Hospital

This post is a little less straight forward, a little trickier to explain. I might not even push “Publish” at the end because maybe it’s just the act of writing that will be enough for my mind to release everything that has been whirling around inside for the last week. On the other hand, maybe I will, because there may be someone else, somewhere, at some point that finds themselves on the winding, confusing road of their own grief, surprised at the many different types of places it takes them. I think that’s why there are aspects of this journey that are more nuanced, more subtle, and harder to unravel, even for us on the “front lines” of our own experience. It’s because, at the end of the day, grief and healing is a mixed bag of straight forward, “makes total sense” and complex, “didn’t see that coming”. So file this one under the latter and I’ll do my best to put it into words.

The night before Holden was born, I sat down and lifted the weight off my chest of what was coming the next morning by describing what happened the last time we did what we were about to do. I wrote a post (you can read it here) called “Fear”, painting a simplified picture of what happened the day and night Kamri was born. After all of the words were written, it became clear that it was needed for both parties involved up to that point: us as parents about to head into another birth, and our sweet, self-titled “KamFam”… the army of people who had been praying for and supporting us since the day she was born. Writing that pushed Mitch and I to put some focus to all of the fears we had been working through for months leading up in the counseling setting, pinpointing and reminding us which specific ones we may encounter in the next day. It also gave some context and insight to those who were following our story closely up to that point and were already going before the Lord in prayer for us for the coming day; it helped provide them with a glimpse of what we were walking into, equipping them with some specifics to pray for.

That post, the picture we painted… it’s not an easy one to read. All of these years later, I have tears streaming down my face every time I relive and remember it as I re-read what I wrote. The roller coaster of the unspeakable joy of showing up at the hospital, ready to be induced to go into labor to the terrifying twist of signing our daughter’s permission to be airlifted to CHOP, the words “it’s not looking good”, recording my voice for Mitch to take with him to play for her just in case I would never have the chance to talk to her in person again… those memories are hard to go back to. The very worst day of our lives happened in the hospital. Which makes what I am about to say next so confusing, so seemingly backwards, that it can only be the result of the always-at-work grace of God.

That very hospital is one of our most favorite places in the world and one we are always deeply sad to leave.

You see, while all of those memories and experiences are true, they are not the full picture. Yes, we received the news that our daughter may not… probably won’t… live, at that hospital, but that is still the place where our daughter and two sons were born. It is still the place that we returned to in the weeks after she passed away to hug all of the doctors and nurses that waded through the whole experience with us. It is still the place we returned to with our counselor a few months before Holden was born to do the hard work of sitting in and walking through the delivery spaces for the first time since we’d delivered Kamri. It is still the place we returned to in victory as both of our sons were born. It is still the place full of all of our life’s biggest moments and the people that have been there for all of them. Any time we are there, whether it be for a quick visit to say hi to our friends or a several day’s stay following the birth of one of our children, there is a sadness when it is time to go home.

I’ve been grappling with this a lot this week, this sadness that has joined up with the happiness of coming home after our latest stay in the hospital. A week ago today, we left the cozy, quiet recovery room in that building with its maze of hallways and entrances (I still have no idea how to navigate hospitals and I’ve spent significant chunks of life in several), and made our way back home. Mitch had left to collect Holden and the two of them returned to pick me up around noon last Saturday. Holden got a first glimpse of his new baby brother as one of the nurses and I walked out to the car. He was both excited and, as we could tell, a little nervous. There were a few tears right off the bat because he wanted to hold Calihan right away, in the car, while we drove home. The whole way home, his tiny voice, a higher pitch than usual, sweet and unsure, said over and over again from the back, “he’s so cute! my brother is so cute!”

We came home and walked into the house together, video camera on to capture this new “family first” of ours. After eating the sandwiches we had grabbed from Subway on the way home in a picnic-on-the-floor lunch, we cleaned Holden up and finally, he got to hold his brother. Being the 2.5 year old he is, he wanted to do everything all at once. Put Calihan in the baby seat, hold Calihan on the couch, put Calihan on the mat on the floor, crawl next to him and lay down with Calihan, pick Calihan up and pull him onto his lap. By the time we had finished all of the activities Holden had requested and then put him down for a much-needed, later-than-usual nap, we were exhausted and collapsed on the couch with our newest baby to relax.

For me, this is where the processing finally started. We had done it… we had brought another baby home, our second to make it out of the hospital and back to our house. The flurry of another pregnancy, the anticipation of another birth, and the excitement of another delivery was behind us and now we were back home with a brand new season of life before us, a brand new stretch of road in front of us. All at once, I was both happy and sad.

