A month ago

My nightmare started a month ago today. Sunday, February 8th, I was supposed to be celebrating Hailey's birthday, but I ended up in the hospital. The whole thing still seems so surreal. When the resident told me, "I can see a good portion of the bag of waters," I couldn't believe it. I've been to L&D many times with my other kids and always heard, it's nothing or it's something simple (UTI once, yeast infection once). This was the start of a nightmare that I can't wake up from. Some mornings when I wake up, my first thought is that it was just a dream and I'm still pregnant, Sydney is still safe in my womb, and none of this ever happened. But every morning, the first thing I see is the little brown teddy bear that the nurses had in Sydney's hands on our second day in the hospital. I take that bear with me everywhere and at night, I sleep with it wrapped in the little pink fleece blanket that she was wrapped in on the first day.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't rehash the events leading up to Sydney's birth and wonder what I could've done differently. I wish I'd realized something was going on and gone to the hospital sooner. I wish...well, I wish a lot of things, too many to list here. I wish I could make it all go away and have my baby back. I have begged and pleaded with God to just put her back inside of me, to please give me my sweet little baby back.

I feel nothing but pain. I want to feel peace. I don't want to feel this torment anymore. I want to understand, I want to know why. Not why physically, but why in the big picture was my baby taken from me. I feel like the Lord has turned His back on me when I need Him the most. I felt a surge of faith when Sydney first died and now, I feel like the bad child who has been scolded by her parents and sent to her room. I want to see Sydney in my dreams and feel her near me. There were a few times, in the first couple of weeks, when I would suddenly smell her near me and it made me feel so calm and comforted. I haven't had that happen in a while though. I'm so irrational, I worry that she isn't near me because she's angry with me for letting her down and for not being with her now. I worry that she will never know how much I love her and how much I wanted her to be here with me.

I'm a basket case. I feel like I'm on the verge of a breakdown any minute.