Why has my body betrayed me?

That is the question I began to ask myself after I gave birth to my stillborn son. I ask myself that question everyday and I cannot find the answer to it. I feel like I cannot verbally express myself in any way. I cannot form coherent sentences that give the pain I feel proper justice.

Never in my lifetime did I think the first baby I would ever bring into this world would be deceased. You prepare yourself for motherhood.  You prepare yourself mentally and physically. You are pregnant and now have the responsibility of keeping another human being alive. I was so scared. Insanely scared that I now had this responsibility. But why should I be scared? I was a strong, healthy, young woman.

Eat the right foods. Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t take any medications. Take the proper vitamins to ensure you have a normal, healthy baby.

Now, I wake up every morning and have to fight the urge to cry because I can’t stop thinking about my baby that was taken away from me. I feel so much regret and guilt because I feel like I could have done something to prevent his death. I should have known there was something wrong.

However, I knew there was something wrong when the nurses couldn’t find my baby’s heart beat.

I thought, “It should not be this hard.”

I will never forget the image of my baby on the ultrasound machine. I will never forget the image of my baby when the doctor confirmed there was no heartbeat. It has been burned into my brain. He was there on the screen, motionless with his hand balled into a fist. Heart. Not. Beating.

WHY has my body betrayed me??

I scream that question in my head when I think about my baby.

Preparing for 9 months, growing your baby, waiting to hold them. Then they are taken away from you. It is an indescribable feeling. It’s like a craving you will never be able to satisfy. I wake up in the middle of the night craving to hold my baby who isn’t there.  

Every part of me says I had a baby. I WAS pregnant and did HAVE a baby. I went through everything a woman goes through in hopes of having a baby at the end of it. I had morning sickness, cravings, I felt the pain of labor, I pushed to get you here and I don’t have you anymore. I feel the physical pain now, the bleeding, the body aches, and the flat stomach with no baby inside of it, my milk coming in.. But the mental pain is far worse.

Mothers need their sons. It isn’t natural for a mother to birth a baby she can’t have. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Father and lose a child but I know what its like to be a Mother and lose a child. You feel empty, like a part of you will be missing forever and you will never get it back. You crave something you can never have. Constantly wanting something that isn’t there. You feel physical pain. You feel like you are crazy.

His room. His room. His room.

I can’t even go in there without having a complete meltdown because I look at something like his car seat, or his crib and they are just there. Just there not being used and taking up space. Those clothes and diapers those all should be being used and they’re not! Why was it my baby that had to be taken away? I don’t want to change his room because it’s like another piece of him is being taken away from me.

I feel so incredibly guilty that I didn’t do more to save him. It caught us so off guard. I wish I had spent more time with him while I could have. I wish I had gotten to hold him longer than I did.  I never thought I would be in this situation. I didn’t know how to react or what to do when they put him in my arms.

It’s been 8 days since I gave birth.

Why has my body betrayed me?

When your baby dies, you as a Mother, feel like you have died right along with them. Literally a part of you has grown inside you, lived, and died inside of you and now it’s gone. I wish I had just a little bit longer with him. Just more time to hold him.

And when you cry, it’s not crying anymore. You weep, you sob, uncontrollably, harder than you ever have before.

I regret not taking more pictures of him. I regret so many things I did the day he was born because you don’t know what you truly want until it’s too late.

I will long for that baby for the rest of my life