In the arms of Jesus

Peace. A wave of peace. That was the feeling God washed over me as I drove away from the cemetery yesterday after Kyson's burial service. I can't describe it in any other way than I knew it was a gift from God. His presence was palpable. 

I knew the day would be tough. I woke up much earlier than I wanted to...8:30 am...crazy, right? I know for some of you with children you are blessed to be able to take care of that this doesn't sound that early, but for me, on a day off, I rarely wake before 9:30 or 10. I awoke not because of poor sleep, nightmares, or grief, but because my dog Buster puked all over the bed. Didn't really wanna go back to sleep in that. I'm pretty sure I know why he puked. The day before, Adam and I took him on a walk to the park close to our house, which we often do, letting him off the leash to play fetch. There had obviously been a food fight and/or child tornado, because there was a smorgasbord of junk food on the ground by the picnic tables. Needless to say, Buster partook of leftovers. 


I was drawing on a sidewalk with chalk, something I think I may have made into a tradition last time we went to the park. It was the day after the initial ultrasound, when we found out about Kyson's cystic hygroma. We walked Buster to the park, and there was some chalk left behind on the sidewalk. I picked it up, sat down, and wrote the phrase I had said to Kyson multiple times..."I love you, my little baby. (heart) mommy." So when I returned to the park a couple days ago for the first time since then, I brought some chalk with. I sat down and wrote the same thing with an angel next to it as my tears dripped down onto the drawing. As I was finishing the angel, a few children came over to us to play with Buster. They were impressed that he would sit before Adam would throw the ball. Adam showed them the hand signal we use to tell him to sit. They emulated. I wanted to show them his coolest tricks, high five and "pow" (roll over). Buster was too excited to listen to these more complicated commands, so I grabbed a chip off the ground (which he had already had several of, so what's one more crumb, right?) to entice him to follow the command. Hence the emetic awakening yesterday.


The morning was fine. After putting the sheets in the washer, I napped on the couch for an uninterrupted 3 hours. I awoke at noon and showered. It was at about 2pm some flowers were delivered and Toby, my cat, decided he wanted to jump onto my shoulders to greet the visitor and possibly catch an escape route out the front door. The problem was he jumped on my back, not my shoulders, as I was standing upright, not anticipating his attack. His back claws dug deep into my back as he slid down. Ouch. 

This was enough to make me mad, but what made me lose it was figuring out this kind of flower that was just delivered was poisonous to the very cat who just tried to kill me via back stabbing. Toby will sometimes chew on flowers or plants, so we put them in the bathroom and shut the door when we leave or at night so he can't get them. The collection of bouquets and house plants gathering in my bathroom has quickly become more than the little counter has room for. I wasn't coping with this problem well. 

I threw Toby off my back and sobbed. I clung to the Sarah Bear (the teddy bear I got from the bereavement program at the hospital). I laid on the couch and called Adam to see if he could come home. I was planning on picking him up from work at 3pm anyways to go to the hospital together to pick up Kyson in his box. He came home early and we laid on the couch together. 


We went to the hospital and met up with Toni, the hospital chaplain. We ran into Dr Wildey in the hall. We exchanged a few words, a hug, and I cried. He speaks very empathetically. He told me today that the chromosome test was inconclusive. They weren't able to grow the chromosomes from the fascia sample they collected. So we won't know what caused the cystic hygroma. I'm ok with that. 

We went to the hospital chapel while Toni went to go get Kyson's box. I like the box. It's nicer looking than a casket. Toni prayed for us, and we left. It was weird walking out of the front door of the hospital in the middle of the day holding my son in a box. Oh how I wish it could have been in a carseat carrier. I wondered if anyone could tell what the box was. My face probably revealed what it was. Plus Adam was carrying the Sarah bear, and I had some pale yellow/cream colored lilies I'd grabbed out of a bouquet we got from our church laying on top of the box. The day before, Toni gave me a bracelet that had a matching baby bracelet. We sent the baby sized bracelet to be placed in the box with him. They pinned it to his garment. Toni also gave me a pair of matching wooden crosses, and I had one placed in the box with him, and I kept one. They sealed the box that morning before we picked him up.


We then stopped by a flower shop to pick up some flowers I ordered to place on top of his box. They were 3 roses in a hand tied bouquet, the color of roses I had in my wedding bouquet. I think they are called leonidas roses. They are a yellowish cream with reddish orange tips. My favorite kind of roses. I brought the box into the flower shop with me, which seems odd, but I wasn't going to leave him in the car. The florist looked at it strangely. I don't care. 


