5 years gone by: Saying Hello and Goodbye to Sarah and Jacob
Coincidentally this is my 200th post, and I wish it was something fun I could post about. But my head is just not there right now. Its with my heart and that is with the memory of my sweet Sarah Jane and Jacob Robert.
5 years ago (I can't believe that it has been 5 years) they came into this world too early and left it way too soon. I am writing our story as much for me as for anyone that reads it. When you have children that are gone all you have left is what lives in you and the more I am able to let that out of myself I feel like I keep a part of them always here. With that said...
Can you imagine how excited we were to be pregnant with twins? After Joshua died, I was not sure that I would ever want to be pregnant again. Over time, I realized that I had more love in my heart for other children and really I could not imagine myself
not mothering someone. So, we tried again that next year and we found out we were having twins on June 8th, our 6 week ultrasound. Everyone was so excited. We were excited and terrified, which is a very hard emotional combination. The Drs. reassured us that all the precautions would be taken and pretty much immediately I was put out of work on modified bed rest. Actually it sounds terrible to be put on bed rest so early in a pregnancy, but let me tell you, I would have stood on my head for this pregnancy to work out. And I had terrible morning sickness (at all times of the day) and wacky blood sugar dips that made me feel faint a lot, so it was good that I was able to rest when I needed it.
I felt very pregnant very fast. That was good, I needed the reassurance that all was well, and the more symptoms I had the better. We celebrated our 4th anniversary watching our babies' heartbeats on ultrasound. It was wonderfully sweet. When I was 12 weeks, the cervical cerclage (stitch) was put in. This was supposed to keep my cervix from opening too soon. At 17 weeks, we found out that Baby A was a girl and Baby B was a boy! My Mom and Aunt were in the room too to hear the good news, and they were so excited too.
There is a story behind why I wanted Sarah to be our baby girl's name. You see, Sarah was my Confirmation name. I chose that name because my Grandma was my Confirmation sponsor and she loved the name. She said that she always wanted to name a girl 'Sarah', but her own mother (my great-grandmother) did not like the name, so she never used it. The sad part of that is that my Grandma has 7 daughters, obviously she named none of them Sarah. I have known my first daughter would be Sarah since I was 14 years old. Sarah - in honor of my Grandma. And Jane was my Great Aunt (my Grandma's sister) that I love dearly, so Sarah's middle name was an homage to her. Jacob's name was more of a challenge. We could not agree on a boy's name so that took some work to figure out what our Baby B would be named. We found Jacob and loved it. His middle name, Robert, is also Tom's middle name and both my Dad's and my father in law's name. Yes, a lot of Roberts in our families (there are even more - my brother, my grandfather, Tom's uncle - a lot!)
I never realized then how important it would be that we named our babies and began referring to them by their names right then. It gave me even more of a sense of closeness, like I really
knew these babies (beyond them living inside me). That would be so important later.
September 18th was a Saturday. The night before I had been very restless and just didn't feel right. That morning we called labor and delivery because I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. They told us to come on in and they would take a look. I was a few days more than 20 weeks at the time. On the way into the hospital the contractions began. I kept telling myself this could not be happening. I was just over tired, dehydrated, worried, stressed, something -
anything - just not in labor. They took me right in when we got there and right up to the L+D. I went in to use the bathroom before they did the ultrasound and that's when the panic really began - my water broke.
To say that I totally freaked out would be a gross understatement. We found out that the bag of waters broke around Sarah, but Jacob's was still intact. The stitch to hold my cervix shut was the ONLY thing holding my cervix shut. And I was in active labor. Shit. (sorry, but that's the best word right now)
I began the Magnesium sulfate then and stayed on that, on complete bed rest for the next 3 days. We were able to stop the labor and I was allowed to move to an ante-partum room. I was to remain there until the babies were born, hopefully we could put that off as long as possible. I was on a lot of antibiotics to keep infection at bay which is really common once your water is broken. And once the infection is there, they will no longer stop your labor because of the risk of uterine rupture.
We had seen on ultrasound that Sarah had very little water around her, but that she was making more water all the time and was still able to move and breathe okay, so we had hoped to buy just a few more weeks so that they could safely come into this world as preemies, but preemies with a chance of survival. I was realistic, I knew I was not going to make it to 30 weeks or something like that. I just please needed a few more precious weeks, just that much more time. That was not to be. Around 8:00 on the night of the 22nd ( Wednesday) I started having contractions again, only this time I also was running a fever.
My husband is a rock. A fricking rock. Watching him yell at the nurses and basically order them to help me and the babies was awful for me to watch. You see, I got it. I understood what they were saying. I didn't like it, but I got it. They couldn't stop it - they wouldn't stop the labor this time because of the infection. God, I love my husband more than I can ever express and I will never forget having to hold his face in my hands and explain this horrible circumstance to him. He just did not want to believe that there was nothing to be done. We called our families and tried our best to prepare ourselves for what lie ahead of us that night.
Pain. Physical pain that is so intense and you cannot reason your way out of it thinking "well, at least I will have my baby at the end, this will be all worth it." Because you won't. There will be no happy ending to this labor and you know that from the get go. Does it make the pain worse? I'm saying that it made the pain worse for me. I spent the entire night writhing in pain waiting for the inevitable to happen.
Early Thursday morning, the 23rd of September, it was time to push. The neonatal staff was there to evaluate the babies as they were born to determine if they were going to be able to help the babies. At 7:10 am, Sarah Jane was born and weighed 12 ounces. At 7:15 am Jacob Robert was born weighing 15 ounces. Dr. C came over to tell us that the babies were too small for them to assist and asked if we wanted to hold them.
Tom and I held our babies wrapped together in their blanket and poured every bit of love we had on them. We looked all over their little perfect bodies and memorized their features. Kissed their faces and told them all the ways that they were loved. They spent their short lives completely enveloped in all the love that we could give them and our family could give them. We had them baptized there in the room with us and our family. Words cannot describe what having that time with Sarah and Jacob meant to us, I will always have wanted more, will always want more, but... Precious, precious time that I am forever grateful for.
Our lives were touched by these two beautiful children and our hearts were forever imprinted with their spirits. The obituary in the paper says that they were "born and became angels on September 23rd, 2004" and there are no words that could be more fitting. On this day, what would have been their 5th birthday our Angels Sarah and Jacob are especially loved and remembered. May they be enjoying heavenly bliss with their brother Joshua on their birthday.
We love you and miss you our Angels.
