Fine Tooth Comb

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9


Wow.  Yesterday's post was a hard one for sure.  I cried (wept) a lot while writing it, allowing tears to fall, which I rarely do.  I'm not sure why I hold them in like I do.  It's silly really.  But, as I moved through the rest of my day, I found my mood to be foul.  I'd poked the bear, so to speak, and I'm not a fan of that.  Who is?


This morning as I woke and went to my "meet with Jesus chair", I began to pray;  what's this all about Lord, what's the feeling, that as I explore it, sends me to....well anything that might possible mask the pain it causes me.  I believe the word to describe that painful feeling, is shame. 


No one had a clue what to tell us to expect of our baby.  Would she live?:  Possibly.  Maybe even for years.  Would she die?:  Possibly; much the way her sister had.  There were no answers, so we just tried to settle in to this vague new reality. 


It was really difficult for both Brett and I to connect to Eadie Joy. The previous and prospective loss proved just too much.  Our "vessels" had severe cracks and we were leaking like sieves; faltering under the pressure of heavy sorrow and fear.  Thankfully, I was nursing Eadie which I'm convinced was the only thing that kept me as close as I dared be to her.  Unlike Josie's little life where we really embraced every moment, Eadie's life resembled a process we had to get through.  Looking back now I am so mad at myself for not forcing my mind and my body to stay in the moment with her, to be present for her, but I just couldn't.  And THAT my friends is where my shame comes from.


Shame is not life giving, I think we can all agree.  Shame is ugly, and messy, and in this case, it leaves me...embarrassed.  How sick is THAT?  I want it out of me.  I want to go through all the emotion and "ick" with a fine tooth comb; name it and claim it; because it's keeping me from being the me I am called to be.  Somehow I just don't think it's that simple.


As I chose the verse for today, I went back and read all of 2 Corinthians 12, and then proceeded to move over to Acts to remind myself of just who Paul (still called Saul at this time until his conversion in Acts 9) had been.  Saul was a REALLY bad guy.  A tyrant, back when the word tyrant didn't get thrown around save for those who really were.  He was very scary and very efficient at what he saw was his "calling"; to kill every disciple of Jesus.  Yet, you see no glimpse of this once tyrant when you look into that intimate moment in 2 Corinthians where Paul talks to the people of Corinth about his faults, his lacking, and the awesome "covering of all THAT" power of Christ .  Thank God for Jesus, right?  I desire to get this.  I mean, really get it.  I understand the words, but I desire to apply this amazing grace, to the space where Eadie Joy lives in me.


I remember so very little of those first few weeks with Eadie at home, and I cannot find ANY pictures to remind me besides the ones taken at a studio in town.  Thank you God for those precious images, those precious moments as a family. 


{images can be found on facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/mcleod.fit/}

Birth Day

To the woman he said, "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children." Genesis 3:16a


With both Josie and Eadie, I was willing stay pregnant with them forever.  I didn't know exactly what their little lives had in store for them,  but I knew I didn't want to find out.  I felt they were safest and closest to me right where they were.  So much better than the alternative.  But in such things, we have no say.


My body started showing signs of going into labor mid December, so we needed to make a plan since we lived so far from the hospital.  I was told to start calling Labor and Delivery for a room on December 21st.  I guess babies love to be born around Christmas, the closer, the better, because L&D was very full and I didn't get a room until the 22nd and didn't actually get into that room until around dinner time that day.  I was exhausted.  I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.


For the birth of Josie, we had been at our home hospital, surrounded by so many people who love us and wanted so badly to meet our sweet baby girl who wasn't guaranteed that first breath.  Eadie's birth was vastly different.  Brett and I were so weary and so shell shocked, riddled with anxiety and sorrow, that we couldn't be around anyone, and as labor began to pick up, after five hours or so of Pitocin I was glad for the pain, the silence, the solace.  I was like an animal laboring in the woods.


