The Three Worst Days of my Life

Here we go... This is my first time blogging, ever. I'll get to my family story and the meaning of my blog name later, but I'm creating this blog to help me get through a difficult time. I shared a short story on a private FB group last week and that was the most therapeutic thing for me, so here we are. My first post is just something I need to get off my chest. I'll get to the happier stuff later. I'm going to take these in chronological order because they all three hurt like hell.

The Three Worst Days of my Life

 #1

Meet Buckley Williams. The best dog in the whole wide world.

But he was so much more than a dog to us. He was our first child.  Whit and I got Buckley, who is the offspring of my childhood poodle, Little Bit, a year after we had started dating. He was our baby, and he went everywhere with us. He was practically born potty-trained.  He was so little as a puppy that he slept in a shoe box. He absolutely loved to give kisses and was a total lap dog. He had quite the large vocabulary too. He couldn't talk, of course, but he understood so much.  He loved to go riding in the car, walk to the mailbox, get treats. He did not like cats. He only liked certain parts of his dog food, but Whit fed him enough table food to live off of too! He loved our two daughters too, but he was older and would occasionally let them know if he did not like something they were doing to him. We had 9 wonderful years with him.

July 9, 2014, started off like every other day. I woke up to Buckley waiting on me to open my eyes and then smother me with kisses. He needed to go outside.  I let him out. After 15 minutes or so, he wasn't coming back. I called and called. Then went outside and started looking. Could not find him. Called my husband home to help look and eventually my dad too.  I was panicking. Told my judge I was going to be late for work. Then my dad found him. DEAD. in our neighbor's yard. He had been attacked by another dog in the neighborhood. My poor, poor baby. I have never in my life felt so much pain. I still feel it. I think of him every day. RIP, Buck. We miss you so so so so much. Until we meet again, sweet boy...

 

#2

October 2, 2014. I was 34.4 weeks pregnant with our third child, our first son, Ace Whitfield Williams. I'll get to the beginning of Ace's life story later. This post is just about October 2. We had a doctor appointment with Dr. Tucker, an OB-GYN who specialized in kidneys. Ace's kidneys had been showing larger than normal, but they were still functioning just fine, which was a good sign. But because of that, Dr. Tucker said we needed to take a closer look at the heart too just to make sure, and we did.  That sonogram with a cardiologist showed a moderate-sized hole in his heart. So at this point we had two things wrong with our baby. I really wasn't that concerned. These were not life-threatening. I mean, I would know if something was wrong with my child who is inside of me, right?  Apparently not. But anyways, after we found the hole in the heart, we decided to have my blood drawn for the Harmony test. This test tested for the three trisomies. I honestly just did it because insurance was going to pay for it and to rule this stuff out for peace of mind.

 

Okay, now we're back to October 2. We arrived for our sonogram, but the receptionist told us Dr. Tucker wanted to see us upstairs first.  What? Why? Our hearts were pounding. My husband is freaking out. I am trying to keep it together. They call us back. We are waiting. Dr. Tucker comes in and hugs me. Hugs me? I've seen him like two or three times. He sits down and asks us how we are. I said that we were fixing to find out. To which he replied, "Well, we didn't get the results we were hoping for." Knot in throat, tears filling up eyes, heart in stomach. He hands us both a piece of paper and says our son has Trisomy 13. I knew exactly what it was.  Whit did not. I knew it meant our son was not going to live. We cried, we hugged. We stared at the doctor. 99 % accurate he said. No point in doing an amnio since we were so close to delivery anyways. He handed us a fact sheet about the condition and then gave us some time alone until my regular doctor, Dr. Kimmel, came to speak to us. All I really remember is crying. Being in disbelief.

 

In comes Dr. Kimmel. I've been with her for close to 15 years, had two girls with her. She hugs us. I think we are all crying. We talked about it and how unfair it was. She eventually walked us out the side staircase, and we walk to our car. We were numb. Can you imagine being told your little baby is not going to live? We pull out onto Lakeland Drive heading home. I am sobbing to the third degree. Whit grabs my hand. We get maybe 5 to 10 minutes up the road, and there is a huge, beautiful rainbow. Really, God? We just found out our child is not going to live and you plaster a rainbow for us to see on the way home? What the heck is that supposed to mean? Everything is going to be okay? It won't happen again?

