If you don't have anything nice to say...

We were warned and prepared that people will say things that will be painful after Jack died. Things like "God needed another angel." Etc etc.

But honestly, I can ignore those cheesy cards or comments. I honestly don't remember them or who said what and there haven't been that many that struck a nerve.

The more painful thing is to hear nothing. To hear nothing from people we love, who prayed, who carried us when Jack was alive. But silence now. Silence feels like it never happened. Silence feels like they think we are the same people we were July 11th.

I don't want to ignore that it is hard to know what to say. I get it. I am sure I have said nothing when I should have at least said "I'm sorry. And I love you." But the kids discipline line "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all" does not apply here. There are no "nice" words when a life has ended far too early.

It is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month.

Obviously, we don't need reminders to think about our baby we lost. It is all so raw and real still. But knowing that others remember and care and still shed tears over our sweet boy makes a HUGE difference to our spirits.

Nancy Guthrie says in Holding on to Hope these words "..those who shed their tears with me show me we are not alone. It often feels like we are carrying this enormous load of sorrow, and when other shed their tears with me, it is as if they are taking a bucketful of sadness and carrying it for me."

Elizabeth Edwards said these words "If you know someone who has lost a child, and you're afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died- you're not reminding them. They didn't forget they died. What you're reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and that is a great gift."

Let both of those quotes encourage you to be brave with those who have lost a baby. "Saying the wrong thing" is hard when it comes from a desire to share that you too remember and are sad.

Angel Baby Jack, by A. McClure

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Day 1 - July 12th

I have desired to write about Jack and our child rearing experiences in general for a while and I frequently push it off and it just simply isn't a "right now" priority. Starting today, on what would have been Jack's 2nd Birthday, I am going to write daily (or try to) for the next 35 days in remembrance of the 35 days he lived on this earth. It will likely be unedited, imperfect, and intentionally raw - partially for the sake of time (I work, do school and we have a toddler in foster care ok?!) and partially because that is the theme of our story, imperfection (made perfect through Christ). Today, I want to talk about birth. More specifically, medically complex birth. I get asked often if I had to have a mandatory c-section - thankfully no I did not. But I also did not expect to go into labor at 35 weeks and 5 days either and I am certain that is the worse option here. We came home from a week at the lake with Ike's family and as we are getting into bed Ike s

Day 2 - The NICU

The NICU is a place you are extremely grateful for but you also dread its existence. You are so thankful that your fragile baby has around the clock expert care but you also hate that your baby has to be there without you. And then when you are there you feel awkward - you’re the mother but his caretaker is the nurse - you have to ask permission or for help to hold the baby (so many lines/drains so it’s not easy to pick them up). It’s also just heartbreaking to see the other babies that have been there for weeks or even months. Jack’s isolette/crib/bed was next to a baby born at 24 weeks (on April 8 actually) and it was July 12… he was still tiny with a young mom who we witnessed have hard conversations about her capacity to care for such a tiny fragile baby. The baby on the other side was born via c section because his organs were on the outside of his belly (omphalocele) and he cried and cried and cried. (We actually had a mom bring a baby with this same diagnosis to our house in Ug

Day 6 - ECMO

After all that surgery talk, this seems like an appropriate time to talk about ECMO. ECMO stands for extracorporal membrane oxygenation - basically an exterior heart and lungs. Only a few hospitals in Virginia have trained teams and adequate machines to run ECMO. We learned a lot about it because there had to be someone in Jacks room 24 hours a day to monitor/run the machine. Like for bathroom breaks or lunch breaks - they had another trained ECMO person come and sit in the room while they took a break. We met almost every ECMO worker (a few didn’t do peds) and we talked with them a ton. They were present for many hard conversations with doctors, surgeons, nurses, chaplains, etc. They did things like get us lunch when the free lunch carts rolled by, bring us honey from home, update us on medical rounds that we missed. They felt like a second family. We wrote down almost all the nurses and ECMO techs Jack had - we wrote down 15 names for ECMO and I know we missed a few (like the night

Shickel Family

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