Friday, November 3, 2017

When Christmas Doesn't Feel Like Christmas

Some of you may be groaning at the title of this post because it is only November 3. We are barely past Halloween and you may be worrying that I'm bypassing Thanksgiving all together. I promise you this is very much NOT the case! This Thanksgiving will take on a more special meaning for us than ever before because we will finally be welcoming Hailey's baby sister to this world, and we have so very much to be thankful for.

BECAUSE of the fact that I will be having a baby at Thanksgiving, and I know those first few weeks with our toddler son and a newborn will be a blur, I'm trying to get all of my Christmas shopping done now, wrapped, and shipped off to where it needs to go. Maybe this is also part of that nesting/homemaking thing that can afflict women at the end of their pregnancies - who knows. But I'm embracing it.

BECAUSE, too, last year Christmas didn't feel like Christmas at all.

I spent the second half of October in the NICU with Hailey. And then all of November. By early December, our sweet little fighter had actually mounted her biggest recovery to date, and my husband and I were cautiously optimistic that we might actually be able to take her home by Christmas. As I spent all my days with Hailey, shopping on Amazon was a life saver for me in terms of tackling gift giving for our families.

For what felt like the longest time, I held off on buying Hailey any Christmas presents because I wasn't sure if she would live to see the holiday, and it broke my heart to think of the presents sitting idly by if she was never to play with them. But as she continued to improve, I cautiously purchased a handful of gifts for her.

On the morning of Saturday, December 17, I woke up at home beside my husband. Hailey had been stable and doing well enough that I'd taken to spending the evenings and overnights with my husband and son to provide our family with some balance. We'd been invited to a neighbor's house for breakfast, but I was lagging behind to finish pumping breast milk for Hailey when the hospital called.

The nurse practitioner on the phone sounded somewhat calm as she told me my daughter's lung had collapsed, but I could sense the frenzy going on in the background. It took me a moment for my brain to process. I obviously knew that wasn't good news, but I wasn't quite sure of the implications. I asked if my daughter was, in that moment, dying. Quite honestly, they didn't know. I was told a lot would depend on how the next number of hours went. In shock, I called my husband home and we rushed to the hospital to find our daughter who had just been doing so well suddenly hooked up to more wires and tubes than we'd ever seen before (and we'd already been through a lot!).

Hailey held on for the next few days, but she wasn't doing well. And then on December 23, we found out this last setback was one our beautiful, strong daughter wasn't likely to surmount. Her heart had given out faster than anyone had ever seen in a child so young.

I remember dazedly walking through the halls of the Children's Hospital, all decked out for the winter holidays. I remember feeling sad, mad and utterly distraught that I'd been foolish enough to give in to hope and that I had just bought Hailey Christmas presents. I remember thinking, how on God's green earth does anyone find out two days before Christmas that their child is going to die?

I remember thinking of my son. I remember my husband and I discussing how best to love each of our children through the tough days and weeks ahead. I didn't want to leave Hailey, but we took some time away from the hospital to try to think more clearly, and to take our son out to enjoy at least a little bit of the Christmas season. Mainly, that meant we took him to a nearby mall to see Santa, and to ride a two-story carousel as many times as he wanted. He was two, so he was easily entertained and made happy by all the Christmas lights and the crowds of happy people.



You know that saying about being kind to people because you never know what they are going through? That day, I felt like we were THOSE people. I marveled that to anyone who saw us then, we were simply a young family of three. A Mommy and Daddy taking their son out on our holiday break. How could any of them guess we'd just been told our daughter was dying? We rode the carousel with our son. We tried to smile, for him. We were numb.

We spent Christmas together, as a family of four, in the NICU.

Grief in and of itself can be so isolating, but when yours hits on a holiday or some other occasion when the rest of the world is out celebrating, it can feel so much worse. So much more lonely.

But in the end, I actually took comfort in the fact that we were losing Hailey at Christmas because I've always felt it is a time when God in Heaven is closer to us here on earth, as we all stop to love each other a little better in celebration of Jesus' birth.

We waited until December 30 to remove Hailey from life support. She didn't have much time left with us regardless, but I chose the day. I wanted to ease our daughter's suffering --- to finally give her some small measure of peace. To acknowledge how hard she'd fought to remain with us for as long as she had. And to let her go to be with Our Father when I felt him nearest to us. It somehow felt wrong to make her carry her burdens into the new year.

Hailey's going home was one of the most painful and most special moments in my life. As I've written about before in this blog, Hailey blessed us with every last wish we had for her. We removed her tubes and she got to sit with her big brother one last time. He got to hold her, hug her and kiss her cheek. And then my husband and I got to hold onto her as she passed quickly from this world with a gentle sigh. She didn't struggle. She didn't seem scared. She seemed relieved.

I have wondered for these past many months since losing Hailey how I would feel this Christmas. If the holiday would forever be tainted for me as a time of great sadness and loss. I think a wonderful part of this journey in healing is that we have been blessed with another child who will be in our arms when the holiday comes around once again. This new child will never replace Hailey, nor is she meant to. Rather, I see her as a gift FROM Hailey...a third child I'd otherwise never expected to carry.

So yes, it is November 3 and I am embracing Christmas. I am shopping and I am wrapping gifts while I listen to Christmas carols. And with every breath, I am thinking of our dear, sweet Hailey Grace and praying for this new life that is about to emerge. And that I won't be too much of a disaster the final week of this year. But if I am, that is okay, too. Few things are as immense as a parent's love for their child. Death cannot change that.

With love and a grateful heart.


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