The moment that you died, my heart was torn in two, one side filled with heartache, the other died with you.

I often lie awake at night, when the world is fast asleep, and take a walk down memory lane, with tears upon my cheeks.

Remembering you is easy, I do it everyday, but missing you is heartache that never goes away.

I hold you tightly within my heart and there you will remain. Until the joys day arrives, That we will meet again.

-Unknown

In the weeks following the death and birth of Nathan, I tried to get back to normal. I put on such a strong front that when people would ask me how I was, I’d say fine. But I was so far from fine, I felt as if I was drowning deeper. I developed such panic & anxiety. Those mixed with depression is a scary situation. Definitely the whole situation was very traumatizing and I live with a lot of regret. I second guess everything and everyone. The fear of losing someone so close is terrifying. 

Although we had lost Nathan, we wanted to try again. This is a scary feeling to try because you don’t know what the future would hold. We didn’t know if the next child would have the same as Nathan. Despite the unknown, we planned to try and get pregnant again. 5 weeks later, and we were pregnant. My first initial reaction was happiness. As fast as I felt happiness, along came worry, anxiety, panic. Some thoughts I had was, what happens if this child develops Spina Bifida or some other issue. Up until our 18 week scan, I was a nervous wreck. I couldn’t let myself get excited. I would talk myself out of feeling any sort of happiness just in case something were to go wrong, I’d be protected mentally (or so I thought). But when the results came back that everything was okay and how it was to be, I still didn’t enjoy my pregnancy. The anxiety and worry took over. I’d say I was also depressed. The panic that I constantly felt left me uneasy. Looking back now, I would say that I should have given myself time. Time to grieve, time to heal. I won’t say time to move on because I will never move on completely. This is not something you could ever be 100% over. It is with you all the time. Some days are better than others. There is not a day that goes by without me thinking of him, but there are days where it doesn’t hurt as bad. Its as if you have a dull ache and certain thoughts bring on the heavy pain. I’d say now I’m to where I can talk about him and not have the urge to cry. But talking about him and thinking of him does bring me into a unstable mental space. I would remember every date of what was to be from my pregnancy. I had already planned my baby shower, date and all. His due date was June 17th, 2015. 

‘And sometimes she’ll get sad and she’ll share it with you. Not for you to cheer her up. Just be quiet and feel it with her. Because sometimes she needs to feel it to let it go, but she doesn’t want to feel so alone.’  -JmStorm

During my pregnancy with Tony, health wise I was fine. I dealt with high blood pressure but of course I think it’s cause I was a nervous wreck 24/7. My oldest son, Sammy suffered from his loss. He would cry for his baby brother gone too soon. That would break my heart. It wasn’t fair. Kylie would talk openly about him and still does. She will see a star, point to it and says “there’s Nathan”. Abbi was more neutral. She didn’t show her heartache but I know it affected her in some way.

Tony was due on December 24th (what a gift from God, right?!) but due to my high blood pressure, they thought it be best to induce labor. I went into the hospital the night before, December 7th. They set me up and started the process of induction. I was induced with both girls, so I knew it would most likely be a long night. The next morning, the nurse checked me to see how dilated I was. I’d say this was about 5 a.m. Tony was in position (head down), I just needed to dilate more. The doctor came to check on my progress before she went to her office but she couldn’t feel his head. They ordered an ultrasound machine to be brought into the room to check on him. Upon the scan, she realized that Tony had turned to where he was now lying sideways. The doctor then proceed to give me the options of either turning him back head down or to perform a C-Section. Upon those words, I advised against the cesarian. I am absolutely terrified of surgery, stitches, pain! My doctor than decided to stop my induction and let me know that she would be back with her colleague during lunch time for them to manually turn him. Because we were doing the turning, I needed to get an epidural. Now, I was planning on not getting the epidural but the doctor told me that they could not do the turn with it just in case the baby’s heartbeat dropped they’d need me to go into emergency surgery. I felt this was a step backwards because what I had planned was not working in my favor. My doctor came back as discussed and they proceeded to physically turn Tony. Now while I had waited for them to come back for the turning, Tony had turned again to where he was on the opposite side. There was one doctor (mine) pushing his head upward while her colleague was pushing his butt. As soon as they say he had been placed in the correct position, my doctor broke my water so he wouldn’t have room or a way to move around. Once labor started back up everything seemed fine. As the day went on, the nurse came to check on me to see progress. As she checked me to see how many centimeters I was dilated, Tony grabbed her finger. I think that was a first for her. She seemed really shocked and didn’t know what to do. To make sure, she had another nurse come to check and sure enough, he grabbed her finger also. They then decided to contact my doctor. She came over and again checked me. Of course Tony continued with the same and grabbed her finger. She informed me that she could not deliver him naturally with his arm above is head. It was either she manually push his arm back below his head or C-Section. I of course wanted to try the manual way. Thankfully she was able to get his hand/arm lowered. As time went by after that, I could feel the contractions. It wasn’t anything major, just minor cramping. The only issue is on the machine, no contractions were showing up. So they tried another way to monitor my contractions. I had never seen or heard of how they registered them. But even that way, the contractions were very week or non existent. I knew I was having them cause i was feeling them. I’d say around 8 p.m. my doctor came to check on me. Tony was not dropping down in the canal. I was fully dilated at that point. Before she had to take any extreme measures, she decided that she would just have me push to try and get him to come down. At about 8:30 she had me start pushing. Thankfully, it worked and at 8:55 p.m. we had a healthy baby boy with a head full of black hair. Just like his brother and sisters. He was my tiniest baby seeing as how he was born at 37 weeks. Tony Manuel weighed in at 6 lbs 12 oz and was 20” long. He was healthy. He was safe. He was here. All the worry, pain, anxiety, it was worth it cause he was finally in my arms. Little did I know that I would still continue to suffer with worry, pain, anxiety and depression.

Once we were home I felt so happy. I was finally home and in my own environment. It’s crazy to say but I felt like a first time mom. It’s as if I had forgotten what it was like to have a newborn again. The diapers, non sleeping, nursing on top of my 3 older children. By his birth, they were pretty self sufficient. I was needed 24/7. In a way I loved it and in a way I didn’t. I know thats so hard to admit but there were times where I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Never did I imagine how difficult it would be to go from 3 to 4 kids. Tony was a very demanding baby. I felt like he was nursing 24/7 and sleep had become pretty much non existent. I’d be lucky if I could get in 1-1/2 hour’s before he would wake up again. Lack of sleep along with regularly scheduled activities and school for the kids wrecked havoc on me. Physically and mentally.