I’m going to be famous!

Okay, maybe not famous, but that’s not the point.  Three weeks ago I was contacted by the milk bank with a really cool opportunity.  A film maker was coming to Indy to do a documentary on donating human milk.  He wanted two moms to be a part of the film. Well they asked me if I was interested in telling my story for the bereavement program. I hesitated at first because I’m very shy in front of a camera, but I felt that I had to be a part of it. It would be another reason for me to talk about Aidan and secondly I’m very passionate about donating human milk. I know that pumping and donating really helped me in my grief process. I plan on donating again with future children. 

I got the location, a day spa where the bank was holding a girls night out event, and waited while they got everything set up.  The spa was not prepared for this at all! None of the rooms were well lit enough so they had to tape in the men’s bathroom. It was a very nice bathroom, I wish I would have seen the women’s because you know it’s always better then the men’s. Then they had music piped into the bathroom that couldn’t be turned off. I had to yell and even then the music was still too loud for the film.  I told my story though and hopefully he’ll be able to use some of it.  I of course had my pictures of Aidan and he had me hold them up. Hopefully they’ll still show his picture even if they can’t use my interview.

I’ll keep you updated as I hear how the progress of the film is going.

I love you Aidan Christopher!

Maggs

No I haven't forgotten about you guys

For some reason I like to slack on my blogging on the weekends. I would love to say it's because we're usually out running errands, but usually we're just hanging out. I'm not ready to type out what happened on Aidan's last day. I'll get there, but it's my blog and I'll write it when I'm ready. :-)

What happened this weekend. Friday afternoon Chris called me around 4:30. It's unusual for him to call me at that time.  His mom had just called saying that his dad was admitted to the hospital with chest pains. I left work at 5 and met Chris at home. We then drove straight to the hospital. Chris's brother was already there and when we got there we found out that Larry had two stents put in.  Larry was absolutely hilarious as he was recovering from the pain medicine.  We found out that Larry drove himself to the hospital, about 30 minutes away, around 10:30 in the morning.  Yes, we are all giving him crap for that! He went to the er and they started running tests. They were going to do the stents at the hospital, but then decided that he needed to go to the Heart Hospital instead. They were thinking maybe they would be doing open heart surgery.  The two hospitals are in the same parking lot, but when they built the heart hospital they didn't make a connection to Community. Larry had to ride in an ambulance for a total of 1 minute.  He ended up staying the night and came home Saturday afternoon.  We didn't leave the hospital until about 10 pm Friday night. We wanted to wait until Chris's mom was ready to go home. We wanted to make sure that she got home okay because we could tell she was upset, obviously.

My best friend told me that things come in three. So now it's time to wait for # 3

Well we didn't have to wait too long..... I found out on Saturday that my niece, Piper was taken to the hospital on Friday night. She ended up being diagnosed with bronchitis, which sucks ass. I get it twice a year every year since I was in 6th grade. Well except when I was pregnant, I never got sick. Another perk of my favorite little boy!  What's even scarier is that in babies bronchitis can turn into pneumonia if left untreated. This had better the 3rd thing!

I wrote down a list of things to blog about until I'm ready to talk about what happened on our last day with Aidan.

I love you Aidan Christopher!
Maggs

What happened- Monday Con’t

Let’s see where was I? Oh yes I was taking a nap while Chris got some food with his parents.  Okay really the nap may have come before we held Aidan, but that’s not the point. :-) I just have to make sure I get the main points written down.

We spent the day going back and forth between Aidan’s room and the waiting room.  We were finally got the message that Dr. O was ready to talk to us after looking at Aidan’s scan. I have no idea what was said in the meeting. I just stared at the screen as I realized what was being said. Dr. O was telling us that the bleed on the left side of his brain had drained, but while it was there it pushed tissue over to the right side. She then said this the motor movement part of his brain was gone and that soon his sight would go. She said there bleed caused enough damage that the right side of his brain wouldn’t be able to compensate for the missing left side. I couldn’t look at her or really even breathe the only thing I could do was cry. She told us of miracles that she’s witnessed, but was more telling us that it was almost time. The last thing that we wanted for Aidan was for him to be in pain and to not have a good quality of life. She said that he would stay medicated so he wouldn’t be in pain, but he wouldn’t have any quality of life. Dr. O was willing to explain it all to our family so they would support whatever decision we made, but we knew that they supported us 100%.