At 37.5 weeks gestation, Eadie Joy McLeod came into this world on December 23, 2009 with a flurry of activity.  I honestly can't remember why.  She was breathing and even crying like a "normal" infant, so I have no real idea why so many people, doctors, nurses, rushed into our room when she emerged into the world.  She looks perfect.  She looks perfect.  What did that mean?


After that, I passed out, asleep, unable to stay present.  So tired, I didn't bathe my fourth child, for the first time, as I had my previous children.  A missed moment that even today, I regret, with so many moments to follow.  Unable to stay present. 


Later that day, many doctors came to get a look at our baby girl, another ultrasound is done, tests.  "She looks perfect...", let me fill in that blank for you; "if we didn't know better" doctors wanted to say.  The scans, the tests, say she was far from perfect.


A and G come to Seattle to meet their new baby sister.  What must have been going through their minds?  Oh, our kids!  They had already learned more about life and death than most adults.  We hoped that the decisions we made for them then would help, not hinder.  So far, so good.


We spend another night at the hospital, we wake up to Christmas Eve.  Eadie goes down for an MRI, just to get a better look.  More talks of surgery, of what to do, of what could be done.  For now, "nothing" they say, "Go home."


The ride home is brutal.  Eadie cries the whole way and I wonder now why I didn't just hold her.  She's gone, what would it have mattered had I held her in my arms as opposed to leaving her in a car seat?  It wouldn't have.  Mattered.  And now it does.


I guess we celebrated Christmas.  I assume we did.


Back to Seattle on the 30th, to Children's Hospital this time to meet with the neurosurgeon.  He was sweet.  Not.  He said he wouldn't operate.  "There's nothing there.  Go home." he said, right to me, as I gazed down at my nursing child.  So abrupt, so final, with very little empathy in his voice.  There's nothing there?  But she's nursing, she cries; the hopeful signs Eadie had that her sister didn't.  These had to be signs of life, right?  I guess not.  So, we went home.        

Sloppy Accounting

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Ephesians 5:11

From here, until Eadie is born, it's pretty hazy for me.  But, I'd still like to try to piece the events together, so here goes...


We ended up getting our appointment moved up simply because we begged them, 8 weeks was just way too long to not know how Eadie was developing, I think we maybe waited 6?  Our appointment was scheduled at the University of Washington hospital this time so we were close to the MRI machine.  I had had an MRI while pregnant with Josie. It's such a strange thing for your child to have an MRI while still in your body.  It boggled my mind.


As scheduled, we had an ultrasound first, but I don't remember it at all.  I assume the scan showed that the "cyst" had grown, although at that moment, I didn't look at it.  I just remember somehow heading downstairs to change for the MRI. 


At the U, the MRI machine is in an old ambulance bay in the back of the building.  You practically walk out to the street to get to it.  As you walk through the doors of the main building you're instantly slapped with the sound of traffic and a swirl of gritty, dirty, hot air from the generator.  So weird.  It's like the walk to prison or something.  Again, I don't remember the MRI, I only remember the desperate feeling of wanting to grab the technician though the glass, by the collar, and demand that he make a full brain appear.  Of course we didn't get a peep out of the technician and had to wait many days before the MRI was to be read.


To top off that long, excruciating day, an amniocentesis.  Our doctors seemed determine to get answers.  They never did.  Again, on paper, our daughter was completely healthy. 


After this appointment, there were many more to follow.  Medical frenzy is the best way to describe what goes on for the next few weeks.  The reading of the MRI sparked a huge "meetings of the minds" where preinatologitsts, neurosurgeons, and geneticists all met to discuss our case and what could possibly be done for this poor, poor family.  Ugh!  The biggest question was, is there really a cyst, or is the brain dissipating and the space left behind simply filling with fluid?  The thought was that if it was a cyst, they could go in, while she was still in utero, and drain it.  Surgery on a fetus.  Brilliant!  But, in the end, they all agreed, that for some reason, her brain was dissipating and there was nothing that could be done to stop it.


