What do I tell my son? This was the second question I asked the doctor, right after I asked if she would give me a c-section (which she didn’t!). My sweet, innocent, three and a half year old son was not-so-patiently waiting the arrival of his “baby sister.” All of the sudden, we now had to share with him the cruelness of what life could hold. I wanted so badly for him to maintain his innocence for as long as possible, preferable until he was 80, and I was heartbroken that not only did he need to learn about death, but also the effect that losing a child would have on his mother, and therefore his life.
The doctors advised me to tell him the truth. Okay, so if that was the case, I wanted to tell him that I felt like God failed me. That I prayed to so hard for this baby, he sent her to me, and then took her back right before I had the chance to meet her. I mean, I was 38 weeks and 5 day pregnant; I was at the very end. God and I had just had a conversation in my head a few days before her birth when I was worried for no reason that something was going to happen to her and then I thought to myself, “God wouldn’t bring me all this way and not give me my baby.” Wasn’t IVF twice around enough struggle for one mama?
Everything I did in life was in preparation for me to be a mom. That was always my ultimate goal – BE A MOM. That’s it. Even though I was a mom already, I wanted to be a mom again, and again, and again, and live happily ever after. So now, it felt like God was taking the one thing away from me, the only thing, that I ever really truly cared about. It was brutal. And unfair. How in the world was I going to function without her? If you can’t tell, I blamed God because I had no one else to blame. I felt so betrayed by the one being I thought I could always count on.
So we went home, sat down on the couch with our beautifully perfect son. We told him that God decided that “baby sister” needed to stay with him. We told him we had named her Harper and she will always watch over us. My belly still looked like it had a baby in it, so we had to be very clear that she was no longer in mommy’s belly, that she was with God now. He was so innocently excited that he had a guardian angel for life.
He very matter-of-factly understood that she was in heaven. In his mind, heaven was a beautiful place and she was safe up in the clouds. He would remind me that we would all be together again one day. His innocence prevailed, and I was so grateful that our struggle was eased by his incredibly nurturing soul. He was, and is, our everything. And for the rest of our life, we won’t take a minute with him for granted.