"This is my winter song, December never felt so wrong. 'Cause you're not where you belong-inside my arms."

My life is not what I expected, it's not what I had planned. But if you had asked me a few months ago how I felt about it, I would have told you that it was ok, that God had a plan and I trusted him. I was pregnant, I was just weeks and then just days away from my biggest dream coming true, and all the other ways I feel I've failed wouldn't matter to me.

I went for my 39 week check up, expecting to hear my baby's heartbeat, to get checked to see if he was ready to come this week or if we had more waiting to do. The doctor moved the wand over my swollen belly and I waited eagerly to hear my Nico.
The doctor couldn't find a heartbeat. He said maybe the way Nico was positioned that the placenta was blocking the machine from detecting it, so he brought in an ultrasound. My chest was tight, but I was trusting in the God I had always believed was taking care of me, hoping that the ultrasound would show that he was ok. But it didn't. Instead there was no heartbeat and there was fluid in my baby's belly. I refused to believe it at first. The doctor again said there was no heartbeat.
"What does that mean?"
"I'm afraid it means that the baby has died."

My world stopped.
It felt like someone had reached into my chest and crushed my heart into dust.
I prayed that this was just a nightmare. That I would wake up.

I still haven't woken up. But I can't sleep either. So instead I'm stuck in a limbo of the worst nightmare ever, knowing I will never wake up.

So we went to the hospital so that I could be induced into labor to deliver a dead baby. After the longest days of my life, Nico Xaver was born on November 10 at 4:24 in the morning. He was 19 3/4 inches long and 7 pounds.
And he was absolutely perfect.
I've never seen something so beautiful in my entire life.
He looked exactly like his daddy but had my nose.

I got to hold him for 2 days. It wasn't long enough. No amount of time would have been enough. I have pictures, but it's not enough. I'll never get to touch him again, to smell him. He'll never look at me, I'll never get to see those beautiful gummy smiles. I'll never get to teach him anything. I'll never hear him cry, feed him, or dress him. Never see him take his first steps, his first time driving, his first love.
He never even had a first breath.

And I wonder every day, what horrible thing I have done, that the God I always trusted and worshiped would punish me like this.


So here I am; twenty seven years old, I'm not a teacher, I don't have my own house anymore, my faith is shattered, and my babies are dead. What good could possibly come from this? What lesson is there to be learned?

Ryan has been my rock and my safety. When I am with him, I feel like maybe someday things will be ok. But I can't be with him constantly and when he's gone, I'm crushed with the weight of my grief, not realizing how much of it he has been helping me carry. My good friend Angel told me a metaphor of the grief being like a huge boulder that you're carrying, and that over time it gets smaller, you never put it down, but some day you can just put it in your pocket. I do feel like I am carrying a huge, terrible boulder that I both can't and don't
want to put down. And while I don't want to be hurting so badly, I feel like if I'm not, I'm doing wrong by Nico.

We had Nico cremated, and he sits on the dresser in our room. We didn't want to bury him, because it felt wrong to leave him any where, we didn't want to abandon him. And while I know it's just his body, not his soul, it still wouldn't feel right.
I believe that some day I will be reunited with him and I look forward to that. In the meantime though, I can take comfort in knowing that he is not alone. He has a brother or a sister (I think it's a brother) to play with, and great-grandparents taking care of him.

But until I meet him again, I will miss him every single day.Some times I miss him so much I can barely breathe and the thought of even getting out of bed is completely overwhelming. Time will help; eventually it won't be so hard. The thought of him won't make me feel like curling up and hiding. For now though, I have wonderful family to help me learn to live again.

I can take most comfort in something Ryan said to me.
"His whole life, all he knew was your love."

My precious boy. I will love you forever and always.