Crying

If God collects all of our tears, He better have buckets for me...because they just don't stop. Every day, something makes me upset. Sometimes, I can recover and find the strength to smile, to remember with pride, remember with peace. And sometimes, sometimes I just can't. No matter what. I think of how unfair it is that I am here and my triplets can't be here with me. I think all the prayers I prayed for the safety and health of their arrival, and what to do with all that now. I think of how I should still be pregnant, and how I was robbed of that joy. I just can't bring myself to smile on those days. I just can't bring myself to remember anything good about that day. But I know there was. I know that in their birth, I met and held the most beautiful children. Their smiles on their faces, their short quick breaths, their perfect skin. I know that in their birth God brought amazing people into my life, to lift us up in prayer, to guide us on this journey, to show us that in their short lives, they will teach us eternal lessons. In their death I have learned many things as well. Like how short and unpredictable our lives really are. You can not take anything for granted. I learned lessons that I pray no one ever has to learn, but I know people are learning them every day. Your children are not yours. They don't belong to you. They are gifts from God. From day one, we released our children back to God. Claire, Nathan, Malia, and Anthony Jr. We let God know that we understood they aren't ours, we were just vessels to create their beautiful souls for God's work on this earth. God can do whatever He chooses with His children, and He chose the triplets to join Him in heaven. In that, we grieve. It's hard to let them go, it's hard to not know when I will see them again. I know though, that in all this hurt, in all this pain, and in all these tears, God will be glorified. He will work it all together for His good. That is His promise. And He is a promise keeper. I have to trust in that. He promises to never leave or forsake His children, and in that promise I know that even on the days when I can't stop crying, He is right by my side, gathering my tears, holding the broken pieces of my heart together.

"Where is your God now?"

I am dreading this question, so was my husband when he went back to work. There are plenty of non-believers in our life, and plenty who say they believe, but don't live the life God has called us to live. So I wondered many times what I would say if asked this question after tragically loosing our triplets. Heck, I even asked this question. Many times. I actually screamed it in a voice I didn't even recognize when we found out we had to give birth to all 3 of them. "Where are you God? Why does it have to be this way? Why God, why?" I remember hearing me scream/cry this out, over and over and over again. Through my contractions, through my rest, through my pushing, through holding them for the first time. Over and over again. Out of my body. I was looking down and trying to convince myself it was all a dream. I wondered over and over again what the answer was to these questions. I still wonder why...though I assume I will never know here on this earth. I may even never understand. But the where? I have peace in knowing the where. While peace comes and goes in my spirit, while I still miss them terribly and cry daily...I know the where. "Where was my God"...He was right here. He met me here in this place. His grace was waiting. He sustained us. And His presence filled the room.

x Three

it hurts. my heart. my mind. i never thought this would be in my life story. some may not agree, but miscarrying the first 3 of the sextuplets, and then losing these last 3 at birth, it's a completely different loss. we mourned the 3 we never met. we were ok though. i can't explain it with words. it's just a different type of loss. they weren't any less of our children than claire, nathan, malia or anthony jr. but i had over 5 months learning and getting to know the triplets. i knew their personalities, i have many, MANY ultrasound pics of them, video of them. we met them face to face, we saw malia and anthony jr take breaths, we held them in our arms, we kissed their faces. we planned to bring them home. we set up their room. we got them clothes. we named them. i am constantly thinking about my babies. we talk to claire about her brothers and sister everyday as well. how well they would have played together, what they would of fought about, how much she would have loved them. she agrees. she points to the self built upstairs between their bedrooms where their urns rest. i used to dream of when they were older and could sit in their closets and tap secret codes to each other through the wall, like my brother and i used to do when we were little. we were only 20 months apart. claire would have only been at most 18 months older than her siblings. now i think about how she will never know them on this earth. she will never play with them, grow up with them, teach them new things. that makes me sad for her. i pray she will have other siblings one day, God willing. she is a great big sister already, and doesn't even know it. it hurts, physically hurts. some days i don't know how i can do it. how i can mourn them, but "carry on with life". how i can pay attention to claire and love on her, but cry inside all day. i do it though. 3 weeks now. just when i think it's going to get easier, i crumble. i crawl into my husbands arms and he reassures me, we have eternity with them. i read someone say they lost their baby hours after giving birth, and they miss them everyday, but they will have an eternity to catch up with them, to hold them. i have to remind myself, this life on earth, is but a blink of an eye. eternity, that is our goal. that is eternity! i will have eternity with nathan, malia and anthony jr. i can't wait. though i want to enjoy every breath and every moment with my husband and my daughter. it's a tug of war with my heart. i'm not whole. there is a void in my heart right now. while i will ALWAYS miss my children that have gone before me to be with the Lord, i pray that void fills with a joy unspeakable. i pray each day does get easier. life has to go on. though life now is vastly different from what it was just 3 short weeks ago. i am a changed person. my emotions have changed, my dreams have changed, my personality has changed, everything about me is now changed x 3.

