My First and Last Morning with Kristen - The detailed version

I wrote this "story" on the night when I posted the photos of Kristen sleeping in my arms just before she slipped away. I had a longer, more detailed story with some other photos that I wanted to share, but felt it was too long to post on the main page. So if you want the rest of the story, click the title above to open it. (warning, have your tissues handy!)


I was trying to get to sleep tonight but couldn't. Today marks one month since Kristen went to Heaven and it's almost as real as the day it happened. The phone calls have slowed down, the continual flow of e-mails and snail mail has significantly decreased, but the tears and the heartache haven't. I didn't post anything to mark one month since her birthday, I guess because it doesn't hurt as much as today does. (although I did post on the 4 week mark, which for the first month counts as a month even though it wasn't the 29th)

I wanted to post a few photos that were taken after she had been taken off her oxygen tubes and all her monitors because I don't think anyone has gotten to see her like this. Once we knew her lungs were no longer working, the nurses removed all the "stuff" so we could hold her more comfortably. Her heart was still beating and she would take a few breaths a minute, but we knew it was time. i love these photos because they're some of the only ones we have of her face with no tubes or wires while she was still alive.

I don't know if the story of her last day has ever been told, but I want to tell it now, since that's what's keeping me awake! (and maybe if I cry hard enough, I'll sleep better!)

Here’s the long version:
So, Sunday night we got back to our room after "tucking Kristen in" and we wanted to write a quick post to let everyone know that we'd write more on Monday. So a little after 12:30am we went to sleep exhausted from a long day. I had just been discharged from St. Joe's that morning and had spent my first visits with Kristen since she was born almost 2.5 days earlier. (I did get to visit the night she was born, but don't remember most of it since I was still pretty heavily medicated!) I was still recovering from the c-section and the emotions of the whole ordeal. So needless to say, Sunday was a FULL day and I/we really needed the rest!

At 3:30 or so I woke up and couldn't get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. (my milk was coming in and I was SO uncomfortable!!) I tossed and turned for an hour or so (which isn't easy after a c-section mind you!), contemplating if I should get up and have my 1st try at pumping, but didn't want to wake Kevin up. I tried expressing, but that didn't work. So I just laid there trying to go back to sleep. I remembered that in the mornings Katelynn would come and crawl in bed with me along with her blanket and stuffed penguin and we'd each get a bit more sleep. Oh how I would have loved her there in that hospital bed with me to keep me company! But even more so how I wished I could have Kristen in bed with me, that was something I had been day dreaming about for months. Spooning up to my little baby and listening to her breathe. I had done that with Katelynn the night she was born and wanted that so badly for me and Kristen. So I decided if she can't get in bed with me, I'll get in bed with her!! The nurses said we could come down anytime and hold her so that was what I was going to do.

I got up & put on my little robe and wrapped up in a big fleece blanket one of the nurses had found for me, slipped on my slippers and headed down the hall. I am sure I looked pretty scary at 5:30 am with only 2-3 hours of sleep, but I didn't care, I wanted to see my baby! Amy, her nurse, said Kristen woke up around 3:30 or so and was fussy....hmm....that was when I woke up! She wanted her Mamma and I like to think she woke me up!! She also told me that at 1 or so that morning she had had a breathing blockage and had stopped breathing. They were able to get it cleared but were almost at the point of coming to get us, since they weren’t sure if she'd recover, but she did. Apparently she had some pretty nasty "boogers" plugging up her airways. Later we found out, that's not good a good sign.

I told Amy of my hope to give her some breast milk at some point and she said I could go pump for her breakfast in an about an hour, but I said I'd rather just snuggle right now. (Later I saw that as a wonderful decision!) The nurses found a big comfy recliner for me and Amy helped me get her situated on my chest so we'd have as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. Her body temp had slowly been getting unstable (another bad sign) and skin-to-skin contact is the best way to help, so I was happy to help!

The room was fairly dark and I laid my head back and just soaked in the moment. I would talk to her and then just listen to her. I chatted with the nurses here and there. We had talked about the possibility of brining our laptop into the NICU so we could blog from there and not have to leave her side. They all thought it would be a great idea. I slowly noticed dawn breaking and the new nurses coming in for their shifts. Sally (our NICU Angel!!) came in a little early to get started and she was assigned to Kristen for the day. (what a way to start your shift!)
(this is where my memory gets a little foggy as to the exact sequence of events, but you'll get the idea)