Chris and I talked, cried, held each other while we decided what was in Aidan’s best interest. We had to put our selfish interests aside to protect our baby. I told him that I couldn’t let him lose his son on his birthday, but he said that he wanted to share that day with Aidan.  We talked about how Aidan wasn’t moving as much and that his organs were starting to shut down since he was unable to fight the jaundice.  We talked to Dr. O again and we made the decision to take Aidan off the machines. She held us, cried with us and was extremely supportive.  At this point I was very calm and at peace with our decision. I knew it was best for Aidan and I felt that we were being carried by God.  We went out to let our families know we had made the decision. Surprisingly I was the one to make the “announcement” because Chris really wasn’t able to speak.  I lost it right after that.

We were given the option to sign a DNR if Aidan’s heart went out in the middle of the night, but I told the doctors that I had to have one more night. I had to have my baby to call and check on in the morning.  Even though we knew that we would have the next day I wanted everyone to say goodbye to Aidan that night. I told them that I needed them to be calm when saying goodbye.  I needed Aidan to know that they all love him and that we were happy to meet him. Of course I didn’t mind people crying, I just didn’t want anyone to be hysterical in the room.  The nurses broke the rules and let us have a few extra people in the room. I didn’t want to leave Aidan while Chris’s family was in the room, so they closed the blinds so no other families would see. My very good friend Denice had brought an impression kit earlier in the week and I asked Natalie, Aidan’s night nurse if she could make it for us.

(Uncle Adam and Aunt Trish)

(Momo and frampa)

Natalie offered to let us stay the night, but I had to go home. I needed to be able to lose it and I wasn’t going to do that in Aidan’s room or the family room. As soon as we got to the parking garage and the cold air hit my face I almost fainted from everything. Chris held me while I just sobbed in the parking garage.  He called his co-worker to let him know what was going on. I just cried. We got home, Chris made pizza and I just cried. I then pumped because once again I was in so much pain from not pumping for hours. We slept on the couches because I still wasn’t able to make it up the stairs to bed. I barely slept that night and when I did I would wake up a short while later just sobbing. To the point where I couldn’t breathe. Snoopy and Chris finally came to snuggle me, but I still couldn’t sleep. How do you sleep the night before you’re baby is about to leave you?

To be continued…..

I love you Aidan Christopher!

Maggs

Good night

I've decided not to continue my story tonight. I've had a really good day and I want to keep it that way.  I talked about Aidan so much today and thinking of him just makes me smile so much today. I'll finish it soon, but for right now I'm going to snuggle Chris and Snoopy while I think of my favorite baby.

I love you Aidan Christiopher!

Maggs

What happened-Monday Feb 8th

I was reading back through my blog yesterday and realized that I didn’t write about what happened in between being nervous about Chris going back to work and Aidan passing.  I want to write about it before I forget.

Monday, February 8th Chris went back to work. My mom and I had planned on going to the NICU at noon for Aidan’s hands on time. I called around 8:30 in the morning to check on him and I had been put on hold for awhile. I thought it was a little weird, but assumed his nurse was doing hands on still. Dr. H picked up the phone and my heart sank.  He told us that Aidan’s jaundice was going back up and he needed us to get to the NICU as soon as possible.  I texted Chris 911 and then called him to tell him to get to the hospital right away. He had been at work for an hour.