Anytime we’ve come home from the hospital after having a baby, our house has felt a bit foreign. The most extreme example, of course, was coming home after Kamri died. As you can imagine, it was the most painful heartbreak. I wrote about what it felt like in this post a month after she passed away. We remember that feeling of confusion in that everything about our world had changed, but the house seemed stuck in time, exactly as it had been when we left it. It was such a surreal, unnerving experience. With the birth of Holden, I remember similar feelings, though maybe not quite to the same level. With another winter baby, there were already triggers in the look and feel of the world around us, reminding us that we had just done this a year ago. This time, though, we had a baby in our arms as we opened the front door and walked inside, so it would be… should be… different. But the house still felt unfamiliar and cold in some way. There was still a sadness.

Fast-forward to present day (well, last week)… I think going into this birth, I was subconsciously doing everything in my power to minimize that feeling of coming home to the cold and foreign feeling. This looked like A LOT of nesting, a lot of last minute projects, and a lot of “let’s leave it so nice that it will feel like a dream coming back to”. So we went to work and walked out on Wednesday morning leaving it as good as it was going to get and as finished as it was going to be, on our way to have our baby. Sitting on the couch for the first time after coming home and putting Holden down for his nap, the sadness still slowly came in. The unsettling feeling of re-entering a place that felt so warm and familiar when we left it, but now feels strange and lacking in some way, returned.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and we have spent a lot of time talking about why this seems to happen over and over again. I think there are two parts to this; one that perhaps everyone may experience at one point or another and then a second that may be more specific to us and our circumstance. The first calls back to our first time coming home after having and losing Kamri. As I described in that post, it felt like we had been in an alternate universe for over a month and as bizarre as it was, that became our new reality. The jolt happened when we tried to leave that reality after she passed away and return back to our previous one, dropping back into a house that looked just the way we left it, but felt so very out of place from how far we had traveled since leaving. We were totally different people with a totally different life, trying to come back to a home that had sat stuck in time. It was like our home was behind. We had moved leaps and bounds and our home sat, stagnant in the past. Lesser versions have happened with our other deliveries and this is what I suspect others may feel when trying to “re-enter” after being away, experiencing any type of “life changing” event. Leaving a familiar normal, going through a life change, and then trying to come back to that original place can be unsettling and takes time to adjust. I feel confident that this is a fairly common experience and many go through it.

What I think may be different for us is the role of our hospital in our lives. The hospital, specifically our local one, the one we’ve delivered three babies in, is somewhat of a sacred space for us. As we’ve said before, it’s been the location of both our worst nightmares and mind-numbing joy.

I would be remiss not to mention CHOP in all of this. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the place that Kamri was flown to and actually spent all but those first few hours of her life in, holds significant real estate in our hearts too. We experienced intense highs and lows and were loved and cared for fiercely by the staff there, a couple of which we are still in contact with today. That building and those people will always, always be deeply meaningful to us. However, our experience with CHOP did not end with the same reconciliation, the same victory, the same continuation of life and as our local hospital did. We’ve always said, CHOP is either your heaven or your hell. It all comes down to one thing: does your child come out of that building or do you have to make the worst decision any parent has to make… deciding when it’s time to stop holding their body to your chest and walk out for the last time, without them. With all of my being, I hope there is nothing worse left in this world to experience.

So yes, CHOP is a little different for us.

Our local hospital, though, that place is home to us. That is a funny thing to type and it is probably even more bizarre to read, but it’s the truth. There is a sacredness to that building, to the people we have gotten to know and love that work within, that resonates with some of the deepest parts of us. There are not many places we can go that Kamri also has been. That’s the unfortunate reality of having her for such a short amount of time. What ends up happening is that there is a closeness that we feel to her when we enter one of the two places she spent her life, however painful the feelings may be that accompany. Those spaces, as peculiar as it may sound, are a kind of home for us. Since we feel the strongest sense of home when we feel close to her, the hospital that she was born in and the one in which she spent her life have maintained that spirit of home base… the few places where we can get as close to her earthly experience as we will ever be able to. To be with her is to be home and at our core, we will always want to be where Kamri has been until we can be in the place where she is now.

