"The Good In It All"

There are so many reasons why you could say this tragedy happened to Kevin and I.  Some reasons I like, some I don't.  How can I look at our tragedy and turn it into something positive?  What good things happened in our situation?  It seems like there wouldn't be anything good, right?  Well this is how I see the good in what happened.  Lets take the failed ablation for instance.  Yes, it didn't work and yes it irritated my uterus and put me in the Labor and Delivery unit for a week.  I never actually went into labor.  It was Nathan's heart that started to decel which made me have an emergency c-section.  Lets say we didn't get diagnosed early enough or I wasn't being monitored 24 hrs a day.  Both my boys could have died inside me and I wouldn't have known it was coming.  We may have never known that Nathan's heart was decelerating thus never getting an emergency c-section.  Everything that happened gave us the blessing of actually meeting our babies and spending time with them.  I truly believe that if it weren't for the doctors who did everything they could to save our babies, Kevin and I would have never gotten to meet our boys alive...and for that, I am forever grateful.

The NICU can bring some very hard decisions for parents when it comes to their child.  And 9 times out of 10, the parents have no medical background to really make an educated decision on what to do.  We really had to rely on the experts and trust that they knew what they were doing.  We relied on them to educate us to the best of their ability so we could make the best decision we knew how for our kids.  The good:  we didn't have to decide whether or not to take the boys off the ventilator.  Colin and Nathan both made the decision for us to leave the physical world and spend the rest of eternity up in heaven.  I thank them so much for not having their parents make such an awful decision if it came down to it.  Now we did tell them to DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) because they said it may buy us minutes, maybe hours, but not a lifetime, so we didn't want to put them through that if it wasn't going to really save them.

I think that Colin and Nathan knew that if they both stayed alive, they would have severe disabilities. Now Kevin and I knew from the beginning that that was a possibility but we were willing to take that chance.  We were prepared to have a life with 2 wheelchair ridden boys.  I applaud any parent that has a disabled child.  I am sure it is a very stressful and difficult life sometimes but for those parents who do anything and everything for their child(ren) is a hero in my book.  So I really do think that Colin and Nathan made the decision to leave us and go to heaven so Kevin and I could continue to grow our family and have healthy children.

Another good thing that came out of this was Kevin and I's relationship.  While some marriages would have failed and been torn apart by the loss of their children, Kevin and I grew closer.  Kevin is the only one who knew what went on in the NICU besides me.  He is the only one who spent as much time with our boys as I did.  There was absolutely no way this marriage was going to fail.  It was going to get stronger and the experience showed each of us what a great parent the other one was and will be in the future.  I couldn't wait until we were able to get pregnant again so I could see this wonderful man really get the chance to parent a child.  I was ready to watch him teach a little boy how to grow up to be a young gentleman, or how to teach a little girl how a man should love his wife and how he should treat women.  If we have a girl, I am sure he would play tea party with her.  I couldn't wait to see what the future would hold for our growing family.

I really do feel very blessed, even after everything that happened.  I got to meet my 2 beautiful, sweet, baby boys and it would feel wrong to look at our journey as a horrible experience.  Yes, horrible things happened, but so much good came out of it.  I tell people that if I knew what I know now, I would do it all over again.  I would go through the pain and the heartache just to meet my sons, to hold them, to kiss them.  I have no hesitation saying that.  Of course, I would have rather had them go to a reasonable gestational age and be completely healthy in the end and have them at home with me, but if it was between never getting pregnant with them in the first place or getting pregnant and going through that heartache, there is no question that I would choose meeting my boys, if just for a little while.

Colin and Nathan will forever be my angels and I am so proud to be their mother.  In their short little lives, they did a whole lot of good.