Tara & Ayden's Story

I was 26 years old at the time with a 8 year old son from a previous relationship. My husband and I had been undecided on having a baby… work, time and finances seemed to be an issue. When we became pregnant it was quite a shock but both were excited about it. At around 34 weeks on November 9^th around 4:00PM I was laying in bed and noticed I had not felt him move for a while, I then realized the last time I could really remember him moving was about 4:00AM that morning. My husband, my son and I went to the hospital…I knew something was wrong but never did it cross my mind that we lost him. I so wish I had the mindset not to bring my son with us, when they could not find his heartbeat it was devastating I felt like the world ended. I did my best to keep my composure until my brother could pick up Anthony then I lost it.

The hospital was very good to us, aside from the man that gave me the epidural… seems he did not see the note outside the door of my room about it being a still birth he was happy and excited for us. I did not have the words to tell him there was nothing happy about it. Of course they want to know what you want to do with the remains, do you want an autopsy, do you want pictures, what do you want to dress him in, do you want to hold him, do you want to see him. I could not wrap my head around any of those things My first thought was I could not bear to see him or hold him I was hurting so bad. It took 18 hours of labor before he arrived, we did hold him and spend time with him, so glad I did. He looked absolutely perfect, his color was great. Just over 4lbs and 19 inches long. At first we decided not to take pictures, they did the mold of his hand and tried to do his face it was after that we called Julie in. She did a great job and was so nice, the poor little guy had some plaster on his face for the pictures they could not get off. We named in Ayden.

Leaving the hospital empty handed was horrifying, I felt empty, violated and out of myself. When we got home I sat in the nursery and just cried… where does one go from there? I had my husband take down the crib and the decorations while I was out of the house. The whole family had a hard time with it, I think what kept me from losing my mind and collapsing inside myself was seeing how much my son was hurting and needed me.

So many emotions come with the experience, my brain and my heart were not in sync. I blamed myself… If I had only noticed sooner maybe he would still be here, there was something wrong with me and my body I could not save him. I was angry, so incredibly angry and just plain empty. My heart literally hurt. As each day passed I felt farther away from him which made me cry even more, I became almost afraid to sleep I did not want to dream of him as silly as that sounds, I felt like I could not be happy with anything in life as that would in some way be offensive to him, and the thought of having another child was cheating on him, I could not do that to him.

I am not a religious person and could not lean on my faith, I actually went in another direction for answers. I made an appointment with a well respected psychic in Salt Lake to look for comfort. My doctor gave me an LDS book to read on the subject, a few pages hit the nail on the read when it came to the thoughts I had. I’m glad people have their faith to help them through things but for myself it just wasn’t working. I did find it was something people did not want to talk about, or made them uncomfortable to be around. I found out my co-workers were afraid of how to handle me once I went back to work, like I was some sort of dark plague or fragile flower. As for me, I felt like I had to talk about him, I had to talk about what happened, people had to know he existed or maybe it all seemed like such a dream even I wasn’t sure it all happened?

We did make the decision to try again a few months later. That is when I found out I have polycystic ovaries and was not ovulating normally. My doctor gave me a prescription of metformin and clomid, the whole time I felt bad for trying but wanted it so badly. In no way did I want to replace the child we lost or dishonor his memory. We did end up conceiving, the pregnancy was stressful as I didn’t know what I would do if I lost again, I wasn’t sure I could survive it all again. He was born in March of this year, I love him dearly and in no way see him as a replacement. I still think of him every day and my heart still hurts for him. My son even still talks about him, how old he would have been, what he might have been like.

In March the birth of our 3^rd son was both a happy day and a sad day. We named him Grayson. It brought back so many feelings. My husband originally dealt with the loss from a biology view point, it was nature’s way of saying something wasn’t right. The day Grayson was born he found himself angry Ayden was not with us. Anthony now almost 10 wrote me a letter a few weeks after his birth telling me though he was happy and excited Grayson was here, sometimes he looks at him and thinks of Ayden which makes him sad. I think we all felt that way.