I called Chris’s dad to let him know that we were on the way to the hospital. When we got there Dr. H told us that in a full term baby if the jaundice level gets up to 30 they get concerned about brain damage. They don’t know what the magic number is for preemies, but assume that’s much lower than 30. Aidan’s number was 14. He wanted to talk to us about doing a possible blood transfusion. They would take all of Aidan’s blood out that was jaundice and put in fresh blood. It would have been a very risky procedure and wouldn’t guarantee that Aidan would make it.  Our minds were swirling and Dr. H could tell so he said that he would give Aidan a shot of something, put him back under the bili lights and wait to see if that would help. He said that if it went up to 16 that we would need to decide what we were going to do. It was starting to become clear that the end was coming. I asked if we’d be able to hold him and was told that we could later in the day. We called all of our family members to come to the hospital because we needed them so much.

About an hour or two later they tested Aidan’s jaundice level again and it had risen to 16. Chris and I had no idea what we were going to do so once again Dr. H came up with an idea. He told us that they would take Aidan to get another ct scan to find out the extent of brain damage the bleed caused. I cried, begged and pleaded for God to bring Aidan back to me alive after the scan. I needed to have Aidan back, I needed him to be with his mommy and daddy if he wasn’t going to make it in the next few hours. I HAD to be able to hold him.  While he was down getting the scan we went back to the waiting room where everyone was hanging out.

I ended up taking a short nap because I was in such shock. I woke up to find out that my shirt was wet because I had leaked. It had been about 6 hours since I had last pumped and I left all of my supplies at home.  The nurses gave me another set of supplies and were shocked at how quickly I filled the bottles.

Amber, Aidan’s nurse came out to get us because he was back from the scan.  Chris and I ran back to his room to see him. Then we had to wait on Dr. O, the neonatologist to take a look at his scans. We had to wait about 6 hours.  My parents had gone home, but Chris’s stayed with us. We were finally able to hold Aidan. It was unbelievably bittersweet because we knew that the only reason we were able to hold him is because he was most likely not going to make it. I sat down on the recliner and waited for Amber and the RT to get Aidan ready to be moved. He was finally in my arms! 

I sat there rocking him very carefully so the ventilator wouldn’t budge. I talked to him, kissed his little head and sang to him. I loved feeling his body against mine and I was so happy. I cried a lot too, but I told him they were happy tears.  My back was so sore from the surgery, recovery, stress and my lack of resting so I wasn’t able to hold Aidan for very long. Once I was done Chris got a turn to hold him.  I can’t describe the amount of love that I felt when I saw my whole world sitting in that chair.  I won’t pretend to know what Chris was feeling or saying while he held Aidan. I let him have his space with his son.

Chris’s parents were in the room with us and got some family pictures as well. Once we were done holding Aidan he was put back into his isolate. The whole time we were holding him his numbers were great and that really helped us a lot.  At this point we weren’t even considering the transfusion because we were waiting to hear what Dr. O would say. 

Everyone but Chris’s parents had left and came back after they got off work. Chris went downstairs to get something to eat with his parents because he hadn’t eaten all day. At that point food was our very last priority.  I ended up staying in Aidan’s room and taking another short nap.  I couldn’t hold him or touch him so the only thing I could do was sleep. 

I’ll continue the rest of the story tomorrow.

I love you Aidan Christopher!

Maggs

I won't let this define me

As many of you know I'm part of an online message board.  A lot of those ladies have helped me so much during all of this.  Just 2 months ago I was blissfully sitting on the 3rd trimester board getting excited/nervous that I only had 3 more months to go until I would have an outside baby.  I've always known that just because I'm pregnant it doesn't mean that I automatically will have a baby. Secretly I thought that since I knew that, I would be one of the masses that had a healthy baby in the end.  Now I post between a loss board and trying to conceive after a loss. No we're not trying and won't for awhile.  I also read posts on pregnant after a loss and there is a board for parenting after a loss. All of these boards have made me feel like I'm now just Maggie after a loss and honestly I don't want that.

Yes part of me died when Aidan died and I will never get my innocence back, but I am determined to enjoy future pregnancies just as much and just as quickly as I did when I found out I was pregnant with Aidan.  I couldn't have done anything differently and I don't want to be terrified every day of my future pregnancies.  I also don't want to become that paranoid mom that won't let her child have any freedom. 

I will never ever EVER deny Aidan's life or my insane amount of love for him! I love you Aidan Christopher and I'm so happy that I'm your mommy.

Maggs

Happy St. Patrick's Day-A day late

Aidan,

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Mommy's family is very Irish so we love St. Patty's day.  The first thing that momo bought you when you were born was this from Kohls.

When I first got pregnant with you I told your daddy that it would be weird to not drink this year. I was very happy to not drink, but it would be weird. Well I did have a drink last night buddy and it was very bitter sweet. Mommy and daddy went out and met up with friends for a couple of hours. We had an okay time sweetie, but it made me miss you a lot!  I would rather have been visiting you in the NICU and making sure that your goggles were green. I wouldn't want anyone to pinch you. :-) 

Instead I visited you at the cemetary. Momo bought a pot of shamrocks and an angel holding a froggy and dropped it off earlier in the day and I wanted to see them. I wish I would have thought to bring the bib with me to put on the angel, but that's okay. Soon we'll be decorating the area for Easter. 

I love you and miss you so much Aidan Christopher.

Love,

Mommy

100th post and update from my dr appointment

On my other blog that I was writing while trying to get pregnant with Aidan I was so excited for my 100th post. The post was announcing that I was pregnant. Well this post isn't like that.  I canceled that blog, so mom don't go looking for it. :-)

I just got back from my 6 week postpartum check up. I look good and everything is healing properly. I've been cleared to exercise and I lost 2 lbs since last week (which I already knew) The final autopsy isn't in yet or Dr. H hasn't called Dr. B to go over it. She's going to call him this week to talk about my case a little more.  I asked if they knew when the bleed happened. Dr. B isn't 100 % certain, but she thinks Aidan had a stroke in utero. She's not sure if the stress from the cord failing could have caused the possible stroke.  I don't know if we'll ever know if he had a stroke though. 

I asked if flying to Vegas could have caused the stress and she reminded me that I didn't do anything wrong. Before the 28 wk appointment she said that I had a picture perfect pregnancy. I'll get the blood work done tomorrow and then have another appointment to go over everything. For right now I just need to keep taking my prenatals and I might have to take an additional folic acid pill, but we'll find out after the blood work results. She also told me that if I'm not pregnant 3-4 months after we start trying to come in and she'll run more tests. I'll be seeing her primarily still and I'll start to be monitored more closely after I get into the 2nd trimester. I already knew this, but I'll be having scheduled c-sections for all future pregnancies and if everything is going smoothly then it will be scheduled between 37-39 weeks.

So that's where we're at. I'm doing okay emotionally now, but I wasn't right after the appointment. It's hard to hear that I didn't do anything wrong and that he possibly had a stroke, but it's nice to possibly have an answer.

I love you Aidan Christopher and I miss you lots!

Maggs

Thank You's

To everyone that sent us gifts or made donations to the March of Dimes in Aidan's name,  I will be sending you a thank you card. I had them all written out and then lost them. So I have to write them all over again. Or hopefully I'll find the ones that I already wrote.

I love you Aidan Christopher!

Maggs

Huge step

So I've been saying how pregnant woman and babies don't bother me.  Well, my friends who are pregnant or have babies don't bother me. Strangers, that's a different story. Aaron and Jen were kind enough to have their little Logan on Thursday, instead of this coming Tuesday since we share both see Dr. B. I was going to go with some co-workers to visit them in the hospital. They wanted to go after work and I had plans so instead I went alone during lunch.  A lot of people didn't want me going alone, but I needed to. I knew that if I started to cry that Aaron and Jen would understand. Yes I know that everyone understands when I cry, but once again I was over thinking the scenario. 

