He would have been 15 today

CAVEAT: The purpose of this blog is to record the life we live as a family. This post is something I, personally, needed to write. It may not be something you need to read. It is very long and very sad. If you are expecting a baby in the near future, my recommendation is that you NOT read this post at this time.

The c-section was scheduled for Friday, May 13, 1994. We were having our third child after a somewhat eventful pregnancy which saw pre-term labor, unusual discomfort and a growing uneasiness in my heart. Something felt wrong, but the baby tested fine and my doctor tried to assure me that all was well. The contractions kicked in again, and on the morning of May 10, 1994, my dear husband and I were making an early morning trip to the hospital. After being hooked up to the monitor for a while, the nurse came in and very calmly told me that the baby wasn't responding the way they would like it to, so we were going to have our c-section that morning. We made phone calls and arrangements for the older two children and prepared to meet baby #3.

I honestly cannot remember any of my emotions on the trip to the OR. My emotions had been so jumbled during this pregnancy. I was excited, of course, but apprehensive, tired, and for some reason, worried. This pregnancy had felt different. There was some pain when the baby moved. And every time I turned around, I was seeing, reading or hearing about a baby born with some sort of handicap. When I would say my Consecration prayer in the morning, the words, "I give myself entirely to Jesus Christ...." seemed to resound and echo in my mind. I just could not shake the feeling that God was preparing me for something. Something hard.

There was the usual happy chatter in the operating room prior to the c-section. "Is this your first?" "What are the names?" etc. It is usually quite business-like but also pretty festive. Once the surgeon showed up, the operation began and the baby was born very quickly after that. I heard the baby squeak a little bit, and the festive mood of the room disappeared. Quickly, our pediatrician took over care of the baby. We had to ask if it was a boy or girl...no one was offering any information. The room was eerily quiet except for our pediatrician's voice talking to our new son, "Come on, Brady, come on." In one part of my brain, I loved hearing her call our new son by his new name; the other part of my brain was frozen with fear. After that first squeak, Brady did not make another sound. I heard the doctor ask for "epi" and knew it was epinephrine to jump start his heart. They whisked our newborn out of the room to "stabilize" him, the doctor explained, as I screamed silently to Our Lord and Blessed Mother and every saint in heaven to fill this room and save my baby. My prayers were desperate, not profound, and after a while I could not pray at all.
Instead of bringing me into the recovery room, they moved me right back upstairs to my maternity suite, despite the fact that I had just had a c-section. I still had not had any more news of the baby and I was afraid to ask, afraid to know. I remember the nurse telling me that it was OK for me to cry. This angered me, because, as far as I knew, there was nothing to cry about yet. The assisting doctor had talked to me before he left the operating room and assured me that Dartmouth Hitchcock Memorial Hospital (a teaching hospital associated with the College) was just up the road and "they can work wonders." The pediatrician told me she was stabilizing him...why do I need to cry right now? I still have hope. But, I didn't say any of these things. I tried to pray, but could only squeeze the rosary beads my mother-in-law handed to me and repeat, "Please, Mother" over and over. Now, all these years later, I know, from experience, that I am a "delayed reactor" when it comes to tragedy. I sit, tearless and numb, as others fall apart. So, I sat in my bed, full of morphine from the surgery, squeezing my rosary beads, thoughts swirling, head in a complete fog, waiting for news of our son. My husband, dear man, sat quietly by my bed enduring his own inner turmoil. We held hands, but I don't remember talking much.
My husband's parents were there, and they called our priest. He came up to the hospital immediately and baptized our son. Praise be to God. I am, to this day, so very grateful for this gift. I am embarrassed to say that dear Father had to ask if we wanted him to baptize the baby....I never thought to ask....the fog was too thick.
Finally, our pediatrician came into the room. She explained that Brady could not breathe on his own, his lungs were not expanding as they tried to force air into them. They had called Dartmouth Hitchcock and consulted the doctors there and were confident that they had done all Dartmouth would have done. There was no amniotic fluid (we still do not know why). Babies need this fluid to "breathe" into their lungs in utero to help them develop and keep them supple. Without the fluid, Brady's lungs were rigid, and unable to inflate. Transplant was not an option, as they could not stabilize him. She wanted our permission to stop "bagging" him, bring him into us, so that he could pass away in our arms. She mentioned something about his brain being without oxygen for so long now that there would be damage. Inwardly, I gave a sarcastic sneer. Having an "impaired" child, which would have, at one time, seemed like a tragedy, would now have been a blessed relief. The possibility of life, impaired or not, was all that I begged God for now. It was not to be. At that moment, a nurse popped her head in the door and announced to the doctor that Brady's heart had stopped. The pediatrician rushed out to restart his heart, and my husband began to cry. I clearly remember, as if in slow motion, turning my head to the left to look at him and he seemed so far away from me, in the fog. And I vividly recall feeling terrible sorrow for him, that he had to go through all of this. So, I turned to him and said, "I'm so sorry." He did something then that I will remember for the rest of my life. He stood up and hugged me and told me he loved me. I knew we would be OK, then. A tragedy like this can really shake and even destroy a marriage, but my husband's actions reassured me that we were going to work through this together. Scott gave me a gift that horrible day, and I doubt he knows this, but I still treasure it.