Loss

it's hard to read my last post. we had so much hope for Malia and Anthony and Nathan. We thought of the possibility of coming home with only 2, but never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that we wouldn't come home with any of our babies. Saturday, August 27th, around 12:30pm I went to shower after putting Claire down for her nap with my husband. He was about to leave to run some errands, and as I looked down I saw an umbilical cord. I screamed. I ran to the stairs to call for Anthony, hoping he hadn't left yet, and he came running and immediately called 911. They were here within a few minutes, and quickly took me to Strong. My regular Ob was on call, what a relief it was to see her. I knew it was bad news, but I never thought of how bad until about a 1/2 hr later. Baby A was no longer alive. The pressure on the cord had cut off the blood flow. Hideous noises came out of me and my husband as we cried, screamed, and I kept repeating "oh God, please no!". I had a really high fever, the cord could not be put back through my cervix. The bacteria had a roadway to walk right up into my uterus. With Baby A deceased, he/she had no immune system to fight the bacteria off, so it would just keep growing, therefore, infecting Malia and Anthony Jr. Time was ticking. We could wait and see how bad the infection would get, but with it attacking Baby A, who had no immune system, it wasn't going anywhere. The longer we waited the riskier it got for me. The dr. came in explaining that it would most likely turn septic, and then would be a high risk of me dying as well as all 3 babies. My blood pressure was pretty low, and my fever was coming and going, each time getting a little higher. The only way to rid my body of the infection is to give birth to Baby A. Giving birth to Baby A would mean more than likely giving birth to Malia and Anthony as well. At just under 22 weeks pregnant, the dr said there wasn't a chance for Malia and Anthony to make it. There was too much that hadn't had time to develop yet. We took a little while to talk it over and we prayed and the decision was clear to us. We didn't have much time to wait, we needed to get this infection out of my body, and hope my cervix would just close up after giving birth to Baby A. Anthony ran home to get our stuff, take a shower, and see Claire before we started to induction and the longest day of our lives. He returned around 7pm and the dr. inserted the Cervital. My contractions were inconsistent and not very strong, we tried to get some sleep, but that was not happening. I took some pain medicine orally, and it worked enough for me to sleep about an hour. After that, they put a pain killer into my IV to see if that would ease any of the contractions, but it didn't work. I didn't want to get an epidural. I wanted to feel as much as I could without being so overwhelmed with the pain. Hours and hours went by. It was dawn, and the contractions were about every 30 seconds and pretty intense. I tried to wait a while longer. Around 7:15 Sunday August 28th, the nurse came in to give me a different drug through my IV, but before she did, the dr. checked and said I was ready to push. This was really real. I was really about to give birth to my first triplet, Baby A, who was already dead. After screaming out and crying, I reluctantly pushed. Baby A came right out. "It's a boy" the dr said. I cried even harder. Nathan Richard was born, my baby boy, my dream, came at 7:26am. Weighing in at 11 oz, measuring only 9.5 in long. They put him on the end of my bed, and not more than seconds later, Malia's, Baby B's, sac burst. I knew my cervix wouldn't close and I had to deliver her. Only took a few pushes and Malia was born at 7:32am. Weighing in at 14.25 oz, and measuring only 10 in long. Then I could feel Anthony Jr coming. I thought, "oh no, we are going to lose all 3 babies!". After many pushes, and excruciating pain, Anthony Jr's, Baby C's sac wouldn't rupture. I was ready to pass out, the pain was shooting down my legs, and I couldn't catch my breath. Finally, my dr. decided to rupture the sac and it was so tense it burst with such force. A few more pushes and Anthony Jr was born at 7:46am. Weighing in at 1 lb 2 oz, and