I always imagined telling Ayden that the day he was born was
the scariest day of my life. I was being induced, he was getting distressed,
and I had to have an emergency C-section. My fiancé, who is now my husband, was
outside on the phone and I was getting quickly introduced to the doctor who’d
be performing the surgery. I was shaking uncontrollably and all I could focus
on was making sure I DID NOT get an epidural (yes, I had two tattoos, now three
and I’m still terrified of needles). My mom made sure they understood this and
I don’t think I’d ever been more grateful of her. My husband came in while I
was about to be moved and I’m pretty sure he turned completely white when he
saw seven people around me instead of just my midwife and my nurse. I got asked
questions I cannot for the life me remember by the anesthesiologist, I somehow
got myself on the operating table, the last thing I remember before waking up
is my nurse holding my hand, telling me everything was going to be fine, that I’d
wake up and see my son.
I slowly came out from under the anesthesia in the recovery
room and heard nurse talking to my husband, giving him a lesson in feeding
Ayden a bottle until I was conscious and could breastfeed. When I woke all the
way up, I got moved back to my room and the rest of our hospital stay was
uneventful, pretty good even. Aside from a little jaundice, our Ayden was
perfect. He started trying to hold up his head at twelve hours hold, by his one
month “birthday” he was scooting and holding himself up on his hands, and he
started smiling a couple weeks before he was two months old. Ayden was adored
and he was the center of our universe.
My husband found Ayden not breathing on November 28th,
the day he turned two months old. I won’t go into all the details but Ayden was
brought back, but with severe swelling in his brain. We spent five hellish days
in the hospital while they ran tests and I’d fall apart at the sight or sound
of a baby, which is hard to avoid in the PICU, because in my gut I knew what
was going to happen. We had amazing support in the hospital from family and
friends and after three nights of sleeping on the floor we were able to get a
room at the Ronald McDonald House. We were given the worst possible news by the
neurologist; our son was not coming back. We made the decision to take him off
the ventilator and we also made arrangements for Ayden to be an organ donor.
Once my husband’s brothers both got into town, it was time to let go. Everyone
who wanted to, got to hold him, unfortunately for my husband’s family…this was
the first time they’d seen him. Ayden got held by everyone who loved him most,
his grandparents, great-grandparents, god parents, uncles, me and my husband
was holding him when he passed away. He held on for eight hours and then became
an angel.
We’ll never have answers and that’s one of the hardest
things. We don’t know why this happened to our angel. We’ll always be plagued
with horrible memories we would rather forget, while we try desperately to hold
on to the good. We also recently decided to try to pregnant, which comes with a
whole other range of emotions…but we’ll talk about this later.
Anyway I just wanted to share a little about Ayden and my
SIDS experience. My heart breaks for you if you have also had a SIDS experience
and I hope you know you are not alone!
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