(After the fact, I wondered if the doctor meant that there was a possibility of life, when she told us that there would be brain damage. The thought nagged me and I felt guilt that perhaps I hadn't fought hard enough for my baby's life. The next day, I questioned the doctor about this and about a ventilator. She assured me that if we had put him on a ventilator he would only have lasted a half hour more or so. His lungs didn't work and were not going to. Scott and I both received that message when she came in to talk to us that day. Our baby was going to die no matter what.)

After they started Brady's heart again, they brought him in to be with us as he passed into God's arms. During all this time, approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes since his birth, I still had not broken down. I had shed some tears, yes, but my head was still in a fog, and I was still numb. When the doctor walked into my room carrying the little swaddled bundle that was my son, a sound escaped from me that I did not recognize, nor could I repeat. It was a primordial sound, the anguished wail of a mother who has lost a child. The veil lifted, the numbness disappeared and a searing pain broke my heart in two. I held our son and my husband held us. We sobbed out our grief as our son entered into Eternity.

I held him one more time before the funeral home came to get his body. I had never touched a dead person before. I was young and afraid. I was afraid to see his head, misshapen from being wedged in my pelvic bones with no amniotic fluid. I remember he had large hands, "paws" I called them, just like his brother, Isaac. He was beautiful, but I was afraid of him. I wanted to unwrap him and count his tiny toes and kiss his soft newborn skin, but I was afraid. This is my biggest regret. This was the only time I was going to have with him on earth, and I let my fear keep me from experiencing all I could of my son. Fear, truly, is useless.

My ob-gyn visited me the following day and he was visibly shaken. He kept saying, "you knew, you knew..." He offered me a prescription for Valium. Valium wouldn't help, I only wanted my baby. I refused the Valium and he told me I was a brave lady. Friends visited and I found myself comforting them. They called me brave, also. I was not brave. If God had consulted me and asked my permission to take my son, even if this sacrifice could have converted the world, I would have said, "No. Please find another way, Lord. Not my son." I am not Our Lady and I was not brave. I went to the hospital to have a baby and instead, found myself in the middle of a nightmare. I'd like to be able to say that I chose to walk with God through it, instead of turning from Him, but that is not true.

The truth is that God picked me up and carried me through this tragedy. I know He did. I felt His arms. In a way I cannot explain properly, I experienced a physical comfort and an interior strength for the first couple of weeks following Brady's death. God was carrying me. I felt it. I knew it. Just like the 'Footprints' story.
Then, about two weeks later, I felt Him put me down. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew it. I also know he told me, "It is time for you to walk now, but I am right here next to you." I didn't see him or hear him. But I knew Him.
When Our Lord tells St. Paul, "My grace is sufficient," He means it!!
God's grace allowed me to comfort the friends who came to comfort me.
God's grace allowed me to experience absolutely no pain from this c-section at all!!
God's grace caused Scott and I to grow stronger through this trauma,
And God's grace has given us our own personal saint in Heaven, Brady Joseph Sweet. He was born, baptized and died completely sinless...he went directly from my arms into Heaven! This is the greatest joy-- to know that our son lives with His Heavenly Father.

Grief is a journey. We have traveled this path for 15 years now. There were times we traveled it alone. Scott and I grieved differently. I needed to talk about Brady -- I needed to acknowledge his existence. "He lived!! He was my son!! Please don't forget!!" Strangely, I wanted to wear a sign that said, "My baby just died." Not because I wanted sympathy, but because I needed people to know that I was not the same person they may have seen at the grocery store the week before. A major event changed me, my life, my husband and our family. I wanted to talk about it, process it out loud. It was so fundamental to who I now was. Scott, on the other hand, did not want to talk about it. He wanted to go "back to normal" so the pain would go away. So, sometimes we grieved alone...yet still together. For months, I cried myself to sleep in Scott's arms. The fog didn't lift for me for a long time. My doctor told me that my forgetfulness was a symptom of grief. But slowly, the pain lessened, the wound healed and the sun did shine again for us.

We are new people, with new perspectives. The value of human life was brought into sharp focus for us. We learned that Our Loving Father holds us in the palm of his hand, even when we are walking in deep darkness. We learned that He loves us intensely, even though He may have allowed, in His Permissive Will, a great suffering to come to us, and we trust that He will bring good from it. And I, in particular, felt a profound connection with our Blessed Mother. I experienced my own Pieta, but with much less grace and strength and faith.

We had to live the words of Job, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." By His grace, it wasn't difficult to trust God through this. We never felt abandoned. To the contrary, we felt His presence closer than ever. A couple of years before our son died, my cousin and his wife lost their 2 month old son to SIDS. As I was traveling to his funeral, I spoke to God and asked him where He was in all of this. I heard clearly, "God is crying with them." At the funeral, during the priest's beautiful homily, he spoke directly to my cousin and his wife, "God is crying with you." God does not cause tragedies like this, but He weeps with us, and strengthens us and loves us until we can walk alone again.

There is a saying that, "God doesn't give us more than we can handle." I don't agree. Sometimes we do get more than we can handle, but God gives us grace sufficient to handle what we are given. With God we can do all things; His love for us is deep and true and everlasting.

Every few years, Brady's birthday falls on Mother's Day. It is very fitting. My son, the saint in Heaven, is truly a unique and unrepeatable gift from God. Happy Birthday, Brady. It is an honor to be your mom.