We got to the cemetery about half an hour early. We sat down on a bench, which was also someone's gravestone. We debated whether to sit there, but ultimately decided that this was the reason this person's family chose to make his grave marker a bench. It was a peaceful place to sit in the shade, under a wind chime. I was grateful to this person and/or their family for creating a beautiful oasis of peace for others to mourn their loved ones. 

I took pictures of Kyson's box with the 3 rose bouquet on top, next to a tree and the Sarah bear. I put the lilies I pulled from the bouquet from my church in the arms of the Sarah bear. They are beautiful pictures. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I loved the shadows the roses cast on the box in the late afternoon sun.


The service was intimate. It was just Adam and I, and our pastor from Cottonwood Community Church, Bob. It was a beautiful and serene service. Bob always has just the right words to say. His words were very comforting. He read several scriptures. I will have to get those from him, they were very soothing and reassuring. 


I clung to Kyson's box with Adam's arm around me as Bob spoke. The tears I cried softly were a beautiful release, an expression of my deepest love for my son. My tears dripped onto his box. Bob asked if we wanted to say anything. I said, "I love you, my little baby," as I wept. I placed the box on the frame over the green carpet that covers the hole in the ground. Adam gave me the Sarah bear to hold. I plucked a lily off the stem and placed it in the bouquet of roses. I took the other 2 lilies home to hang them upside down to dry. As we drove home, a peace that I've never felt before overcame my soul. All is good. Kyson is in a wonderful place. In the arms of Jesus. 

Life is good

Yesterday I had to make some phone calls that were very difficult to make. I googled the local funeral home/granite store to find a marker for Kyson’s gravesite. Ugh. I don’t like my son’s name next to that word. Resting place? Kyson’s resting place. That’s weird too.

As I search, I try to muster up the courage to place the call. Meanwhile, my grandma is cooking up lunch, and the mood in the house with my uncle, aunts, and cousins is jovial. It just doesn’t seem like the right time to make a call like that. It’s an excuse to put it off even longer. I shut the laptop and go to the bedroom to wipe away a few tears before I end up sobering up the mood in the house.  At that point, it had been 5 days since he was born and I felt the need to get this ordered soon. I put it off til that afternoon.

They said it would take 1-2 weeks to get the marker customized. Not something that would be ready in time for the funeral anyways. So I guess it doesn’t matter how soon I get it ordered. We’ll have the funeral on Wed after we get back from my brother’s wedding. Adam and I have decided that it will just be me and him with our pastor there. It would just feel odd having our friends and co-workers there without any family. All our family would have to fly up for it, and we don’t expect that. It’s been good to be around family this week. Plus my mom and sister came quickly for the delivery, and that was more important to me than being there for the funeral.

I do feel bad for Adam. I left him to go to Texas to visit my family. It was a vacation I had planned before any of this happened. It turned out to be ok timing for me to still go on this trip a couple days after the delivery. But now he’s home by himself. He says he’s ok, and I’m sure he’s getting by, but it's still just not a good time for us to be apart. Hopefully Buster and Toby (our dog and cat) are keeping him company.  I know our friends are too. We’ve had some friends bring by a couple meals, which is really helpful. Thanks, guys! The food, gifts, kind words, posts, texts, calls and cards from everyone have been very uplifting. It’s encouraging to look on facebook and see the comments and status posts about the loss of a baby, or posting the link to my blog. I can’t thank you all enough.

There is one good thing that has come out of all of this so far. The love that I've felt for Adam has never been stronger. Our connection is so much deeper. Having a part of him growing inside me was such an amazing feeling, as I’m sure any mothers out there reading this have experienced. It’s even stronger after going through this together.

I have to admit, as silly as it sounds, I’ve been sleeping with a teddy bear. At our birthing center, mothers who have lost their babies get the Sarah Bear. I think the story behind it is someone lost their baby and wanted to give moms something to hold as they leave the hospital since they aren’t leaving with their baby. I have clung to that fuzzy little bear every night since Kyson and I parted. I hope it’s a phase I grow out of, but for now, it’s comforting. The necklace with the ring on it (the one I got from the hospital that Erin took his pictures with) has also been around my neck since my mom got the chain for me. I hope to get his name engraved on it if it’s possible. I’ll take it to a jewelry store to see if they can do that.

