Time does not make things better!!!

Well, it a year today when everything started! I started my contractions and our lives turned upside down from here on! Time has flown by, but i feel like it was just yesterday! I thought time was suppose to heal, i guess its just too early for that now. We should be planning for his 1st birthday party right now, golly this really sucks!
I went and saw a doctor last week about getting pregnant without doing IVF and he said he would do his best to make it happen! I'm excited, but also scared. I go back on June 30th to figure out what his plans are! So cross your fingers and say lots of prayers!
Ahhhh... its so hard! My life is like so upside down!
Well, sorry for the short one today! Don't feel like typing :(
'till next time yall!

9 months old

Well yesterday my little boy would have been 9 months old, wow! He'd be crawling all over the house and saying "mommy" and "daddy" by now, probably pulling on Molly and Sammy's (our 2 basset hound dogs) ears. He'd be so much fun! Its so hard to believe he's gone. I'm so tired today, but every time i close my eyes i keep remembering the 1st time he looked at me, he opened his eyes and just kept blinking, then when i got closer, he just stared right at me, he knew who i was and it was an amazing feeling! i keep reliving that day like it was yesterday. I keep imagining if his hair would still be so blond or if it darkened up, my mom swore it was turning red, but it was so white blond, it did get a little darker, but not red! He had his daddy's dimple on his chin and yeah, he had my nose. He was just so beautiful, so perfect, he was my son. It doesn't get any easier with time, sometimes i feel like it just gets worse. There are so many what ifs, if things just could have been different. i will never know why God took him from me or what i ever did to deserve this, but i hope one day i can get some answers.
No one could ever know what this is like, every situation is so different and i just know he wasn't meant to die, he overcame so much, he fought so hard. He was my dream and i feel like he was just ripped away from me, its such an awful feeling. Bill just doesn't understand sometimes how hard it is on me and i don't think he ever will. I know he lost his son, but i feel like i lost everything, its hard to explain, but it just is. I don't know... i just don't know :(

Can't sleep

Well its 3:15 am and i am sooooo tired, but every time i close my eyes my head just goes crazy! I just keep thinking of how different things could be right now. I miss Billy so much, its so hard! I tell ya, there are plenty of days i just wish i could go to heaven, so then i could be with him. But i know he wouldn't want that, but its hard not to think like that sometimes. Being a mother is something i've dreamt about forever, and then to have it all taken from you, its pure hell. I think sometimes what did i ever do to deserve this? I did everything right, got me the best husband in the world, we were married.... then i see people who don't even want kids having them left and right, why can't i have that?? I just don't understand AT ALL!!!!
WHY ME?
WHY US?

Rainy days

Well today is a rainy day and that means something to me. It seemed like every time Billy was having an extraordinary day it would rain, like it was a sign that he was doing ok! When ever I would ask God for a sign that he was ok, it would rain. Even now when I am having a bad day, I would ask for a sign that my precious Angel is ok, it seems like the sky would just open up and it would rain. To me, rain is tears falling from the sky, saying "Mommy, I'm ok!"
The evening of his funeral it started to rain and when we were all leaving a friend of ours was like" look up in the sky, look at the beautiful rainbow", It was like Billy was letting us know he's at peace, that he's ok! Its strange how the smallest things can have such meaning to someone!
I miss him so much! He wasn't suppose to die, he over came so much and he was doing so good, even the doctors couldn't believe how good he was doing, so I have to believe that it was a last minute decision that God made, that : An Angel in the book of life wrote down our baby's birth and on August 23rd she whispered... Too beautiful for Earth! Mommy misses you so so so much! I love you William Patrick Connors, xoxoxoxox

How am I doing?

Well, my journey thru this is quite a roller coaster! When it 1st happened I was in shock for awhile! I started seeing a counselor every week until recently, when we moved out of Florida. And golly I miss it! I miss having that one person to speak to and who understood me, she was so amazing! Bill and I decided to move up here to Georgia so we could start a new life, too many memories there for me, and until your in my shoes, you could never understand!
There were many of times i just wanted to die so i could be with him again, but I knew that wasn't fair to my husband and my friends and family. I put on a great front, but until recently, my front is sorta going away. I've just been reliving every moment i had with him, its starting to feel like it was just yesterday that it all happened. Its been 8 longs months and i just feel like I'm falling apart all over again! Its so hard, I'm sure moving away from my family plays a part in how i feel, but i just felt like no one understood how bad i was and still am hurting!

