Will I Ever Be Content?

I have been struggling a lot this last week.  I don’t know why.  Nothing in particular has triggered it, that I can think of beyond the fact that I miss my baby girl so, so much.

I have so very much to be thankful for, yet I am not content.  I want FOUR children.  Not three here and one in heaven.  I want four children to hug and kiss and screw up in the way that only parents can.  

My husband and I had a date night on Saturday night.  We had the chance to sit and talk and somehow we got on the topic of our children’s births.  He told me something he had never shared with me.  When our son, Nayner Bug was born, he was blue and not breathing.  I never knew this.  I knew we struggled with the delivery, and thankfully they had an entire NICU team in the room because he had meconium in the amniotic fluid, but I did not know that detail.  When I saw him, he was white as a ghost as they flashed him up at me and rushed him to the NICU.  

How close we were to having a tragedy then.  I am so very thankful for my little man.  

While we were on the topic of our childrens births, I asked JD if he saw Kathryn when she was born.  He had not been able to see her.  Then I shared with him a detail he did not know.  When I asked the doctor, months after they were born, what had happened at delivery, she told me that when Kathryn was born, she was purple and had to be resuscitated and intubated.  And my husband said something that very much surprised me.  “I almost wish that she had just died then.  I feel like she did nothing but suffer for two days.”

 

Kathryn, shortly after birth

Those two days gave me peace and closure.  Does that make me a horrible, selfish person that I would have rather had my baby here for two days, even if she was suffering?  I always believed they could FIX her if she made it through delivery.  They could not.  Her life would not have been good if she had survived.  I know that she is better off in heaven.  But I still cannot be content.

I kept a daily diary for the twelve weeks that Tiny spent in the NICU.  One year ago today, Tiny was 8 weeks old.  She broke the 5 lb threshold, was eating decently, had no breathing help, and had been taken off all medicines.  We finally could breathe more easily that she would eventually come home.  Interestingly, in my diary on February 4, 2012 I wrote “I wish I could still have Kathryn here too, but I know life would have been so hard for her.  My poor girls and the struggles they have faced.”

Life often deals us blows that we do not understand and have a difficult time overcoming.  I try to put on my happy face day in and day out, but inside I’m a mess.  I want to be content.  I should be content.  And yet I am not.

This morning I received a daily devotional with the following scripture.

I pray that today and every day I can remember those words and find the strength to carry on… content.