 

#3

 

October 23, 2014. This is the day my precious, precious baby died in my arms. It all started about 5:45 a.m.  We had started doing tube feedings because Ace was not nursing well or taking a bottle well. He just didn't want to eat, and I regret making him eat. But I was having to insert the tube down his throat and listen for it in his stomach and then start the gravity pull system to feed him the formula straight to his tummy. Well, we started and he was just laying there, non responsive. The nurse yanks the tube out and picks him up and starts rubbing him and then hands him to me. He was dying. He couldn't breathe. He was struggling. We were freaking out. Whit had been dying to take him home. Bless his heart. He just wanted to take him home, outside the four walls of the hospital. He asked to take him outside and we did. There was a little courtyard just a door away from our room and we took him out for a minute or so. We went back in and he wasn't breathing. He had died. We sobbed and sobbed and just held him. It had to have been 5-8 minutes, and then he was back! We could not believe it. Even the nurse was in shock. But he was back. We loved on him and held him. He was struggling to breathe. We knew this was the end. I took his clothes off, except his diaper, and put him right inside my pajamas. Skin to skin. He loved it. I wanted him to be comforted, loved, safe. I wanted to be strong for him, and I was.  I kissed him, stroked him, held him tight. I sang him songs. We told him how much we loved him, and it was okay to go. We couldn't bear to see him struggle to breathe.

 

The nurse said this could last minutes, hours, days. There was no way to know. So we decided we wanted to head home. We wanted to take him home, something we never even imagined we would get to do. We hurried and got our paperwork together, packed our stuff. I kept Ace tucked in my pajamas, even on the car ride home. We sat up front. Still skin to skin. Screw the car seat. We had told no one in our family what was going on. I didn't want to call my mom until I knew she had dropped the girls off at daycare. Then she was supposed to be coming back to Jackson. I guess we left the hospital about 7:15 a.m. or so.  I thought Ace had drifted back to sleep and his breathing troubles had stopped. I was just holding him. Then Whit asked what was he doing, and I pulled him away from my body to check, and he was purple around his mouth. He was gone. I'm thankful it was peaceful. I didn't even know he had slipped away. We pulled off the road. Whit held him. He was lifeless. That's just a picture I struggle with every day.  Seeing my child lifeless. It hurts to even write about it.  So we waited until my mom dropped the girls off and called her about 7:50 and told her he was gone, and we were already on our way home.

These were a couple pics I took on the way home before he passed away. Look at that blond hair on his back! I just loved it.

 

 

So I wanted to take Ace home for a few hours and not let go just yet, but turns out we had to meet a coroner because he had passed away during the ride home. So we all met at the funeral home. My close family, who I love all so much, met us there. The coroner met us there. Whit talked with him. There was lots of crying going on.  My grandmother met Ace for the first time right then. I bet they were all wondering why he was only wearing a diaper, but nobody asked. I checked his diaper, and wouldn't you know that little booger had finally pooped! So I changed his diaper. While I was changing his diaper, the coroner came in with bad news. According to state law, there needed to be an autopsy done. Oh, hell no. Over my dead body. I would have ran away with him. That was not happening.  Thankfully, the coroner pulled some strings and they were going to get with the doctors to get the necessary paperwork so that did not have to happen. That was a terrifying ordeal.

 

We eventually had to leave our baby at the funeral home.  We went home without a baby, just like I had been dreading. We laid on our bed with all of his clothes and blankets, just smelling him. I still sleep with his blanket. His graveside service was the next morning. My uncle had passed away unexpectedly the day before Ace, and his funeral was Saturday, so Ace's was Friday. My uncle was a great man, and I like to think that he greeted Ace at heaven's gates along with all my other loved ones, especially Buckley. I tell Ella that Buckley and Ace get to play and sleep together.

 

So there they are: the three worst days of my life. Very few people know about Buckley's death, and I already feel so much better having wrote it out. It shattered my heart into pieces.  And in some twisted way, it really did prepare me for Ace's death. I learned how to grieve and the stages and what worked best for me. Buckley's death was very difficult for me, and I even said that I could never lose a child because I wouldn't make it through it. Little did I know.....