Until next time....

His final days

On August 14th Bill arrived early, so we went to have dinner and back to the hospital to spend a couple hours with Billy. He was in his private room and we had a new nurse, our first impression on him was that we didn't like him, not sure why we both felt that way but we did. It was now "hands on time" which means diaper change, sponge bath and clean and change his tubes. I normally change his diaper, but this nurse told me no, he'll do it. Then Billy started fussing and stuff so the nurse said he'll finish his cleaning later, we didn't think anything of it, Billy was starting to get agitated, it was late, so we thought we'd just let him rest and come back in the morning.
August 15th We got up and went to see our boy, I let his nurse know what happened the previous night and just how rude he was and she would let the head nurse know that we did not want him with our son again. I changed his diaper and fed him and cleaned him up, after spending a couple hours with him , we decided to go get lunch and when we came back it all began.
We walked in his room and his alarms were going off, his nurse was at lunch, so I grabbed another nurse, she turned up his oxygen levels and that seemed to work. I went up to his bed and we wasn't moving like we normally does, he's very active, he wouldn't even hold my finger. Alarms started sounding again,I noticed his blood pressure dropping, next thing the nurse calls for a bloodgas to see what was going on, it came back bad, so they ordered an xray, they said that was fine, next thing all alarms start sounding, his pressure has dropped and they are yelling 'code blue' Bill steps out of the room, I was just frozen in shock as I watch his room get packed with nurses and doctors, I thought he was gone. Then finally his respiratory therapist who ran upstairs form the level 1 NICU came up (we became close with him) We knew for him to run up to our room it must be bad, after about the longest 10-15 minutes of my life, Billy was ok again. they said somehow water got into his lungs, but they were able to get him stable again. I noticed that his blood pressure was dropping, so i asked his doctor on duty and he said the albuteral will cause that. I told him something is still wrong I can feel it, he said everything would be fine, NO ONE would listen to me, I'm his mother I should know!
A couple hours has now passed and they told us we should leave for awhile so Billy can get some rest, so we did. Later on I get a phone call from his nurse saying he is being moved back down to the level 1 NICU, his blood pressure is still dropping and they can't get it up. The doctor pulled us aside and told us, they don't know what happened, but things do not look good at all, he may not make it. At that point I run back in the NICU and just sit with him, he won't hold my finger at all. They tell us we need to leave its shift change, and he needs his rest and we should come back 1st thing in the morning. I called every hour to see how he was doing, at one call at 3am they said he was doing better. See, they wouldn't let us stay with him over night, of all nights for the NICU to be so so busy!!
We get to the hospital at 6am and we haven't even made it thru the NICU's doors and his respiratory therapist walks thru them and sees us and says its not good, he had tears in his eyes and I just bolted to my son. The doctors told us there is nothing else they could do for him, they tried everything but his pressure would just not come up. We then had him baptized and I had the priest say a prayer for him, just hoping for a miracle. Around 7:45 am they asked if I wanted to hold him and I told them yes, I then held my precious Billy for 46 minutes before he died in my arms. A few minutes before he passed, he reached for my finger and gave it one last squeeze.
The doctors and nurses actually started crying, no one had answers for us, no one knew what happened, EVERYONE was just in shock. They gave him to me for 4 hours after he passed so we could say good-bye to him, they even had a photographer from NILMDTS take pictures of us with Billy. Before the pictures they wanted to get him cleaned up and dressed, his nurse couldn't even do it, she almost dropped him, so I took him and bathed him and got him dress, I am his mother and that is what mothers do. I was truly in hell. They were all so distraught, they even dropped his file everywhere, it was just all so unbearable, it was truly a nightmare! I held him for 4 hours until he started losing color and my mom made me give him back, It was actually my husbands 1st time holding his son, and he actually didn't want to, but I told him he would regret it if he didn't, so daddy held his son for the 1st time. No one could possibly understand how it all felt. The doctor told us to call them in a week to find out what went wrong and what happened to our boy, cause they were just in a loss!
Friends of ours work at a funeral home, so we had his funeral there, his funeral was held on my husbands birthday, he wanted to have one day with his son he said. The next day he was cremated...That day was just unreal. A couple days late I called the doctors back and asked them what happened, they said because I did not have an autopsy on him, the only thing they could think of was that condensation got into his ventilator and someone did not clean his tubing properly and the water poisoned his blood. I was still grieving very hard and just let them say what they had to and they said how sorry they were and that was the end of the phone conversation. Well after telling Bill and my mom, they said wait, we signed papers for him to have an autopsy done, why wasn't it done, just pieces were not fitting right in the puzzle. then the funeral place calls and says his death certificate was there and our friend who works there said their was an autopsy performed on him, he had the v mark on his chest, even his death certificate said there was not one performed Needless to say, we got a lawyer! Can't say anything else, just that the case is still open and I am just waiting for my answers! Oh and one more thing, we did find out there was an autopsy performed on him!!!!!! Why are they lieing????? I'll be sure to post as soon as I am able too!