Do you ever associate a song that was popular on the radio with a specific time in your life? A song I really like that's been on repeat in my head is Good Life by OneRepublic, both before and after receiving the news about Kyson’s prognosis. The lyrics don’t have much to do with what I’m going through, but the words in the chorus are a general perspective I’m maintaining, despite all the grief and sadness. “This has gotta be a good life, this has gotta be a good life, this could really be a good life, a good, good life.” The melody is soothing. Life is still good. The colors of life are sharper when you go through something heart-wrenching and come out of it a better person. The highs are higher. The good is better. The sweet is sweeter.

Interestingly, another OneRepublic song, Apologize, is what I associate with the first time I lost a baby in the NICU. Lyrics unrelated, the emotion of the melody is cathartic. The death of a few babies that I’ve cared for and loved in the NICU has helped me prepare for this grief. Obviously losing my own child is much more heartbreaking, but at least the process of grief is a road I've walked before.

Kyson Alexander Chambers

I didn't know it would happen so soon. All the worries went through my head, like "What if the baby is born with issues that will be a lifetime of suffering?" or "How do we decide how to invasively to intervene?" and "What if the delivery happens while I'm in Texas or New Orleans in the next couple weeks?"

The timing was perfect.

I was emotionally tortured on Fri with some mild cramping...the kind that you normally think, oh, it's just gas. But every little pain is concerning when you are pretty sure you will have a fetal demise. Is it time yet? 

Friday evening after the mild cramping, I went into the OB nurse's station to my co-workers to borrow a doppler for my trip to Texas the following week. I had asked my boss if I could borrow one for a little while, knowing that it could provide some reassurance for my anxiety about every little cramp. So I took the doppler home to try to hear the heartbeat. I couldn't hear it, but I didn't panic, since it was probably my technique or because the placenta is in the way. I went back to OB and they tried to find it.They couldn't find it. At this point, I was like, ok, if it's time, that is ok. I wasn't panicking.

They grabbed the ultrasound machine, and after some searching, they found the heartbeat. The quality of this machine wasn't quite that of the one at the office, but the nurses convinced me the heartbeat was there. I didn't see what they saw, but I trusted them, they do this all the time.  

The next morning, I had a small amount of bleeding. I got a little panicked.  I told Adam to get ready to go to the hospital, and I took a quick shower. I called in sick for transport call, which I do every 3rd weekend...I am on call for emergencies in the NICU or if we get a transport to pick up a baby from another hospital. 


Having gone in last night, I knew I couldn't go in every night for an ultrasound from my co-workers. I would drive myself nuts (and them too) going in for everything, for who knows how long. So I called the doctor on call (who, by the way, is brand new at our hospital...that wasn't reassuring, when you are used to being able to talk to doctors you work with...I am spoiled to that). She said to wait and see if the bleeding increases, and then come in. I was thinking this too...that if it was really time, then I would bleed more.


While I was in the shower, I had a mini panic attack. I said, "this is ok, if it's time, that's ok, it's ok." Then I lost it. I sobbed, "Little baby, it's ok if you wanna go meet Jesus, it's ok." Looking back, I am wondering if this is when it started. 


Once I got out of the shower, I was talking to my mother-in-law, and I was certain I felt a couple movements. This is the last time that I was certain that what I felt was movement and not my digestion. 


Sunday was uneventful. I was relaxed. We went to church. I knew that the worship songs at church would be hard to listen to, so I just listened and didn't sing. I managed to get through those with only a couple tears. 


That evening, we met with Steph to do some maternity photos. I am sooooo glad we got these photos taken when we did. The timing for this was crucial. 


The next morning, we left for Sioux Falls to see the Maternal/Fetal Specialist. I was very anxious for the drive there. Our car kept loosing traction every time we'd hit a bump. Plus we knew we were about to drive into rain. I was getting very panicky, imagining us flying off the road, being in the hospital, thinking, "If I'm unconscious from a car accident, how would the paramedics know that I'm pregnant? Would they notice that I'm wearing maternity clothes?" All these stupid, exaggerated anxious thoughts were crawling around in my head. I finally called my mom just to talk to someone to get my mind off these anxious thoughts. 


So we get to the clinic early. We sat in the waiting room for a while. I remember thinking, "Are all the moms here with anomalies and problems, or is this the normal prenatal checkup place?" After sitting in the waiting room for about 45 min and watching the moms come and go, I realized this was the normal prenatal office too. 

