthday to you,

Today you should be two. 

Running around,

Enjoying playgrounds.

How we wish you were here,

Instead we face our worst fear. 

So today we celebrate you,

All the while trying not to be blue. 

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you. 

  

Happy Birthday Hunter. Our precious little acorn who we love and miss you oh so much. 

His Birthday Shouldn’t Be Awkward 

But unfortunately at times it is. Which both bothers and upsets me. 

This week is March Break and many people are off work. It’s quiet, which is really nice. Leaving a meeting yesterday a colleague asked me if I was in all week or taking time off. I told him I was working from home Thursday and off on Friday. Of course he went on to joke about me partying hard for St. Patrick’s Day. If only that were the case. It’s not like I can turn and say. “Well no I am celebrating my dead son’s birthday.” That would create an awkward moment. Something you just don’t do in an office environment. 

Instead I just smile and laugh. Something you just get good at faking. 

I should have another baby right now

Baby lawson #3 was due April 13th, 2016, which means, given my circumstances that baby would probably be here with us right now. But it’s not here and I don’t have another baby.

In hindsight I should have a toddler not a baby. If Hunter had made it home, Baby Lawson #3 probably would not have existed, well at least not at that time. I have always had my heart set on three children. But that is looking further and further from possible.

It’s funny but it’s not, if I look at the time that we have been trying to build our family and how many children we would have if it had been easy, we could fill a small bus. This year it will be nine years. Almost a decade.

I thought it would get easier

I thought that the second round of anniversaries and holidays would be easier than the first, but they haven’t been so far, so I am dreading the next few months that have the hardest anniversaires of all.

Christmas was harder in 2015 than 2014, that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t want to celebrate, I didn’t want to be around people, even more so than I had not wanted to the first year after Hunter’s death. It was something that I definitely was not prepared for. I thought it was supposed to get easier but it hasn’t. He seems to be slipping further and further away, even though he is just as gone today as he was the day he died.

The anniversary to the day that my water broke, the day that changed mine and Hunter’s life forever just passed, which means that all the anniversaies leading up to his death are just around the corner.

I just want to go away and be alone. I don’t want it to be two years since I had hope and faith that things would work out in our favour.

Premature is premature

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Premature birth, the number 1 killer of infants. I wish I didn’t have first hand experience with this, but I do.

It’s funny, though not really funny, that I have had two premature babies, but I often forget that my first child was also born premature because I am fixated on Hunter being a micropreemie and having not survived because of this.

Xander was also premature, but because his hospital stay was shorter and easier (in hindsight), it is often forgotten. Because he is here, and you would never know it now. At the time, though, we were so scared. When the doctors told me that I was in labour and that he was coming, I think my heart skipped a beat and I was worried, because it was too early.

I remember when Hunter was alive and fighting in the NICU saying, “man what I would give for a 34 weeker”. But when I had that 34 weeker 4 years prior I was just as terrified as I was with my 24 weeker. The biggest difference is that my 34 weeker got better and it was happy news when talking with doctors; versus my 24 weeker, where it ended in devastation and meetings with doctors were just the worst.

In the end though premature is premature. No matter how premature or sick your baby is, you are terrified for their lives. You are terrified of the unknown. You are terrified what is going to happen next. You are terrified that you have to leave your baby in the care of someone other than yourself.

So today on World Prematurity Day, we will celebrate all of the preemies that fought their battles and won; and we will also remember the ones who fought their battles but just didn’t make it.

Premature is premature and premature fights like hell. I am a proud premature parent!

Twelve Weeks

The time in a pregnancy you normally feel safe to start telling your friends and family that your family will be expanding. That was when we told with our first pregnancy. We didn’t think otherwise. We were excited. With our second we had a scare and were dealing with some tests so we didn’t share with everyone. We didn’t tell most until we really had no choice because it was quite obvious I was pregnant. I was over four months (16 weeks) by that point. It should have been a safe time to tell. Two and a half weeks later my water broke.

There really is no safe time. So when I got pregnant for the third time I had it in my mind that I would tell people as I saw fit. I didn’t go yelling be it from the roof top or tell everyone I knew that’s just not how I am, but I had told a few people. We were excited and scared.

Actually scared is an understatement. I was TERRIFIED. What if what happened with Hunter happened again?! I don’t think I could survive that type of loss again. Losing one child was hard enough on us, I couldn’t imagine losing a second.

At first everything seemed to be going fine. Blood work as good, I was feeling good, though a little tired and my cultures came back normal. But until I saw it on the ultrasound I knew I wouldn’t calm down.