I remember talks about termination, which I think I verbally agreed to but ultimately could not do.  I understood the push for this, it wasn't just ME that this was going to affect and I hated having to put A and G through this again, the possible (probable) loss of another sister, but still, I couldn't do it.  I couldn't play God that way with her life.  She HAD to have some purpose or I'd not have conceived her in the first place.  At least, this is how I saw it, and still do today.


From here on out, you could tell there was a resignation in most everyone.  We mostly had meetings with Dr. death; a doctor who's name I cannot remember, but who we called Dr. death because that's all he talked about.  Great.  He actually was a really nice guy, but as you can imagine, we were not fans of his.   We had other appointments too, even another ultrasound that showed that the dissipation had slowed.  I cheered, full of hope, with my "sister" during that appointment.  Brett was "unable to make it" that day, who could blame him?  But, in the end, there just wasn't enough brain tissue to sustain life, and the tissue she did have was lissensapholic, or smooth, where it needed to be bumpy and full of grooves.  I felt trapped.  I felt panicked.  We were going to have to do this whole thing all over.

Broke Down Faith

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1


I can remember, after Josie's diagnosis, the incredible amount of faith we had that God would heal our child.  We believed that God would fix in her what had broken.  We most certainly KNEW that He could, and we had faith that He would.  He did not.


It was time for our 20 week ultrasound for Eadie Joy and we'd been asked to have the scan in Everett so that we were closer to the University of Washington and working with specialists who had been consultants for Josie, "just in case" something was to go wrong with this baby as well.   If this scan came back normal, then we'd be released to go back to our home hospital which is where all our kids had been born, including Josie. But, as soon as the scan began, we knew something was up because the technician left the room and brought back our perinatologits to have a look right then and there.  Not good. 


Our doctor had found what she believed to be a sub arachnoid cyst (a bubble of fluid above the brain), which normally is not a big deal, they happen all the time.  But, because it was a sub arachnoid cyst on a fetus who's mother had just delivered an infant born with no brain, it was a big deal.  She literally crossed her fingers in hopes that it would be absorbed as most cysts of this kind do.  She also told us to come back in eight weeks.  Seriously?!


After that appointment I was so pessimistic, and I remember it being hard to even pray.  I could not breathe.  I was angry, Brett was angry, and I specifically remember saying to our brand new Pastor's wife, whom I had literally just met; "if this happens again, I'm done."  Meaning, I would not be able to serve a God, any longer, who asks us to walk through this again.  I meant it, but I guess I was wrong. 

The Original

The school year of 2010-2011, I took a writing class.  I wanted to see if writing would help me process and begin to heal from all we'd been through.  This was my first ever piece.  The writing prompt was to pick a number...

Shannon McLeod

September 29, 2010

Twenty-three

Twenty-three days old.  A mother sits with her new-born child.  She rocks her in a chair.  She is beginning to get the hang of this life that she has welcomed into hers.  This life that will grow to be twenty-four and twenty-five days old and on and on for years to come.  This life that she grew within herself and has known already for nine months.  Nine months…..and twenty-three days.

Twenty-three days old.  The only measure of life, of age, that can be used for my child, my children actually.  My third and fourth children, both daughters.  Death at the age of twenty-three days.  How strange.  Why twenty-three days?  Twenty-three days, two separate times, two separate years.  Way too young.  No twenty-four, no twenty-five days old and on and on for years to come.  Nothing and no one to get the hang of.  No life to learn.

Twenty-three days of life once was…..sweet.  A surprise from her powerful life that was to have none.  Each breath she took, each day she woke, was such a gift.  How lucky we were to be able to spend that time with an infant deemed “incompatible with life”. 

Twenty-three days twice was…….a cruel joke.  And where the first time we moved through this space alert and with grace that could only come from nothing human but once was, the second time felt like we were being punched in the face, in the gut, over and over.  Where has the grace gone?  Where is my focus?  “Incompatible with life”, again. 

