okay. We’ll name him Dillon.” He smiled at Annie and the nurse and then looked at his little boy. Dillon. He did look like a Dillon.
The nurse took the pink and blue striped bundle from Annie’s arms. Her arms were trembling as she held this most precious little person. She’d never had to baptize a stillborn baby before. As reverently and calmly as she could, she made a sign of the cross on the infant’s forehead and said, “Dillon Paul Morgan, I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” She patted his head affectionately as she said the final word and gently gave him back to Annie.
The moment was holy. It was the only word Annie could think of to describe it. She felt so close to God and Dillon at that moment, and wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Anything, except a healthy baby, alive and crying in her arms. Feeling so close to God at that moment, she would’ve been crazy to lie about how she really felt.
Dr. Hayes knocked gently on the door and came in. “How are you two doing?” he asked quietly.
Annie looked at him, tears welling up in her eyes. What could she say? How were they doing? She didn’t pretend to know.
“Are you ready to say good-bye?” he asked, his voice breaking. He had only met Annie and Eric that day, but seemed to feel such a bond, such responsibility for these young parents.
Annie looked down at Dillon tenderly. How could she ever let him go? He’d been her constant companion for the past eight months. He’d been her dream forever. She knew that it was time to say good-bye. Her tiny son was already starting to feel cold when she placed one last kiss on his cheek.
The nurse came and ever so quietly took him from her arms. It happened so gently that when she looked back on it later, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact moment of separation.
The room was dark and silent. There was such an emptiness now that Dillon was gone. Her arms ached as well as her heart – they were both so empty. Annie laid back in the hospital bed, exhausted. She fixed her gaze on the night sky because there was no where else to look. Eric was wrapping himself up in his feelings of loss and numbness. She respected his need to approach things in his own way, but it left her very much alone.
It was then that she saw it – a tiny star, glistening and shiny brightly, all alone in the darkness. She closed her eyes and looked again. It hadn’t been there a minute before – was she hallucinating? No, there it was, twinkling and shining more than it had before.
Suddenly a feeling of warmth and peace enveloped her. She smiled because she knew that Dillon was in Heaven. He was telling her that by making his little star shine brighter than all the others. He would always be in her heart, swaddled in a blanket of the memories of this night and all the days preceding it. Every time she looked at the night sky and saw his star or any star, she’d know that she was not alone.
Much of what happened next was a blur. Because she was no longer pregnant, she could have a room on a regular floor rather than the maternity floor, in case it would be too difficult for her to be around babies. Even through her newborn grief, she knew enough to sense that they wanted to get rid of her, to remove the pain and stigma of a pregnancy gone wrong.
“I’d like to be where people know how to take care of me,” she told Dr. Hayes. “This is my first baby…”
“Then that is what you will have,” he declared. “And you’ll have a private room. That’s the least we can do.”
This followed the discussion about how long she should stay home from work. The doctor was definitely her advocate. Eric suggested that since she didn’t have a newborn to care for, perhaps she’d need less time to recuperate. Dr. Hayes dismissed his comment without missing a beat.
“Annie had a baby - she needs the customary six week maternity leave.” He wrote his orders: a minimum of six weeks.
It was a relief to know that the time she’d need was validated, but she knew she’d go back to work sooner than that because they needed the money. While she was pregnant, she brought up the possibility of her working part-time after the baby came.
“There’s no way we can afford that,” Eric stated firmly. She took him at his word and didn’t argue because she knew he was right. Now, even though there was no baby, she regretted her decision not to fight for time with him. Having just held him and smelled his tiny newborn head made her realize how precious that time would have been, and she felt awful for having been so willing to give it away.
Her arms literally ached for wanting to hold him, not only for a moment but for the rest of her life. She was shocked at the intensity of her feelings. Not only did her arms ache, but her heart hurt as well. It was unlike any pain she’d ever felt before, either physical or emotional. It was exquisitely perfect, a vast collection of contradictions. The baby that had brought her so much joy was now the cause of unimaginable pain. The emptiness inside of her where he had just spent his entire little life was such a vast chasm of grief and loss, she could not begin to comprehend it. Her wounds were fresh and raw and she had no idea how she was going to live until tomorrow or the next five minutes without him.
According to her wishes, she was moved to a room – private – on the maternity floor. Eric was given a cot to sleep on next to her bed, and there they spent the rest of the night. They didn’t speak or touch. Each of them lay in their cocoons, alone and apart from each other.
Annie could never remember when she’d felt more alone. She gazed out the window at the now predawn sky. A chill ran from her forehead to her little toe, and she pulled the thin hospital blanket up under her chin to keep warm, to protect herself. The memory of Dillon’s birth was still strong in her mind, and she closed her eyes and did her best to relive it. As painful as it was, she never wanted to forget a moment of it. She had to remember it. That was all she’d ever have of him.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice of a nurse and a hand on her shoulder.
“Annie. Hi. How are you doing?” She had a kind, soothing voice.
“Okay, I guess.”
“Are you having much pain?” The question was perfectly normal and valid, but Annie wanted to scream, ‘YES. You have no idea!’ But, of course, she didn’t. She simply said, “Not too much.”
“Well, that’s good,” the nurse replied, “but I’m afraid I’ll be causing you some - I have to knead your tummy.”
Annie looked at her, perplexed. “You have to what?”
“I have to knead your uterus. It makes it shrink.” She set to work, massaging and pushing on Annie’s abdomen as if it were a blob of bread dough instead of the sacred vessel that had just held her baby. As the nurse pushed and prodded, she closed her eyes and tried to transport herself to another place, to another place in time. She wanted to be taken care of properly, but this was too invasive. Her first instinct was to clutch her belly, to protect the place that had been Dillon’s home for the past thirty-four weeks. As the nurse did her job, she felt that her very soul was being touched. She felt pain on so many levels, it was difficult to tell where it started. There was supposed to be a squalling baby latching onto her breast to make this happen, not a nurse simulating the event. It broke her heart yet again.
“Normally nursing your baby takes care of this because it releases hormones that do the trick, but…” Suddenly she realized what she was saying and to whom she was saying it. Her demeanor changed abruptly. “So, that should be good
