The delivery room

I have been avoiding sharing the rest of the story of Koen's delivery.  Initially I thought telling the story via decisions would help me to organize my thoughts, but the truth is nothing was organized that day.

Right after the ultrasound my doctor told us that we may never know why.  They were going to try to get us answers and blood work was ordered right away.  They took every color vile of blood on their cart.  I sat there in shock during this process.  I couldn't believe how quickly we had gotten to this point.  Even in my worst case scenario that day I never envisioned this.

Now my labor was in full swing.  The same thing had happened with Hackett.  Once my contractions started, they came quick.  I was asking for meds to help with the pain.  I didn't want to feel what was happening to me.  I was already feeling so much pain emotionally that I was unsure how much physical pain I could handle.  In order to start pain medication I needed my IV in.  My veins can be a challenge.  My nurse tried twice and was unsuccessful.  She went to get another nurse and after the third try I just stared at the wall and cried.  Nothing was going to be easy that day - not even the IV that I so desperately needed.  I can look back now and see that the staff was feeling the emotion of the situation and only had a small window of time between my contractions, but at the time I laid there and felt like screaming in pure frustration.  In the end the anesthesiologist was called in and on the sixth attempt my IV was finally in.  Both my hands were bruised for weeks, a physical reminder of all the pain I had felt that day.

Kevin had called our family at this point and was texting others.  Prayers were beginning to go up on our behalf.  I didn't want to watch TV or talk much.  I did a lot of staring out the window.  I had to hold myself together if I was going to get through the day.  I was not strong enough to pray, but could feel HIs presence.  Even in the horrible sadness and heartbreak I had a certain amount of unexplainable peace that made it possible to endure the delivery room.