The Nonexistent Baby

How is a baby nonexistent? O so many ways. Miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility. In some of those cases a baby did exist but then all of a sudden stopped existing. For me my nonexistent baby came in the form of adoption. It did exist, to my knowledge it still exists, but it’s not my baby. It was my baby for approximately one second, and then like so many things that happened it that 24 hour span it was gone in the next second. Was it ever really mine? I suppose you could make an argument that it never was. It was not mine like my 10 year old daughter is mine, but still three years later I think about the baby I had for one second, the baby that I never even got to find out the sex of. The baby that my husband and I had waited and prayed about for four years.  The baby that I poured my soul into, the baby that is to me now nonexistent.

My husband and I always knew we would adopt someday. It was a given, it was always part of the deal. Even before we got married we talked about adopting. We weren’t sure how it would play out, if we would have several kids first and then adopt, if we would go back and forth between adoption and biological children. We didn’t know if we would adopt locally or foreign.  We didn’t know if it would be a new born or an older child. We didn’t give a single thought to gender or skin color. We just knew adoption would be part of our family. Just as much as we knew we were soul mates, just as much as we wanted biological children we wanted adopted children. Dan and I wanted babies so bad, I always wanted four and he only wanted three. We would always tease back and forth about this and why one was better than the other. And I would always end it by saying “You just wait and see, I’m going to win this one”

In 2006 I became pregnant with our first child. We were beyond excited to finally start our family; this was going to be the best.  There was one little catch it appeared, pregnancy and my body did not mix well at all. I became sick almost immediately and stayed sick for the whole nine months. I was miserable, I hated being pregnant. I remember going in for the ultrasound to find out the sex of our baby. I should have been ecstatic and instead I felt so awful I didn’t even want to be there.  I was lying on the table when the technician told us we were having a girl. Instead of squealing with joy my first thought was ‘can I get down now because seriously I’m going to puke’

At 30 weeks pregnant I went into pre-term labor.  I thought I was just having a stomach ache but my husband saw it for what it was; contractions, two months early.  He rushed me to our nearest hospital; they confirmed my husband’s theory. This baby wanted out, and wanted out now.  The Dr. gave me steroids to help develop our baby’s lungs, then they predicted the baby would be born in the next twenty four hours and thus we were ambulanced us to another hospital that had a NICU, because we were going to need it. Luckily however we did not need to use the NICU, they were able to stabilize the contractions and after two weeks in the hospital and two months on bed rest our perfect little girl was born only a week before her due date.

That was more than enough for us, especially my husband whom I have never have seen more terrified than that night at the hospital when he knew there was a possibility that both his wife and baby could die.  He was always so calm and collected, but even I, in labor and on more medication then I can remember noticed the utter terror in his eyes. We unanimously decided we never wanted to get pregnant again; instead we would just adopt the rest of our kids. It was fine with us; adoption was always in our plan anyway.   When our daughter was three years old we decided we were ready to add another baby to our family and started the process for adoption.  It was a grueling process of raising money, trying to ‘sell’ yourself to birth mothers and just flat out waiting and waiting, and waiting.

We spent years telling our daughter what an awesome big sister she was going to be. How she could help feed the baby bottles and sing it to sleep.  I made a little picture book for her to help explain the adoption process. I even ordered personalized pacifiers over the internet that said “I love… and then our daughters name.”  She completely rolled with the adoption, it was as natural to her as it was for us; of course we were adopting a baby, what other way was there to get one?

 To help fill the time we put together the nursery; crib, changing table, rocker.  My sister painted murals on the walls of scenes from Narnia, one of our favorite books. Above the crib was Aslan the Lion, waiting to watch over our baby.  I started stocking up on diapers, wipes, and formula. You can never have too many of those things, might as well get started.  I bought a new diaper bag. I couldn’t resist the gender neutral baby clothes and started filling the closet.  Blankets, bottles, car seat, everything was ready to go at a moment’s notice. Diaper bag packed; we were ready to go to the hospital and get our baby the second they called.

Four years we waited to adopt a baby.  In the afternoon of Monday January 12, 2015 we got a call from our adoption agency. Our baby was here. Waiting for us to come to hospital and bring it home. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; how was this possible? Our baby was here at last. At the same time I heard those words I had been waiting four years to hear I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

It was exactly 12 hours before that my husband, my soulmate, my high school sweetheart, the man I was married to for 15 years and had every intention of another 60, died.  Extremely suddenly and unexpectedly, out of nowhere he died. In one second he was gone. Twelve hours and one second later the baby we had hoped and prayed for was also gone.

I started yelling into the phone at our case worker “he died last night, he just died, he died, he died, he died” my friend took the phone out of my hand and I cried so hard I started choking. I screamed at the floor in our bedroom, at the spot where he laid as I was trying to hear a heartbeat. “Dan, Dan, our baby is here, where are you Dan, our baby is here” Twelve hours, the mother was probably giving birth as Dan was dying.  Twelve hours too late.

Our daughter never got to be the big sister we always told her she would be. She longed for that baby as much as we did. She talked about the baby we were going to adopt constantly.  She practiced and practiced with her baby dolls, feeding them, burping them, singing to them as she swayed.  At 7 years old her daddy died and with it one of her biggest dreams was crushed, a dream most people take for granted, having playmates, friends, siblings.

Almost immediately after he died I got rid of all the baby stuff. I couldn’t stand to look at it for another second. I wanted to paint over the walls, white, blank, make it nonexistent like the baby. Our daughter wouldn’t hear of it, she loved that mural; she had lost so much already so I let the mural stay.  I tried to cover them up with the pictures that were in his office at work. The only thing I kept in the baby room was the rocking chair my husband got me for my first mother’s day. Our daughter and I still rock in it when she’s upset. I put in a table and some shelves. I started calling it the office instead of the baby room.  I was trying to fool myself, it didn’t work.

As I was getting rid of all the baby stuff some of it went into a box. Those pacifiers I had made, A blanket and pillow, special gifts that were given to that nonexistent baby.  A giant pile of all our adoption paperwork that we had poured our souls into. I didn’t want it; I didn’t want to acknowledge it, I didn’t want it to exist, like the baby. I couldn’t get rid of it either. I gave the box to my sister in law and said “I don’t care what you do with this but I never want to see it again” she said she would keep it safe for me.

Shortly after my husband died I emailed our case worker, just one sentence; ‘what do we do now?’ We arranged a time for me to go in and officially close our account.  I took one of my best friends with me for moral support. Still in complete shock from the sudden death of my husband I was astounded at the lack of compassion from people whose job it is to create families. My family was gone so I guess I didn’t count anymore. Technically speaking I could still adopt from foster care or international, if I wanted to. I could do it all by myself, without my husband, it was up to me. I had to tell them, physically say the words “I don’t want to adopt anymore.” That way it was me changing my mind and not them forcing me to, all the blame was on me. They weren’t liable, they didn’t need to refund anything, or be compassionate,  or help in any way.

Life, death, and babies are always filled with what ifs. What if they had called us the day before, we would have been at the hospital with our new baby when Dan had his seizure and they would have been able to save him, he would have never died. We would have been celebrating our new baby’s first birthday instead of mourning the one year anniversary of his death. It’s been three years now since Dan died, I still think about that baby. I still wonder if it was a boy or a girl.  It is all wrapped up in all the things we dreamed of that will never happen now; a big house full of kids, growing old together, sitting on the back porch holding hands while we watch our grandchildren play in the yard. All our dreams are nonexistent now just like our baby, but they did exist, they used to exist, we had it all for one second.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle