Grieving.

It’s an interesting thing when crisis strikes, you have the opportunity to find out what you’re made up of. I haven’t felt made of much the last few days.

Meet Isaac Brigham Nielson. This is my baby boy, still living in womb, perfect to us in every way, but not so much to the doctors. We found out he has a neural tube defect called Anencephaly, which means he will be born with little or no brain and scull. His prognosis is death, shortly after birth.

I cannot even express what it meant to my world to hear this news. I felt dazed. Shocked. I cried, and couldn’t stop. I sobbed. I drove to pick up my husband from work and couldn’t remember street names and numbers, where I had driven hundreds of times. And the children. WHAT would I tell my children?

After thinking for the last couple days, I’ve decided to write. And write in such a way that is healing to me. I’ll have this record not only for myself, but for my family, so we can look back some day and realize then we are strong enough now to get through this battle now.

After receiving the news Thursday, I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed up all night researching on the internet about my boy’s condition. I read, I looked at photographs, I laid my head down on my desk and sobbed. Friday night? I decided to stay off of the internet. The kids and I made a huge bed in the living room, and we slept together. I think I was able to sleep last night for 4 or 5 hours, forcing myself to push thoughts out of my head, trying not to weep. Weep over silly things. Things that haven’t even happened yet. Like. Who of my family could be there for me when I have the baby? What happens if I cry too much when Isaac is born? How will I be able to dress my child for burial. I weep because I can’t stand to see my children is such pain, grieving. I weep because it isn’t fair. I weep because I don’t know how I am going to come home from the hospital with empty arms. I weep because my husband is in pain, and I sob because I feel so devastated and heartbroken.

God is good. I am not being punished. For some reason, Andrew, the children and I have been given this trial and blessing in our lives, and I can only cling to the knowledge that we, as a family, some how are strong enough to survive this. Not only survive, but be better for it.

I’m beginning to hate the night. It’s now Saturday evening, around 8:00 pm. Right around 6:00, it started again. The horrible sorrow. My heart aches so badly, it makes my chest hurt. Tonight I keep thinking of all the things I feel cheated out of. I keep thinking “The last time I ran the vacuum, I thought my baby was alive” or “The last time I cooked a decent meal for my family I thought I was a mother of three, preparing lovingly for her fourth child”. My husband took the crib down this afternoon, and I couldn’t watch. Each time I gaze into Ian’s room, there is a huge hole where my baby should be sleeping in May. I walked into the bathroom, and I remember last giving the children a bath and thinking I needed to buy my Johnson’s and Johnson’s shampoo for the baby. I thought today about how I wouldn’t be happily exhausted feeding a baby into the wee hours of the morning. Instead I get to come home - bleed like I’ve had my healthy newborn, feel my milk come in, and get to lay there at night, alone, and wishing for my child to be with me. I weep with sadness as I think of these things.

And now, now it’s time for movie night. The kids want to sleep together in the living room again, and right now, anything seems better then being alone in the night with my tears, grief, and thoughts I cannot quiet.