Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Beating of a Heart


It all started and ended with the beating of a heart

The first time I saw those three beating hearts on that screen my own heart skipped a beat

When I actually got to hear them it was the most precious sound I have ever heard

As a woman who had struggled to get pregnant for so long I couldn’t believe that those wonderful sounds of life were coming from within my womb.

The first crushing blow came when one of those hearts stopped beating 26 weeks later

We don’t know why it stopped they told me sadly

Still I tried to focus on those other two beating hearts

They were hanging on and even though a part of my own heart had just died I had to hang on for them

A few days later as those precious blessings were delivered from my womb I prayed that those two hearts would continue to beat on their own

Every second was so unpredictable and the fear of the unknown scared me to death

When I finally heard that those two little miracles were doing as well as could be expected, a little bit of my own heart started beating again and I could finally breathe for the first time in days

Then two weeks later another blow stopped my heart once again

Brady was sick

For the next five months, every beat of Brady’s heart and every breathe that he took was documented on a little monitor next to his bed

If anything was slightly off, an alarm would sound and a nurse would run to his side

I jumped at every little beep for the first couple of weeks until finally I barely noticed them anymore.

There was no monitor strapped to my heart but if there had been there would surely have been moments when alarms sounded

For my heart stopped numerous times and was broken and crushed every time another bit of bad news was delivered to me

Finally the worst news came of all

Brady’s heart was sick and could not be fixed

So we turned off those monitors and focused instead on loving him with all of our hearts

Then on a cold night in late March, I found myself staring at a screen once again

But this time there was no heartbeat and there was no sound

That little heart had stopped beating and along with it I knew that I had lost a piece of my own heart forever.

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