So vulnerable and so touching,

His little body in our hands,

Though her spirit had flown,

His memory, eternally remains.

***

NATHANAEL CAME into the world ‘not born alive’ according to his Birth Certificate. Arriving a little before 11 at night, and having bathed him, we did not get to sleep until 3 in the morning. I was up at 6am to prepare for the arrival of Heartfelt’s photographer at 7:30am, with our entire family arriving at 8am. We were very blessed that all of our close family, our parents and my daughters, made it. All our brothers visited later. We changed rooms immediately afterwards; to Room 4 Room 7.

That night, October 31, we sobbed a lot. My first opportunity to let out a preponderance of emotions coincided with a visit from the social worker. I couldn’t believe she walked in and expected to see us when I was a mess, hugging Nathanael, ‘having a moment’. She didn’t think to ask if she could talk to us. Apologizing if I came across as rude, I asked him to come back later. That night was a closed night for Sarah and me, with many tears shed. We took a few videos of us experiencing our little man, before he had to go back to freshen up. That night I slept on a camp bed.

We received some visitors on Saturday, November 1; some sweet friends brought some worship songs and we played them and cried and prayed. God touched us. The night was very similar to the last; we sat in silence and could not escape the reality that had now haunted us. There’s nothing like the dichotomy of having a baby that won’t keep you up at night; a baby we wouldn’t hear from the nursery; a baby that didn’t wake us up several times during the night.

The visits we received from the psychologist and the psychiatrist were polar opposites; both professionals, but the latter so humble and appropriately speechless. God, thank you for Dr. Ray Binns. The psychologist couldn’t tell us more than we already knew; the resources that he offered, like Pauline Boss’s work on complaints, which is great, I’ve studied for a long time and written about often.

It was typical for us to have Nathanael with us for several hours in the morning and then have him all afternoon until late afternoon. We would hold it. We’ve seen it a couple of times.

At first I thought Sarah might be out of the hospital sooner, but it was appropriate that she left not on Monday the 3rd but on Tuesday the 4th: she had something like the third-day blues. It was wise to leave when we did. We met with the funeral director and our funeral minister the afternoon Sarah got home.

We had planned to visit Nathanael in the Perinatal Pathology Room on Wednesday, but Sarah took a turn for the worse walking 100 meters to the hospital. We missed our appointment because Sarah spent a few hours in the emergency department. So we visited him on Thursday morning. The funeral was on Friday.

By the time the funeral came around, we had had access to Nathaniel for 179 hours. We really enjoyed (if that’s the right word) all that time. We made the most of it and have no regrets.

God gave us a lot in our experience of our son.

© 2014 SJ Wickham.