After Wyatt

After Wyatt's birth I was filled with joy, the joy only a new mother can experience.  I was thankful for every breath, touch and snuggle.  I gave thanks for every hour, minute and second of his life, for the absence of the sacs that were supposedly seen on the ultrasound and for the perfect little baby I had been given.

Quickly those feelings evaporated and gave way to anger, even rage.  No one was immune, though most did not know they were a target.  I, first and foremost, was angry at God.  I went from feeling he had answered my prayers by giving me almost 3 hours with my soon to feeling like he stole my baby from my arms.  I felt abandoned and I felt that all of the prayers which had been offered for us and our son, including my own, had been disregarded.  I had heard so much of how God works miracles, yet I had not received mine.  Why others? Why not me?  Those were questions I asked constantly - every time I saw a pregnant woman or a baby.  Why did they get theirs and I didn't get mine?  Being in public was awful.  More than ever I sought to hide my no-longer-pregnant belly.  I took four weeks of maternity leave and devoted it to losing the baby weight as quickly as possible.  This was not for health or vanity purposes, simply to avoid the inevitable questions as to how my baby was doing.  I refused to wear maternity clothes after I had Wyatt and packed most of them away before he was born.  I have never worn maternity clothes after having a child since.  It was just too painful to wear those clothes which were filled with so many memories.

My husband, as a man, wanted to ease the pain in my heart.  My 25th birthday was just weeks after Wyatt's death.  He got me a puppy, a miniature dachshund to be exact.  We named her Beenie, which was a clever play on weiner dog (or at least that's what we believed).  Beenie filled my empty arms, gave me a warm little body to snuggle and love.  However, she quickly turned into the anti-answer, more specifically, a devil dog.  She would literally chase us around the house and nip at our heels, it was not a friendly game.  She angrily escaped her gated confines during the day and proceeded to destroy our house and then punish us for leaving her alone when we got off work.    We had to make the difficult decision to find her a new family which was hopefully a better fit.  It was a lesser pain of losing Wyatt all over again.  However, I knew it was the right choice and have not regretted that one, not often we get to make decisions with no regrets, is it?