Shortly after Sally had gotten there, I looked down at Kristen and noticed how still she was. Suddenly she lifted her head up a bit as if to look at me (although she never opened her eyes) and laid her head back down on my chest. It took me a moment, then I looked up at a nurse to ask if she was breathing and that was when I realized the beeping monitor had been hers! (there are so many monitors going off all the time in the NICU, you soon learn to tune them out) I couldn’t see her monitor from where I was and was hoping they could! They calmly rushed over to see what was going on, like a disconnected wire or something like that. Before I knew it they had Kristen up on her little bed and she was surrounded by people trying to get her to breathe. I did what I could to get out of the way (which wasn't much!) and just watched as they tried to clear her airways again. I don't remember all that happened or how long it took, but it seemed like forever. One thing I do remember was the Dr saying to me something along the lines of "this is probably just the beginning of the process." They had been saying that all weekend and I was so sick of it! They told us "the process" of her dying could take minutes, it could take months but it was going to happen. Just 18 hours before they were talking about us taking her home on oxygen if her body allowed it, but that was still just "part of the process" of her dying. So now he tells me it's started, but WHAT HAS STARTED!? I just sat there helplessly not knowing what to do or say. They asked me if I wanted Kevin to come in and I didn't know. I didn't want to wake him up if this was just an episode that we'd become accustomed to. But the Dr told the nurse that she should go ahead and get Kevin.

This is the one moment I think I will remember for my lifetime as a mother.... just the evening before I had told Kevin that I was worried I wasn't bonding with Kristen. I had had a really hard time with that with Katelynn, and this was magnified. I hadn't been aware of her birth, I hadn't seen her for the first 2.5 days of her life, and I didn't know how to bond with her so that she'd know her mommy loved her. I knew she was my baby, but I didn't feel connected to her. She was just this sweet, helpless baby lying down the hall with my last name. He assured me it would get better and to give myself some credit for the situation I was in. So the moment when things got crazy in the NICU that morning, I remember feeling this ache in my heart, a pulling at my soul, and at that moment I knew I had bonded with her. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have felt that ripping and breaking of my heart. I don't think it would have hurt that bad....or that it would still hurt this bad if there wasn't that bond.

They got her airways cleared and handed her back to me. She was taking really slow breaths, like 10 a minute, barely at all. The Dr came back to explain to us that her lungs and other organs were shutting down and there wasn't much we could do beyond what we were comfortable putting her through. (we had already decided not to put her on a ventilator, knowing that her little body could only withstand so much life and we would be prolonging the inevitable.) They offered to take off her tubes and monitors as they wouldn't be needed now and we agreed. The oxygen they were giving her was just helping her get 100% oxygen each time she took a breath. Now that she wasn't breathing productively, there wasn't any need for the tubes. That was the first time we got to see her without all her "stuff". For the first time I got to hold her close and see her beautiful face.

Kevin and I wept over her and prayed over her. We told her how much we loved her and that we were so proud of how hard she fought. And then we told her it was okay for her to go to Jesus, that He'd take good care of her. That we'd miss her and that we loved her and always would. We didn't want her to have to suffer here on earth any more and felt we needed to give her "permission" to let go. That was one of the hardest things I've ever done. (It’s almost as hard to write about! I can hardly see the screen!)

We were told we could go back to our room with her and enjoy her last moments, as her heart was still beating, and we were told it might for a while still. So we went back and joined our family and friends who were slowly gathering. Kristen’s heart kept beating for almost an hour after we left the NICU and we cherished every moment we had.

I’ll write more about our day with Kristen later. But I wanted to close with this one thought. My sister-in-law shared with me a while ago about how my brother had taken some pain medication one night to help with a shoulder injury. She said he didn’t know he had sleep apnea at the time or what that strong of pain medication could do to him. Well, apparently, he got so comfortable and relaxed that he stopped breathing! She had to wake him up to breathe and watch him the rest of the night to make sure he kept breathing in his sleep. That story brought me comfort in thinking that Kristen just needed her mom to hold her for a little bit and to get comfortable before she felt she could eternally relax. She had such a hard weekend that she needed her Mommy. It’s a sweet picture that I will treasure always, that she fell asleep in my arms and woke up in Jesus’. Although it makes me weep, it makes me so thankful for that morning. If I had gone to go try and pump, I wouldn’t have had as much time with her. If I had thought, oh, just go back to sleep, you’ll see her in the morning, I wouldn’t have had any time at all. Not to mention I would have been woken up with bad news. Sure I wish I had more time with her, any parent does. Even those that loose their adult children wish they had more time. But I will take those precious 2 hours with her resting on my chest as a gift and I will remember them always.

I've debated whether or not to share these photos or not, but after writing the details of our morning together I think I will! I wanted to share them to show the "emotional whiplash" we experienced that weekend, and especially that night. The first photo was taken at 11pm, just before we put her down to sleep and went to bed ourselves. It is one of my favorites, because she looked like a little pea in a pod! (the nurses got a kick out of it too!) The next photos were taken only 8 hours later, shortly after 7am and she had been taken off her monitors and oxygen and we started saying our goodbyes.