The genetic counselor spoke with us first. He talked about the possibilties of what could cause a cystic hygroma, the most likely being Turner's syndrome (if it is indeed from a chromosomal cause, which it may not be). This is where there is only one sex chormosome, the X. So they are female. Most people with Turner's walk around and you'd never know they have it except they are poor in math, and they can't have children. I'm thinking, we can deal with this. That would be more than manageable. He also tried to give us a little more hope, saying that 1 out of 4 times people are referred here for some problem, they don't even see the problem on their equipment, or it has already resolved. I didn't like hearing that. It was like he was disregarding the grief and acceptance we had already gone through. I completely trusted the doctors here that know what they saw. It was pretty obvious. 


So then we go into the ultrasound. I was thinking it would be a 3D ultrasound, but it wasn't. She placed the wand on my abdomen. She looked at the baby for a couple minutes to be sure. "I'm so sorry, the heart isn't beating."


I wept as Adam and I embraced on the exam table. "It's ok, it's ok, my baby is in Jesus' arms," I sobbed. "It's ok."


I suspected this immediately when she first put the wand on, because at the ultrasound last Tues, the heartbeat was so obvious, and with this one, it wasn't. I thought about asking her when she first put the wand on my abdomen if the heart was beating, but then I waited, because I knew she was making sure and I knew she would tell us once she got the images she needed.  


The doctor came in to confirm. He said the baby would have died from the fluid overload on the heart, in medical terms, congestive heart failure.


The 5 hour drive home was hard. We made all the phone calls to family. Needless to say, the tears were on and off and on again. We talked about burial. So many questions. Never had to think about gravestones and caskets. I hate the word casket. Caskets are so ugly. Even the word is ugly. I don't want a casket. I want a nice box. A beautiful box.


I was very anxious driving into Grand Forks. I narrowly avoided a panic attack. We get home and pack a few things. I was very eager to get to the hospital quickly, but Adam just needed some time to absorb it all. 


I arrived at the hospital at about 10pm to be induced. They gave me a double dose of cytotec, a medicine that makes me dilate and contract. The night was ok, I was able to sleep for a few hrs. My sister Kassie arrived at 4 am after driving all night from Milwaukee. The pain really started getting stong in the morning. There were a couple hours of really strong contractions, then once we got my morphine PCA up to the right dose, I was feeling better.

My water broke around 1pm...the time is fuzzy after the morphine. My mom arrived shortly after that, flying in from Houston. I am so glad she and my sister were there. 

I felt something when I got up to the bathroom, so Erin let Dr Wildey know. By the way, Erin, the co-worker who I saw in the ultrasound waiting room after initially getting the news of the cystic hygroma last week, came in to work just for me. I am so grateful for that. I had been in a delivery with her a couple years ago, and she did such an awesome job at calming this mom down when she had to labor with her premature baby without any pain meds. I told her that day, "I want you to be my labor nurse when I have kids." She said, "Honey, I'd come in on my day off." She probably doesn't remember saying that back then, but she held up to it. She came in just for me. Dr Wildey also came in that last night when he wasn't on call. You couldn't ask for better care. Like family.


Dr Wildey arrived, and it was time to push. Baby's foot was out. I pushed for about 20 min. 


My little baby arrived at 2:13pm. Kyson Alexander Chambers. 7.7oz/220g. 8 inches long.


His hands are perfect. His fingernails are perfectly formed. His umbilical cord is tiny, thinner than a shoestring. His feet and toes are tiny, not as detailed as his hands. His mouth is open and completely formed and tiny. His lips and mouth look like Adam. I absolutely love and treasure that.  His mouth is shaped the way Adam's is shaped when he is sleeping with his mouth open. I will always remember Kyson when I see Adam sleeping with his mouth open.


I love touching his little hands, feet, and face. I will always treasure the moments I got with him, and the photos Erin took. I love the photos with the little ring. My mom got me a chain that I can wear the ring on as a necklace. We went to a jewelry store in the mall today and picked it out. The first chain I tried on with the ring on it, I broke down and bawled into her arms. I absolutely love it. 


The whole birthing experience was better than I thought it would be. Both emotionally and physically. The day was harder for Adam than last week was. For me, it was easier than last week was. I think that's because I mentally prepared myself for a stillbirth, visuallizing it and mourning about it then. God carried me through, giving me the strength to do what I needed to do. I can't thank Erin and Dr Wildey enough. Their support and comforting manner were exactly what I needed to get through this. 


I slept well last night. I think the morphine was still in me a little. Today was tolerable. I had a few breakdown moments. I am so glad my mom is here with me. I miss him in my womb. I miss my pregnant belly, watching it change week by week. I miss feeling his flutters. He is in Jesus' arms now. It's comforting knowing he hasn't had to face the pain of this world. He has only known love and heaven.