The week of meetings

We have had four meetings in the last two days.  Good, something to do, a plan, a goal for the day.  Too bad they would not be how we envisioned them.  The first three were much worse than the last, which was much better than anticipated.

The first meeting was an appointment for my Wife's six week postpartum check up.  Since we planned our picture perfect homebirth and ended up in the hospital we did not have an O.B.  So our appointment was scheduled at the health clinic.  Oh dear we really did not have an idea how that would go over did we.  We walk into our 8 am meeting at the health clinic and its surrounded by mothers with children.  Dealing with low income government assisted families the staff has become quite narcissistic and disenchanted.  We are waiting in the waiting room for ages and the tv has a breast feeding segment playing and my wife loses it and we have to wait outside while she cries.  They finally drag us into the appointment and they checked her over and she was fine.  But they had no information on her, they did not know our precious son died, or had any of her charts.  It was worthless. 

The second meeting was with our counselor.  We met her once and we did not like her but gave her a second chance.  Between the first and second meeting she gave us a mental health exam to fill out to see how we are doing with depression/anxiety.  Well the scores were less than ideal because we are trying to cope with our baby's death.  She took none of that in consideration and pushed us to get anti-depression medications.  She spent the whole meeting talking about getting us medicated.  I know I have signs of depression now, I am in grief!  LET ME WORK THROUGH MY GRIEF.  Needless to say we want someone who will try to help us through our grief, not just someone who wants to hook us up to meds on the second appointment. 

The third meeting was Compassionate Friends.  It was our first roundtable meeting of discussion and we were excited for the healing which we wanted to be experiencing.  There were about 10 people there, half newbies like us.  Unlike us most have lost older children, from 18 years all the way to 40 years.  Now I know that it is not easier when you lose a child who is an adult or even survived childhood than losing a child/infant.  It is a different type of grief with one big similarity, you lost your child.  But there was this lady here with her daughter, she had lost her other daughter at 29 years old to an auto-immune disease.  My heart went out to her but my patience did not.  She spent the entire meeting talking about her daughter, even when it was our time to talk and we said "we only got to hold our son for 12 days" she cut us off and went into a crying fit by saying "God took her before her 30th birthday"  and on and on.  I kept thinking, I wish I got Marcellus to 29 years old so I would have known what fucking eye color he had or WHAT HIS VOICE SOUNDED LIKE!  I know I should not judge or put my grief over anyone elses, it is just hard sometimes.  We will go back, give it a couple more tries. 

The last meeting we had was with the neonatal doctor who worked on Marcellus the day he dies.  That was a healing, sign of relief appointment.  Emotional to say the least, the last time we saw him I looked over at him and he pronounced my baby as dead at 12:43 pm.  I thanked him from the bottom of my heart that day for trying to save my sweet boys life and asked if he had children.  I then told him to hug them and tell them that he loves them.  I wanted everyone that day to go home and tell their children how much they love them because I would never get that chance again in my life to tell Marcellus.  I really hope he did, I really hope he called them and I really hope that everyone else walked out of there more thankful to have their children that day.  Back to the appointment with him, he reassured us that we did everything that we could and that everything was done correctly to try to save Marcellus.  Somehow he got blood clots which cut the blood supply to his digestive tract and there would be no hope saving him even if we would have stopped feedings a day earlier.  We do not know how he got the clots and there was no way of checking for them.  Those questions remain but we know that we did everything we could and so did they.   A relief to say the least, he then went on to tell us that we are a 'remarkable young couple' and he admired the way we handled ourselves that day.  He went on to praise us for being so active in Marcellus's life in the NICU, being not afraid of the monitors and hoses coming out of our son.  We had to be there, it was not a choice to us.  We thanked him again sincerely and he told us to contact him if we have any more questions.

Leaving the meeting we saw the doctor who assessed him the day he was born.  To see him, to see the man who asked if I wanted to touch my son two minutes after he was born was emotional.  He was the reason for the best moment of my life.  I hugged him with tears in my eyes and he walked us to the elevator.  Marcellus was looked after by such caring, compassionate gentleman it makes my heart so grateful.  The entire staff at the NICU there ensured his life was so pure and so loved.  I take comfort in knowing that Marcellus was always surrounded by people who cared for him, he never knew anything other than love and caring.  Such a wonderful feeling that would be in your life.  It humbled me to see that to my core. 

It is our first parent care tonight, hopefully we find more comfort and healing with people who can associate with us more.  People who can associate with loss of an infant.  Such a painful loss, you lose more than just your child, you lose your future, you lose your chance to prove yourself as a daddy. 

I love my family more than anything, I love my wife so much it hurts sometimes, I love my child in ways I cannot describe in words, we dont have words for the feelings I feel towards my family.