Hello Friends!
I am Amy Layne and I am work at Testa Media, the parent company of Giving in Memory of. Donna Testa asked me to write a little bit about my own experience in losing a child.
Everyone has a story, mine starts with me being a small girl and wanting to have 20 children! In 1995 my husband and I had our daughter Holly, and I was in awe!! She was and still is a beautiful, vibrant child that we love dearly. After Holly we tried and just could not have any other children. 7 years later and after, many hours of doctor’s visits and many tests, with the help of a fertility doctor we were finally going to have another child! We learned early on that we were going to have another little girl and man were we all excited. Things were going wonderfully and around the 24 week mark of our pregnancy I started developing flu like symptoms. When I finally went to the doctor they did the normal check in things, height, weight (UGH), and took my blood pressure, then took it again, and again. They then called in another doctor and he took it manually. My blood pressure was dangerously high, and all of a sudden everyone was in a panic. After resting and taking medication for my blood pressure I was told to go home and make an appointment with my doctor immediately.
After seeing my OB doctor I was sent to a high-risk pregnancy clinic where they did a few tests and ultrasounds. The doctor told me that she thought it was HELLP Syndrome, and sent me home to wait for results of some tests that they had run. That weekend I had so much trouble sleeping, and Saturday night I felt as if I was having a heart attack! My husband rushed me to the hospital, where they immediately admitted me, no heart attack but they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. The next morning my doctor walked into my room, looked up at me, turned around walked out and told the nurses to immediately prepare me for medevac to John’s Hopkins, I had to deliver my baby. At this point I was at 26 weeks, WAY too early to have my baby. I was in such denial, you never think that this is going to happen to you!! I kept thinking these doctor’s are crazy, no way am I this sick. They continued to poke, prod me, they wrapped me up, put me on a gurney and whisked me away to the waiting helicopter. Upon arrival to John’s Hopkins, more poking and prodding, then we are told that we must deliver now, or there was a chance that we would both die. The initial diagnosis of HELLP syndrome had come back positive and my organs were starting to shut down. This is where I think I might have realized that things were a bit serious, and started bargaining, please God just let us be ok, I will do anything . . . . They induced right away and on June 5, 2001, I delivered a beautiful little girl weighing only 15.8 ounces. She was so tiny, they placed her in my arms where she took her first breathes and that is where she stayed until her last breathes 4 minutes later. I memorized every line in her face, her curly dark brown hair, her fingernails, toenails and believe it or not, she had eyebrows!!! We named her Erin MacKenzie and she was beautiful!!! But she was given to me and taken from me so quickly! Man was I mad!!! Why us! All we wanted to do was have another child, to give Holly a sibling!!!
As you can see I went through three stages of “The Grief Cycle” in a VERY short period of time. There are no rules and regulations to Grief. Everyone is different and goes through each step at a different rate. Now we are at the next stage in my story, the depression. I took the allotted time for maternity leave from work, and to this day I don’t know if I should have done that. The first weeks were kind of just a blur. We had flowers EVERYWHERE!! People sending notes, cards, and calling! One thing I did find, was that a lot of people don’t know what to say or do when you loose a child, no matter how old that child was. So although people were calling and sending notes, I felt so alone. No one wanted to talk about my little girl. I still had a child, and I wanted everyone in the world to know about her, but no one wanted to talk about her....I was so depressed, so my coping mechanisms set in and I cleaned, and planted beautiful flowers. I liked to be outside, I felt near Erin when I was outside for some reason. Over time and with the help of a dear friend who was a high risk OB nurse, I have been able to come to terms and accept the fact that Erin was just born way to early. But that still doesn’t mean that I accept her death, it means that I have learned to cope with not having her with me. It is a very hard thing to bury a child, but with time I think that it has strengthened me and I do believe that it has enriched my life. In 2002, we have went on to have another daughter Kelly without any help from doctors. Kelly has really helped with my recovery as well, she is energetic and loving, and will be such a great school teacher one day. Since the doctors advised me to not have children, we then took another step in our “acceptance” and decided that we were going to help a child that did not have a Mommy or a Daddy, and adopted Ben in 2008.
So we have gone through all of the stages of grief, and I still cry for Erin today, and it has been 9 years this year, but I know that she made me the person I am today and for that I love her dearly.
Great sites to visit are:
http://www.athealth.com/consumer/disorders/parentalgrief.html