As I drove to the hospital I was fine. Pressing the button for the 4th floor was a little difficult to press, but my room was on the 5th floor so it wasn't too bad. There was a family in the waiting room with lots of balloons, presents and lots of smiles. I soooo wish that my family could have felt that. Instead we felt fear for Aidan being born so early. We felt joy that his first night he was doing well, but that fear was right behind the joy.

Aaron came out to get me and we walked back to the room.  As soon as I walked into the room and saw little Logan, my heart just melted. Seeing him did let me know that I am okay seeing my friend's babies. I know because of my experience that having a healthy baby is such a miracle and I will never take for granted any future pregnancies. Not that I did with Aidan, but you know what I mean. At first I didn't want to hold Logan because the last newborn baby I held was Aidan. I'm so glad I did hold him though.  I know that I will be a mom to a healthy baby and I will get to hold my own newborn baby some day. 

Jen and I traded war stories and laughed about how calm and cool our ob is. I gave her some tips that I learned from my few days of being a mom. It was great to see their perfect little family and it was so therapeutic for me. Thank you guys so much for supporting me, praying for us and for letting me come visit. I wish you 3 nothing but the best. I can't wait to hear about and see Logan grow up. Congratulations again!

I love you Aidan Christopher!

Maggs

Feelings

I'm feeling sooooooooo much better today than I have the past three days combined. I felt that I had to be as strong as everyone told me I am. I thought that being strong meant I couldn't cry.  So when I felt the need to cry I just bottled it up.  It got really bad, I felt like there was a huge black cloud over me. I came home last night and talk to Chris and my mom. I spilled my guts to them and cried and I felt better. I went to work today and it was a completely different feeling. Not to sound cheesy, okay well I'm a cheesy person so here ya go, my head felt like a sunny day full of big fluffy white clouds. I know that crying doesn't make me weak and when I need to, I'll cry.

Part of the problem is that I had this idea that going back to work would make the hurt go away because I would be too busy working to think about pain. As I learned and have now accepted, that's not true. Only time will heal my pain. I'm also surrounded by people who love me and when I say that I'm doing fine they ask how I'm really doing and don't let me get away with a generic answer.

I love you Aidan Christopher

Maggs

So much to say

I've been sitting at work the past three days with so many things that I want to write about. Then I get home and forget everything that I wanted to write.  Plus I'm exhausted physically and emotionally. I'm going to get a journal so that way when I think of things I'll get them written down right away and then blog about it later.

I do have to say that I'm very thankful for my support system. I can call them, talk to them, cry to them and they never look away. They just hold me close and love me.  When I tell them I'm having a hard time they ask me about Aidan and I can't even begin to explain how much it helps.

I love you Aidan Christopher

Maggs

Sooo tired!

Today was my first day back at work. I have no idea why I was so nervous because it was great to be back. I'm very scatterbrained right now so I feel like I didn't do much, but physically I feel like I was hit by a truck and ran a marathon. My whole body is so sore and my lower stomach feels like I did 1,000 crunches. As soon as I hit "publish post" I'm going to bed!

Speaking of my lower stomach, my incision has been bothering me a lot the past few days. I went to the dr today and saw Dr. B's nurse practitioner. She took a look at the incision and said it looks good. She said it might be my regular pants and suggests that I wear my maternity pants until the end of March. She didn't really give me any advice on the pain, but I'm glad to know that it's not infected right now. Chris and I go back to see Dr. B next Tuesday (Remember Aaron and Jen, you can't have your little boy that afternoon. ;-) ) for my 6 wk check up.

I love you Aidan Christopher and thank you for helping me get through today!

Maggs

Changes

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new Maggie.  I'm overweight and I want that to change. I want to be healthy before my next pregnancy and I have at least 5 months to change.  I'm going to start slowly or else I will give up quickly.  I can't exercise yet so Chris and I have taken short walks around the neighborhood. Because of the recovery from the surgery my back gets sore very quickly. On top of that recovery time is usually 8 weeks and I'm going back to work at 5. So needless to say, it will be awhile before I can start exercising more.

