Leaving The Hospital

I woke up at 4 AM that morning, as I often did with Daniel kicking in my stomach, and just laid in the bed. Even though they made sure to put me at the end of the hall I could still hear newborn babies crying. I wanted so badly to have them bring my baby in so that I could feed him or just hold him. I had to remind myself that this would not happen. I was in essentially the same room as that in which we had our first son. Same couch, same TV, same layout, same congratulatory dinner menu for parents of newborn babies. The only difference was that there was no baby and the nurses only came in to check on me.

I really did not want to be at the hospital anymore. I just wanted to go home. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I got myself up, took a shower and got dressed. I can remember with Sean that it took 3 nurses to get me into the bathroom on the second day, but now I was able to do this all on my own – something that I had hoped for with this deliver - just not this way.

My primary OB came by to talk with me. She wanted me to know that she had also had a still born child who would have been 18 years old this year. For her my loss was closer to her heart than I think I realized. I understood why she said the things she said to me during the delivery; why she was so hard on me to make sure I made the right decisions - not based on how I was feeling at that moment but how she knew I might feel later on. I am so appreciative of her sharing her loss with me because it started to open my eyes to the fact that I am not the only person in this world that has been through such a devastating loss. It brought me one step closer to getting through the “process” and understanding that life goes on, women have more children, families continue to grow, and that people deal with loss in their own way and on their own timeline.

As my husband and I were preparing to leave the hospital I began to realize that this was another step in the “process”. As excited as I was to just get out of there I knew that this was going to be it – my baby was dead and I wasn’t leaving with him. The discharge nurse walked out with us and I remember wondering why she was tagging along. I know now that the nurse walked the halls with us because she also understood what leaving the hospital meant. It is a permanent step in actualizing the loss of your baby.

Just before you leave the maternity floor, just before the last set of doors to exit, there is a room where the hospital initially admits pregnant mothers to monitor their babies. As I walked by this room, I could hear loudly the heart beat of a baby – the same sound that I so longed to hear when I went to my doctor’s two days prior. I raced out of the doors through another set of doors, and into the sun – it was a beautiful day. I just cried into my husband’s shoulder – we both felt the loss even more so now. I feel for any mother who has to leave the hospital without their baby. I hope that mother in that room never takes for granted the sound of her baby’s heartbeat because it is the difference between leaving the hospital with a baby and leaving with a keepsake box, pamphlets, an empty heart and sorrow.