My focus was on her, on her life but it wasn’t enough.  I wasn’t enough.  There was too little left and we knew even less of what to expect with her, less of what to expect from her life that would prove to be too short for any life, again.  Maybe we should have known.  Maybe we should have assumed the worst instead of hoping for the best.  Maybe we were foolish to believe that an infant born with more brain tissue than none would mean there would be some life.  Some.  More.  Life.  Certainly more than just twenty-three days of life.  Again. 

The human body, the human mind will try to protect itself subconsciously from such trauma.  The trauma of losing a child.  But by my mind and body doing this, I am now left with regrets.  I so wish I could have been to Eadie, our fourth, what I was able to be for Josie, our third.  But, it was just too painful.  Twice?  Yet, it was all there was.  Twenty-three days.  Too late.

We hoped for Josie’s life too.  We believed she could live, that they could be wrong.  That a brain would just….appear?  We believed Our Savior would heal her because He could have.  He didn’t.

To hope again was crazy, right?  How could a parent help it?  To believe the best for your child, full of life, or not.  To cling to hope is the only way to survive it.  Foolish.  Child like faith.  The only proper response.

I’m not exactly sure what it all looked like, this second twenty-three days.  There was no way to fight it.  This human protection mode made this space in time, in my life, like a fog.  Rolling in, rolling out.  Was it there?  I heard it (her).  Was it there?  I felt it (her). It was gone before I could grasp it.  Too late.

So, now I live with regret.  Two hundred and seventy-nine days, and counting, of regret.  Hope has become my enemy.  I can only hope it won’t always be.

 

Scavenger

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Psalm 139:23



So, at this point, my obnoxious tenacity went into overdrive and I just became down right obnoxious, anxious, a complete mess, yet determined and focused; on what?  As if I could WILL this pregnancy to go well,  WILL it to produce a healthy child.  I gave it my best shot, that's for sure, although not in the way you'd think, like how women can be uber "natural" during a pregnancy, or protective of their physical body; "the baby house".  I think back and I actually was the most reckless I'd ever been during any pregnancy.  Strange.  It was like I was on some kind of hap-hazard scavenger hunt where I just had to come out on top.  As if.  Fighting/competing/racing against who?  Fighting/competing/racing against what?  Yet, there I stayed, in this strange space, for twenty weeks.

My Way

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
Isaiah 55:8


We had been trying for baby number four for about three months (which was not very long at all, but I had never had trouble getting pregnant, and with our loss...things were...loaded), and after our trip to Disneyland, I went into overdrive in the baby making department.  Sounds like fun, right?  Wrong.  If you've ever been desperate (try hell bent) for a baby, you know that the process is not fun for anyone involved.  It's stressful and full of control, and usually many tears and lots of arguing.  It robs both parents of the beauty of the life making process (there's that brokenness again and the enemy coming up on top by stealing joy; destroying beauty...he sucks).


But, because my husband is who he is, he was very patient with me and sort of allowed me to get nuts, and be nuts with desire for another baby; like, now.  We had gotten clearance from our doctors pretty much right away after losing Josie, mainly because, as I mentioned before, there were no signs of "why" our baby had been born with no brain.  This is where they used that term "fluke".  It went something like this:  "What happened to your baby was just a fluke, a crossing of wires during the process of development that just happens some times, and although we cannot find where those wires crossed, you guys will be fine.  You have two healthy children and if you want to try for another baby, you have our blessing."  I'm not telling you this because I blame our doctors for what happens, but because I want to explain where we were mentally.  We wanted to raise a third child and they wanted that for us as well.


Emotionally, must I say it, we were not well.  Obviously, we were all pretty shell shocked and grieving.  Thankfully, I had enough wear withal to get some help with processing the loss of our baby girl, and that counseling help me a lot.  But, if you know anything about me, you know that I have an obnoxious tenacity, and when I sink my teeth in, things are gonna go my way.  Period.  And although I believe fully that God gave me this specific personality trait on purpose, I have a love/hate relationship with this part of me for sure.


By the end of April 2009, I was pregnant for the 4th time.