Haunted

WARNING: this post is raw and it is just what is coming out of my heart tonight. It may not make much sense and may be hard to follow. I didn’t go back and re-read it to edit it because it was painful enough to write the first time. So if it is a mess, it is just reflecting my heart and I apologize for the scatterbrained storytelling.

A few nights ago I had one of the most painful dreams I have had yet since loosing Adam. I don’t know how normal people’s dreams work but mine are scatter brained, they jump from place to place, moment to moment, scene to scene. So this may be a scatter brained post, but I’ve got to get it out.

(I asked myself after waking up and coming to the realization of everything all over again how I would describe how I felt that day. Haunted. That was the perfect word to describe how this dream left me. Haunted. Haunted by the absence of my baby and the longing to have him. Haunted by the love that my dream “re-jostled” in me.)

In my dream, I was pregnant with twins. They were unhealthy to some extent inside of me so I had to deliver early. It was one boy and one girl. They told me they probably wouldn’t survive. Or at least one wouldn’t. When I delivered they told me the little girl had died, she was too weak. And I was disappointed because having a little boy would be harder, since I had just lost Adam. In another moment I remember scooping them off the bassinet across the room with my “stretch armstrong arms” wrapping them in a blanket, both of them, and trying to keep them warm against my skin. In the back of my mind I did this because their skin was getting cold and I couldn’t let them die. I also hoped for a miracle to bring the little girl back.
Present day: I was very concerned when I gave birth to Adam about him getting cold, because he was stillborn and there would be no blood flow through his tiny body. I would kiss his little nose and let my warm breath flow out over him to warm his face. Back in my dream, I held the babies for such a long time, knowing that it was doing no good and that I would pull them away from my body to see that they had died. When the nurse came in I was worried I had done something wrong and aided in their death. When I pulled the babies away from me to look down at them they were warm. All of a sudden the boy was in a bassinet in front of me, I was staring at him knowing his eyes would never open to meet mine, thinking, this is my reality. I don’t know any other way of bringing a child into the world than this experience of staring at my baby who would never be able to look back at me. ( He was the size of a full term baby, with the ability to lift his head) To my joy and surprise he opened his eyes to meet mine and a smile spread across his lips, he lifted his head and shrieked with joy as he outstretched his hands to me. “MOM” my mind heard his heart cry. My arms instinctively reached out and scooped him up and wept with joy while I held him against my heart, all the while aware of the baby girl that I had just lost and wondering where she was so I could hold her. Present day: I was always worried that the baby I carried wouldn’t find ultimate comfort in my arms. You know how a “mom” is the ultimate comfort to a baby, a mom’s mere touch or presence can calm a baby in ways that look like magic? I was worried that when Adam was born I wouldn’t be able to be that person for him. That he would like someone better than me, like my mom or grandma or my husband.

But I have dreamed of this face of this boy multiple times. He had a bigger head than Adam or any normal sized infant, a square set jaw, and a head full of straight brown hair with big, shining, beautiful brown eyes. Brown eyes that could never break hold of mine.

I have dreamed of multiple things that leave my heart feeling more empty than it did the day before. For instance, one night I had a dream that Adam was sick, and dying, but he was still alive in the moment. He would probably never wake up or open his eyes but I wouldn’t sleep because I wouldn’t allow myself to miss one second of his face. In this dream I laid on my side with my husband behind me and Adam in front of me laying on his back. He opened his eyes and looked at me. I tried to wake my husband without looking away from Adam’s smiling face but knew that by the time Rusty leaned over me to see Adam that he would be back asleep. And so it happened just like that.

But no dream has ever left me waking up as the one I told you about before thinking- that would be such an awful experience to go through to lose a baby like that. And then having the reality set in and lay on me like a tree that had just fallen over- the weight feeling like it is crushing me. In my dream I had experienced the pain that I did when we went through all that we did with Adam, but then I felt the pure joy and relief at the fact that he was alive and in my arms, warm and responding…laughing, smiling, breathing, kicking..relief at the fact that I hadn’t actually lost him but that we just almost did. The weight of that reality hitting me again as I sat up in bed made the room, that was full of morning light, darken around me. It made the air feel thick and as if I could see each particle fulling the room. It made the colors blend together and evaporate out of the comforter laying over my legs. It re-broke my already broken heart because I woke up with the feeling of relief that my baby hadn’t actually died, only to realize the truth….that he had died. And that I would never see those beautiful brown (or blue) eyes stare up at me with a smile spread across his face.

That reality more than sucks. It drowns me. And since that day I have been haunted by that dream where I knew what it was like to hold my living baby in my arms. Because that is just torment, a lingering, teasing sensation that I have never felt. It hurts. It is no fun. It doesn’t feel right. And it is unfair.

The song that says “when you’re dreaming with a broken heart, the worst part is waking up.” reverberates through my mind daily.