Here's my plan:
1. Drink mostly water or milk
2. Have 1 soda a day to slowly work at no soda
3. Take a 10 minute walk before work and a 20 minute walk at lunch
4. Only eat out for lunch 1 or 2 times a week.
5. I would like to lose 10-15 lbs by August. More would be great, but I don't want to set anything too high.

I know it sounds easy, but it hasn't been for me. Now when I don't want to get up and walk in the morning I will look over at Aidan's picture to remind me that I need to do this. I need to do this for me and I need to do this for future babies. I know that Aidan's passing was not my fault, but I have to make sure that I'm healthy to carry a baby closer to full term. I plan on taking a before picture tonight and then on August 7th I will take an after picture. I'll be blogging about how how I'm doing, but I won't focus on it.

I love you Aidan Christopher!

Maggs

PS. I'm finally starting to get a little more comfortable with the idea of posting some of Aidan's pictures.  Here's Aidan during tummy time

White Elephant

The Elephant in the Room


by Terry Kettering


There's an elephant in the room.



It is large and squatting, so it is hard to get around it.



Yet we squeeze by with, "How are you?" and "I'm fine," and a thousand other



forms of trivial chatter. We talk about the weather. We talk about work.



We talk about everything else, except the elephant in the room.



There's an elephant in the room.



We all know it's there. We are thinking about the elephant as we talk together.



It is constantly on our minds. For, you see, it is a very large elephant.



It has hurt us all.



But we don't talk about the elephant in the room.



Oh, please say his name.



Oh, please say his name again.



Oh, please, let's talk about the elephant in the room.



For if we talk about his death, perhaps we can talk about his life.



Can I say his name to you and not have you look away?



For if I cannot, then you are leaving me....



alone....



in a room....



with an elephant.

I love you Aidan Christopher and I'll never stop saying your name

Maggs

These boots are made for walking

Well I better start walking. Besides being signed up for the March for Babies on April 25, my dad and I just signed up to to the Race for the Cure the weekend before. In those two weekends I'll walk 8 1/2 miles. Man I'm tired just thinking about. My parent's live on the canal and I've been watching people run on there every day for the past 2 weeks. Does that count as exercising? No, I didn't think so.

Speaking of the March for Babies, I would like to thank everyone who has donated to team Aidan Christopher (http://www.marchforbabies.org/team/t1375275) there are 52 days until the walk and we are at $1,955 and that doesn't include the checks and cash that I still need to turn in. I'm so amazed by the generosity of everyone and I'm so thankful that other premature babies will be helped in Aidan's name.

I love you Aidan Christopher

Maggs

Random

I had a stupid post started about the diapers that I got in the mail today. Then I realized that no one cares about that. I sat here for the past hour trying to figure out what I wanted to write about. It hit me, I want to talk about Aidan. The problem though is that you all already know all of my stories about Aidan.  I wish I had more time to get more stories with him, but I didn't. I keep sitting here trying to remember more things that I may have forgotten about in the hospital. The problem is though is that I didn't spend all of my time in his room. I was told to get rest and recover. I also knew that Aidan needed to rest and he was easily excitable when Chris and I were in the room. Part of me regrets not being there all day every day, but it wouldn't have changed anything. I was only able to touch him during the hands on time so I would have been sitting on an uncomfortable couch not able to touch or talk to Aidan.

I go back to work on Monday. I'm scared and relieved to go back so soon. My back has been bothering me every day and I'm afraid it's going to continue. Luckily I have my trusty heating pad and Advil so I should be good. We're coming up on our busy season so that should keep my mind occupied for about 4 months and while I think about Aidan constantly he won't be the only thing I think about.

I also want to thank everyone who commented on my post about grieving too soon. Me laughing and going forward doesn't make me love or miss Aidan any less. He is giving me the strength to move forward and to start my new normal.

I love you Aidan Christopher

Maggs