Goodbye, Baby Samuel

Silence as I lay in a hospital bed, its back stretched back as far as it would allow. I was just as tired and uncomfortable and achy as that old bed. Seemed as if we probably hurt together. I was hot. Thirsty. Delirious. My head hurt and did that just happen? The baby? Died. Yes, that just happened.

Hubby handed me a cold can of lemon-lime Gatorade. Cracked it open and I took a few gulps when they walked in. Doc M and Nurse M stood a few feet from my bed, huddling over a small hospital blanket — the cliche white, pink and blue garment that all newborns go home wrapped safely, tightly in.

I felt them looking my way, waiting, for me to look theirs. I looked over and nodded. I was ready. As they neared me, I was terrified, not knowing what I would see. Doc gently lifted the blanket and had not many words. “So, this is your baby,” he said quietly.

I took a last gulp of Gatorade and remember thinking, lemon-lime Gatorade will never taste the same. That flavor will always bring me back to that sad old bed, to that sad old moment — when I met him, when I lost him.

I first cried softly as I peered over him. He was so perfect. My perfect little baby with perfect tiny toes and fingers. But what got me — his tiny little knees. They melted my heart. And with that, the tears streamed down my face quickly and uncontrollably because he was my perfect little baby, with perfect little knees — who was not breathing. And from that point, I don’t remember the tears ever stopping. My soft-blue tank top was soaked with the tears and the what-ifs.

Beneath my quiet sobs, Doc began to inspect the baby. “Was it a boy or a girl?” I asked. He gently nudged a slender metal instrument in-between baby’s knees and said, “Looks like a boy, but I cannot tell you for certain.”

He couldn’t tell me because although I had given birth at 16 weeks, the baby passed away when he was just 12 weeks. He had been dead for four weeks inside my womb before I knew anything was wrong. Although, I knew. The night before I went in to the hospital, I was up until 2 a.m. because my brain and my heart would not let me rest. And the night before that, I had a dream where I was talking to an angel, and he and I kept repeating the word Kumar. I called hubby the next day, and said, “I think God told me this baby is a boy. I looked up the word Kumar and it is a name that means tiny prince or baby boy.”

So although doc was not 100 percent sure, I sure was.

“What happened? Why did he die” I asked Doc. I clung to him for the answer I needed to carry me to my next breath and the next one and the next. “Well, it’s hard to tell,” he replied. My heart became bitter in that second. His words deflated me. “Hard to tell” are words that will haunt me. Hard to tell meant that I could have possibly prevented this, right? Could have been something I ate or … or … Argh!

And then: “Ahh, here it is. This is what happened,” Doc said.

We looked together. See this. He pointed to baby’s neck. Wrapped around it tightly was baby’s umbilical cord. It was wrapped tightly two times around. Other than that, he was perfect. That moment gave me permission to exhale. “There is nothing you could have done to prevent this,” Doc assured me. “This was not your fault, OK. Do you understand me?”

I did understand, although my heart did not. I still wanted to take my baby home with me like all the other mothers on the unit were planning to. I told the nurse I wanted to see the baby one last time as it was nearing my discharge time. She brought him back in and placed him on my lap. She left so hubby and I could be alone with him. Hubby unwrapped the blanket and he looked different — almost smushy from the decomposition that was setting in.

Hubby pulled the baby from me right before I began furiously throwing up — the taste of tangy lemon-lime Gatorade stung my throat. I couldn’t stop throwing up and crying at the same time. I guess my body wasn’t ready for the reality of the moment.

When the nurse came in, I asked her for one last thing:

“I’d like to take his hospital blanket home with me,” I said.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to give you a clean one?” (It was terribly bloody, but I didn’t care because that was my baby’s blood, so yes, hand it over.)
“Yes, I want his blanket.”
“But when you take it off,” I added, “will you please wrap him in my shirt — that purple shirt over there? It is what I came in here wearing.”

The purple shirt was folded neatly on the sink. After she wrapped him, hubby and I held him and prayed over him. I didn’t hear the prayers because I was crying so hard. I was ugly-crying. But my heart heard the prayers.

I was helpless, but it was all I could do, leave him in his momma’s purple soft shirt. I refused to leave him in that cold hospital blanket. No, this was our baby, Baby Samuel, and he needed to be wrapped in his momma’s shirt.

It was all I could do.

For the first time in my life, I was wheeled out of a labor and delivery floor with just my purse in my lap. There was no cart of baby stuff. No car seat. No diapers. No Congrats! balloons. No … baby.

Just to think that at the start of that tragic day, I pulled my favorite purple shirt off its hanger, never realizing that in a matter of hours, my dead baby would be wrapped in it. Had I known that, I would have chosen that same shirt. I loved it. He deserved it.