In another facet, as our lives move forward and our circles re-expand, this inevitably means that the pool of people that know us now and also knew us in the deepest seasons of our lives, the seasons that sculpted who we are as people, grows smaller and smaller. We are aware that as we get older and time moves on, fewer and fewer people in our lives will be ones who had “been there at that moment”. Fewer and fewer people will be able to say Kamri’s name, knowing who she is and what she looked like and how she acted. Unless of course, we continue talking about and treating her as a real member of our family, which we plan to do, of course. But from an “I was there and I remember” perspective, the gift of that shared experience is invaluable to us. There is no greater gift someone can give us than to acknowledge, remember, and share their personal connection with Kamri. It grounds us in a way that I cannot explain, reminding us that yes, she is real. She is real and she is ours and she had and has a place in this world. Even the smallest message, through any medium, saying, “I was there and I remember”, no matter how close or far in proximity or acquaintance, breathes a type of life into us that nothing else can.

Fewer still are the people that saw Kamri, that touched her, that intercepted us and interacted with us then and continue to do so now, four years later. It’s a small handful and most of them are our family. For the most part, the only other people to have ever shared the most intimate space that we will never be able to recreate are the doctors, nurses, and staff of that day… now dear friends and family… at that hospital. This is the place and these are the people that know us in a way that not very many people do and for this reason, there is a sense of homecoming every time we walk into that building and every time we see one of these people. As God has orchestrated things, we have had the blessing of caring for and being cared for by these friends long after Kamri left in the helicopter all those nights ago.

These people and the few that I mentioned from CHOP are the same people that came to Kamri’s funeral to mourn with us. They are the people that have texted to check in, well beyond the hours they’re in the office. They are the people we love to hear family and life updates from, as it is a joy to know about their lives outside of their work that connected us in the first place. They are the people who don’t ask us to fill out the forms that ask “how many pregnancies”, “how many births”, “how many living children” because they are able to and willing to fill them out for us before we ever see them. These are the people who refer to Kamri by name without hesitation instead of the sterile “soooo, looks like your first child…”. These are the people who we joyfully have texted with the news of our following pregnancies and who have altered their schedules, some even coming back to Labor & Delivery after having since moved onto work in other branches of the hospital, to be there for the births of our boys. God has interwoven these people into our lives in simple and complex ways and so there is always a special homecoming when we get to share space and time with them again.

What has blown us away is how God has continued to put the right people in the right places at the exact times we need them. Not only have we had the blessing of knowingly having the same team of doctors and nurses monitoring our pregnancies and on the floor of the delivery room for the births following Kamri’s, but we have also had the honor of some surprises along the way too. Four years later, while recovering after Calihan’s birth, in walks one of the nurses who had prayed over me in the dark hours after Mitch had left to follow Kamri to CHOP. She had been on duty following Holden’s birth and was back after Cali’s… we had no idea we’d get to see her going into either and God knew we’d need her presence both then and now. One of our main nurses this time around introduced herself, saying that she was there the night Kamri was born and that she remembered when it was decided that my labor had stalled and we needed to do a C-Section. She remembered that I had been upset about that and that I had asked to wait one more hour to see if anything would change. We had never met her before last week, but she was there all of those years ago and God planted her right at our room for three full days after Cali’s birth, another angel who knew who we were and what we’d gone through with no explanation necessary.

To come back to the hospital and the people that have held our most precious life moments is, in many ways, a homecoming. There are hugs, sometimes tears, memories shared, stories swapped, and a lot of love. So much love. That’s what has been so remarkable to us… that God has transformed this space that has held some of our darkest moments into one that we cherish so much, both for those hard moments, but now also for all of the beauty and love we feel for it and feel from it. It is beginning to make sense to me that why, when we leave, in a way it feels like we’re leaving home. It feels like we’re leaving the safe bubble where some of the deepest parts of us are known, some of our hardest experiences were experienced and are remembered by someone other than ourselves, and we can share with our children a piece of their sister that they will never be able to access anywhere else. There is a deep peace there and a period of mourning when it is time to leave it behind and come back home to the world that has continued to turn in our absence.

That’s what this week has felt like… the mixture of joy and triumph of a new life and bringing that new life into our home and our lives, and the mingling of sadness as we come off the high of getting to be in the place and with the people that are home to us too. It’s like the Monday after a family vacation away or the day coming home from a weekend retreat that has broken you away from your normal life. The re-entry is hard for us and it takes time. Normal life and new routines will eventually resume, but for now, we will allow ourselves to lean into the mix of emotions, the limbo of transitioning between the different places our hearts recognize as home.

PS. If you’re looking for our other posts on the grief process you can find them here: How Are We Doing?, Anger, Trust, Hurt, Realness, Six/Seven/Eight, Pregnant with Holden, Coping with ristmas, “Kam-uary”, Fear, Disbelief, Well, Room.