measuring at 10.5 in. Both Malia and Anthony Jr were born alive. They brought them to me and Anthony Sr and I held them so close. We sobbed. Malia and Anthony Jr. took a few random "breaths". Their hearts still beating, but very weak. We held them and cried for what seemed like only minutes, but was actually over an hour. The nurse came in to weigh the babies, dress them, wrap them up, and at that time, they were pronounced dead. It was like an out of body experience. I couldn't focus. I couldn't let them go. I couldn't believe this was all happening to us. We didn't understand. We knew they were healed and whole. New, working, beautiful bodies. We knew we would be able to be with them again someday, but that didn't ease my heart at that moment. It does now, but at that moment, I couldn't stop sobbing. The staff was incredible. They were so kind, gentle, loving. They cried with us. They respected us. Things were getting serious again though because my placenta's wouldn't detach, and after many, many tried, the cords came apart from the placenta's, still inside of me. The infection, therefore, was still inside of me. They tried everything to do from the room so I didn't have to leave the babies. I had been given 12mg of morphine, apparently, that is over a single dose, and as high as they could go. They tried to remove the placenta's. It was too painful. They said they didn't have any other option but surgery. They took me right away. Anthony Sr went as far as they let him. They put me under and removed the placenta's. Apparently, the infection made them harden and they struggled even surgically to remove them. I lost a lot of blood. I woke and was so nauseous and dizzy. After a short time I was brought to my room and back with my husband and the triplets. I couldn't put them down. I couldn't bring myself to let them go. We said what we thought were our final goodbyes, and Anthony Sr went home to pick up my daughter Claire. I hadn't seen her in over 24 hrs. It's the longest I have ever gone without seeing her. It was terrible feeling. When he returned my daughter brought tears to my eyes. She hugged and kissed me, played around the room and just brought hope, life, joy, to our lives for those moments. Everything changed for us that day. Priorities, dreams, our future. Nothing would ever be the same again. Not sure how to manage that, how to cope with that...even still, but learning. That night I felt like our babies were not sent to the funeral home yet like we were under the assumption. So I called the nurse to see if they were still at the hospital, and if they were if I could have them back. They brought them back and it felt so good. We held them and whispered to them. We kissed and hugged them. We took lots of pictures, and placed them in their layette for the night. Anthony Sr and I were exhausted. We slept a few hours that night, through many doses of antibiotics, many stat takings, blood draws, etc. Finally, it was morning and we wanted to make sure our babies were going to the funeral home when we left so we wouldn't be leaving them behind at the hospital. I was released after more tests showed my infection was down. My blood count was way down too, so I was put on iron and told I could go home. We left around 11:30 Monday morning. No babies. Just us. It was the hardest drive home ever. I never imagined I would come home empty handed. No longer pregnant. My dreams changed. My future altered. My life....totally turned upside down. We have hope. We know that God has a purpose and a plan for this. We accept that. It's hard, don't get me wrong. I get angry at the drop of a hat, but deep down I know....God knows. They are healthy, happy, beautiful. We dedicated them to the Lord the day we found out we were pregnant. We agreed they weren't ours, they were gifts given by God. That helps to know as well. They were never ours. They have always belonged to Jesus. Life now...forever changed...never going to look the way we thought. Each and every moment we cherish. We are so blessed to have the family we do have. My heart still aches, my arms still ache to hold them again, my lips still ache to kiss their cheeks and lips again. I know life will move forward, different, but forward.