Zooey Noel Mason Feb 6, 2013

On February 6, 2013 Zooey came and went on a day I did not expect.
I have so much I want to put down so that I never forget, one of my greatest fears. This maybe long and it may take me a few times to get it all down the way I want but in the end I will have everything I want to save down.

 It all started on Tuesday night, my blood pressure was not being kind to me so I had to go to the emergency room.When I got there I had to go up by myself because of some stupid guy who made a false call about a man and a gun. The hospital was on lock down! By the time they got me drugged up and into another room, my blood pressure had come down and I had a good feeling I would get to go home. Andy stayed with me as long as he could but he had to get back to Mya, so I was alone again.

 I thought I would get to go home that morning but someone had other plans. My nurse came in at 8am and told me that my doctor wanted to take her at 9am. Here I am with no one and all my plans where leaving me! I did talk them into pushing it back to 11:30. I was able to make my phone calls and get my family to the hospital. Something else was going on but I didn't think about it till a week later, I was feeling Zooey move around for the last time. They had put the monitor on me and I could hear her heart beat and she was moving like crazy, she knew something was going on.

We got to the important part, finally, and I was a nervous wreck the whole time. Poor Andy had to keep holding my hand, trying to get me to stop shaking, and the pressure of them getting her out seemed so much more intense than before.I think it was because I was so NOT ready for it to happen and I was just hoping she would make it through the surgery part. Well, after what felt like forever, she came to us. The NICU doctor took her and tried to get her to react and cry but he couldn't get her to do much. At that time, he handed her to Andy and told us that her heart rate wasn't great and that she had only minutes. Andy put her up to me as close as he could, she was so pretty and perfect. I didn't care how long she had, I was taking her all in. She wasn't very responsive, but did try to cry. I told Andy that right then I knew I had done the right thing and was glad we got to hold her, I had also wished our moms could have been there. All this had come at such a bad time for our moms, mine was still in CA and his was at home because his father had just had surgery the day before. Talk about bad timing!!

 The time we had with Zooey was great! For some reason, after the NICU doctor had left, Zooey was becoming very vocal. She still didn't move a lot but was very vocal about what she wanted. She just wanted to be held and not bothered with everything else. Andy got to watch her get weighed and measured  and a few of my family members came to see her. Tori finally got there and see her but she didn't want to hold her until later. I even tried some skin to skin time to see if she would react a little but nothing really changed. She seemed to just enjoy being held. The NICU doctor had come in at one point and checked her heart rate, he said it had come up and he couldn't explain it.

  She was a fighter, everyone says "just like her mother", but I think she was tougher than me. She gave me all my strength to get to where we were. One really neat thing that she did, she grabbed my finger. She grabbed it and held it tight for just a few minutes but it will be burned into my brain forever. We had finally got into the room and spent our last few hours with her there. Everyone got to hold her and show how much love they had for her. Her heart just couldn't handle anymore and her lungs just weren't strong enough. I held her for a long time after I knew she had passed, Andy and I just needed to let it all sink in.  She had done so well, just to give us a little time, a real fighter is what Zooey was. 

 I had a lot of things in those days at the hospital that came to me. I didn't want any chocolate, which I didn't think about until later. Zooey wasn't in my belly anymore to enjoy it with me, an idea that still makes me cry. On Valentine's Day I put a little chocolate by her urn, it just seemed right. I spent the time at the hospital trying to prepare for leaving her. I got to give her a bath and put on her outfit her Grandma had picked out, the nurse we had that day was so sweet and helpful through it all. She had her pictures made by a great lady named Darci from Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. I sat later and stroked her hair and cried. Her hair was amazing, so much like her dad's. Their hair is so soft to touch!! I couldn't help but think that we would wake the baby when we were too loud or when Andy would help give me a shower, that we left the baby by herself in the room. I think that is just the mother in me. It was hard to remember that she just wasn't with us, it was just her body. It was very hard on Andy too. I won't tell his part of the story, he can if he would like, but I feel that that is for him to tell when he is ready. I will just say that I am glad that he has been so open with me and I feel like Zooey brought us even closer, something I didn't think was possible just because we were so close even before all of this.  

When Friday came we knew it would be hard to leave. Andy and I spent some time holding her and taking a few last pictures with just us. I knew we just had to let her go. I did have a little relief in knowing who was coming to pick her up from the funeral home, something I will get into on my next blog. When we left I gave her one more kiss and down the hall we went. My heart just broke at that moment. I will never forget that feeling, it is what wakes me at night sometimes. It is how I felt when Andy and I first came home, it was how I felt when I woke up last Wednesday, when she should be celebrating a week old birth day. It is a pain that only a mother knows, the pain of something missing that should be there, it is a big hole that will never be filled.