Due to my now high risk I was required to have bloodwork, cultures and an ultrasound every four weeks. Four weeks ago today I went for my first ultrasound. I was just over eight weeks. There wasn’t much to see but the technician confirmed looks like only one baby and everything looks great. I saw and heard baby’s heartbeat. I started to relax a little. It finally sunk in. I’m pregnant again. Our rainbow baby. Xander will get to be a big brother again. I even let myself get a little excited.

And just like that everything changed. Just over twenty-four hours after my ultrasound I started to feel awful. I just knew something wasn’t right. I was keeled over in pain and then the bleeding started. It was the beginning of the end or our rainbow.

It was just Xander and I home. My poor Xander. It’s no wonder he seems older than his age. He has been through and seen so much. I tried to hide him from my pain but he knew something wasn’t right. I decided in that moment that I would break the stigma about not talking about miscarriage. I explained it to him the best I could. He was so amazing. Asking how he could help. Getting himself ready for bed and looking after the dogs. All five of them. He wouldn’t leave my side until Ian got home.

One in four pregnancies end in miscarriage that is unexplainable or just happens for some reason unknown to those involved. It is something that doctors are trained to say to you. “We don’t know why, but it happens often. It’s normal.” The way they say it just makes you feel like you should just accept it and move on. It happens to lots of people, you can try again. Well when you have been working on having a family for seven years and it’s still not completed the way your heart anticipated, hearing those words is like a slap in the face.

It hurts. Having experienced the loss of an infant and miscarriage I can testify that both are painful and emotionally challenging. Was loosing Hunter harder. Most definitely. Maybe if my miscarriage had been before my loss of Hunter it wouldn’t have felt as hard or hurt so much. That I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that it does hurt. This baby was hopes and dreams, and represented a light at the end of the tunnel. It put a little happiness back into our lives. A hope that is now gone.

It was here one day and gone the next.

Endure

For the month of July my calendar at work is entitled “Endure”, everyday it is a reminder to me to keep going.

One definition I found of Endure is; “to continue to exist.”

Which I am sure is how many people who have suffered a loss or traumatic event feel. At least that is how I often feel. That I am continuing to exist, but that is all.

You continue to push through and do what you need to do to survive.

I look back through our time in the NICU with Hunter, and I’m not really sure how I existed or how I even made it home some days. It was a long trek back and forth from home to Mt. Sinai, minimum an hour each way, when there wasn’t some sort of traffic. The offer of staying in the Ronald MacDonald house was given to us, but having Xander and especially the dogs made this not really an option. So back and forth commuting was what I had to do.

Commuting is not new to me, I do it everyday for work, but commuting and paying for gas and parking in downtown Toronto, on an EI income is slightly challenging to say the least. I often had to limit my visits because I didn’t have the funds to pay for gas or parking. I wanted so badly to be there all day everyday with Hunter, but at $20 a day for parking, plus $15 in gas a day x 7 days a week, that would have taken more than half of my EI cheque each week. And even though I had taken critical illness insurance out for my children, because Hunter’s illness was not one of the ten specified illnesses the insurance company deemed critical, we did not qualify for insurance money to help with the costs.

I wanted so badly to be part of the Parent Care program that Mt. Sinai offered, but you had to be able to commit to being there everyday for 8 hours at a time. Something that I was not able to do. One because of the cost of commuting and two because I also had Xander to think of. I am his mother too and therefore the guilt I had and still have bears heavy on my heart. The guilt of leaving Xander to be with Hunter and the guilt of not being with Hunter more.

I am digressing slightly, but this is what lead me to my evening and overnight visits with Hunter. Why I am surprised I was still able to drive and function when I look back on my schedule during that time. I would spend most days with Xander, unless we needed to meet with doctors specifically during the day, and nights were Hunter’s. I would aim to be downtown for 5pm, when I could enter the parking garage and only have to pay $5 to park. There were many nights when I would arrive home and wonder how I got there, want to just crawl under the covers, but then realize it was now time to pump. When I look back at my schedule I realize I was lucky to have 3 hours of sleep each night. Which was usually between 2am – 5am. Then it was time to get up and pump again, and when that was done and the pump was all cleaned up, milk stored and labelled in the freezer, it was time for Xander to wake up and have breakfast.

But as a mother we do what we have to do for our children, we endure. I would do it all over again to have more time with Hunter and would have continued to do it if it meant that he would have been with us longer.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

~ Winston Churchill

Keep going because there is an end, whether it be a happy ending or a sad one. Endure because that is all that we can do in order to survive.