Eventually I came to the realization that my life would never be the same. As I think back to the days in the hospital everything is a bit foggy. I know that the pain was so emotionally taxing that I had a hard time focusing. I was still in the maternity ward while in postpartum recovery so the sounds of happiness and babies were surrounding me. I'd even have nurses come in to ask me about my baby and then realize that I didn't have a baby waiting in nursery for me. Everything felt so mechanical. Almost as if I was watching it from afar. As if someone else was living my life and I was just on the outside watching the scenes play out. I had a "grief counselor" speak with me and I couldn't for the life of me even recall one thing she told me. I just remember that I was supposed to start planning this funeral when all I wanted was for everything to stop. I just wanted to breathe again.
The next several days were a blur. There was a funeral, a burial, lots of flowers and lots of people sending their condolences. I remember beginning to feel numb from it all. One afternoon not long after the funeral I remember going out to the cemetery and just sitting beside her grave, I prayed, I cried, I begged God to let all this be a bad dream. I can still remember the sun was shinning like it should've been a nice day but the wind was bitter cold, it kind of felt like my life, everything should be starting to be warm and pretty again but all I felt was bitterness,.. and cold. I spent countless hours over the next several months at her grave, trying to find answers. I never found them there, all I found was confusion and sadness.
As the months dragged on I can remember feeling like I needed some type of comfort, something to make me feel whole again. It wasn't long after losing her I found myself going through the emotions of wanting another baby. Maybe it was wrong of me, as Maddison could never be replaced but unless you've ever experienced it it's very easy to start placing anything you can in the hole inside your heart. I know now that I should've allowed Jesus to fill that hole but at that time, I was reeling and searching for more possibilities to make me feel whole again. So having a baby was the next viable option.
Approximately six months after Maddison's death I got pregnant again. I was so excited because I had been assured by all the doctors that things like this "only happen once", yes this is a "rare occurrence" and "I shouldn't worry, because chances are I'll have a healthy, happy baby the next time around." About eight weeks into my pregnancy I began bleeding heavily and went into the hospital, if you've never had an early miscarriage let me warn you, hospitals and doctors are very insensitive to the fact. They just tell you, "there's nothing that can be done!, Sorry!" and send you on your way. But usually not before they offer some false hope in words like things such as, "alot of women bleed, your baby still might be fine."
I was never one of the "lucky" ones I guess because at 8 weeks, I was saying goodbye to my second child and heaven was gaining another angel.
The grief I found after our second loss was deeper than before. I felt like I was in a hole and the walls were caving in around me. I was so angry. At everything really, at God, at myself, at life. I was angry at women that were pregnant that I didn't even know, I was angry at people around me who had healthy babies. I was angry at my husband because deep inside I didn't believe he hurt as bad as I did. It seemed like anger was the only thing I could get right. I plunged into a deep depression. A darkness I wasn't sure I'd ever the light in. Not too many months after our second loss, I started having severe panic attacks.
If you have never had a real panic attack let me assure you, its something you never want to experience. I was hospitalized with them because my heart rate was out of control, I got dizzy and honestly felt like death was overtaking me. I remember being told by a doctor that they finally diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. It seemed like a fancy name for something that I at the time didn't feel like I had.
I guess I carried around so much anxiety and anger, I spent days trying to fill my agenda with activities to keep my mind busy and nights indulging in sins of this flesh. I remember thinking it kept my mind busy. I had no desire to even acknowledge God. I felt he had abandoned me and I had no desire to turn to Him.
I would have passing moments when I felt like He was trying to dig through the mess I had made of my life but just as He came into reach I would take off in the other direction. I was mad at Him. I felt alone and left by Him,.. as I look back on these feelings now I know I was wrong. I know that God essentially carried me through those times even at my darkest hour but at that time I was too hard hearted and stubborn to admit or see that.
It was the middle of December 2003, a little over a year since we had lost our daughter when I realized that I was unexpectedly pregnant again. It was not planned, I was not prepared. I was thinking I was fine with my drowning myself in alcohol and late nights, this pregnancy thing was not on my agenda. I wasn't ready but God knew otherwise.
The pregnancy went surprisingly smooth. There was not one complication and mid-way through I found my way back to the Lord. I got up every morning, sat at our little small table in our tiny 2 bedroom trailer house, ate a bowl of cereal and said a prayer for the baby growing inside of me. I wasn't sure if God would honor or answer my prayers but in a desperate attempt to find sanity, I clung to the hope that he would.
36 weeks after conception, Caedence John-Andrew Jones entered this world weighing 6 pounds 5 oz. He was a healthy, beautiful baby boy. All at once the fog of grief lifted as I saw my beautiful baby boy. I began to think this was the end of my struggles, he was my light at the end of a long dark tunnel, the end of my pain but I didn't realize that the next several years that the fog that had once overtaken me would return, that his birth was just one stop on the journey.
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