March 20th 2012

*This post is really sad, if you don’t like sad I wouldn’t read it but I need to get it out of me. 

March 20th 2012 started with a doctor appointment and then taking Marriner and Aftyn to playgroup then grocery shopping and it ended with the birth and death of our 6th child.  I have mixed feeling about March 20th in someways I love it because it is the only day I got to hold and meet Xander while he was alive, but it’s also they day he died, so it’s all a jumble of good and bad.   I didn’t ever share any of this stuff before so on his day I wanted to tell you a little bit about him.   Xander was born at 7:11 pm and died about 30 minutes later.  We don’t know exactly when his little heart stopped beating because of what he had it was hard to tell, the nurse would just check every once in a while with a stethoscope. But his death certificate says 30 minutes, so we are going with that. It’s so surreal waiting for it to happen, you know it’s going to and you know there is nothing you can do to stop it, and you try to soak up a whole lifetime of love in what tiny little bit of time you have.  That is still hard to deal with.  He was 8lbs 9 oz. and about 15 1/2 inches long.  He had a tiny bit of hair around the bottom of his head, kind of like an old man.  It wasn’t very much so it was hard to tell what color it was, but probably light brown it reminded me of the color of Paytyn’s hair when she was born.  I don’t know his eye color he was too swollen to see his eyes, or to cry, I never heard his voice.  I don’t know what he looks like really, another hard thing, I barely have any memories of him and I don’t really know what he looks like.  I wish I had pictures I could share, maybe of his feet, but I don’t and I hate it.  He laid quietly in Cam’s arms mostly not moving, he did move his arms a couple of times. That’s what I get, that’s my memory of him, of him moving his arms for the first and last times.  Then he was gone, but not really we could still feel him there, and because of what he had he looked the same too, death didn’t really change him all that much.  The very, very hardest part was feeling him get colder, and colder.  Sometimes when I was holding him I would try and cover him up or put his hat on, then I would remember it didn’t matter he was gone. I wish we would have kept him longer, at the time I felt like the nurse was telling us to “wrap it up” and that we had to let him go.  But later I found out we could have kept him longer, then I try and console myself with the thought that it doesn’t really matter because we weren’t going to be bringing him home anyway and it was just his body, his broken little body.  I could still feel him with us even after his body was taken away.  It was hard when I couldn’t really feel him anymore, and I always hope that I will again.  Everyday I wonder if it will be the day, the day I know he’s around us, the day I feel him again.