His journey

Because i lived so far from the hospital, they put me up at the Ronald McDonald House, so that way i could spend all my time with him. Bill came up for 2-3 days a week due to work. Little Billy did have to have surgery, they had to close the heart valve that normally closes once a baby takes its 1st cry, but because he needed help breathing he had tubes in his mouth, so he didn't get to. So they had to perform heart surgery on him, he had that done on August 10th, that was such a scary day. It took so long for then to do his surgery because he ended up getting sepsis and they had to put him on antibiotics to get it gone, so that's why it took so long fro him to get this done. But he made it thru it like a little champ. His lungs cleared up and he got moved to a different level of the NICU and we were getting ready to take his tubes out and hear him cry for the 1st time. At this time he was eating my breast milk and i got to hold him 2 times. They called it KANGAROOING, that's when they put him on my bare chest for a couple hours and he gets to feel my heartbeat and my warmth and they say it helps them. i got to do it twice, it was so amazing! The nurses told me that he knew when i was there, he even opened his eyes and would look at me. When i would open his little door to touch him he would always reach for my finger and would hold it so tight, he also liked to push his feet up against my hand. My husband called him stretch, cause when they pulled him outta of me he was stretching and it looked like "stretch armstrong", the nurses called him "Toe Head" cause his hair was so blonde. He was doing so good, they told us he was just shy of 4 lbs and he was now breathing our air and we would most likely be going home soon! We waited to hear those words for so long! We were so excited! At this point, I've been in the hospital for 15 weeks and so ready to bring my boy home. He was 31 weeks 6 days (gestational age) But on Saturday August 15th our world changed forever....

How it all started

In December 2008 my husband and I started Invitro Fertilization, we tried for 10 years to do it on our own but I just had too many health issues ans we needed help. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovaries which causes infertility. We tried the fertility pill Clomid and we conceived once, but we lost the baby at around 14 weeks, we tried several other times but it just wouldn't work. My doctor recommended IVF, so we agreed.
On February 6, 2009 they implanted me with 2 embryos, we actually got to see them before they implanted me, it was so AMAZING! We found out about a week later that we were pregnant, we were just so excited, our dreams were finally coming true! We never thought in our wildest dreams it would end up a nightmare!
My husband was so excited to find out we were having a little boy, its every fathers dream. Our due date was October 19, 2009. Well in June my sisters were all going on vacation to Orlando (we lived 3 hours south of there at that time) we decided to join them, thinking it would be our last getaway before William Patrick would arrive. Our lives changed forever on that vacation. Not an hour once we arrived at our hotel on Monday we sort of got a little frisky (my doctor said intercourse was ok) Not 10 minutes later I started getting pains, figured it was just braxton hicks, they lasted a fiew minutes then went away. the next day they came back so I called my doctor and they also told me they were braxton hicks. Well they kept coming and sometimes they were very close together. Wednesday and Thursday i had 2 small ones, but my gut told me to call my doctors again just to let them know. Well this time they said if anymore happen to go straight to the ER. Friday had a couple small ones, but i felt like there was something wrong. My husband and my younger sister Rhonda took me to Celebration Hospital in Orlando, they hooked me up to monitors and they couldn't see any contractions on the screen, but i still felt them. they gave me a button to push ever time one came so I did, they said i wasn't dilated but they wanted to make sure. At this time we sent my sister back to my older sisters hotel and told her we would call her when we were able to go home, they just wanted to do an internal ultrasound and then we could go home.
Everything seemed to be going good on the ultrasound, at least we thought it was. They wheeled me back to triage. Then next thing we hear is NO she's being admitted right now, they put me in a room start cutting my clothes off me, tilting my bed so I'm like hanging upside down and NO ONE is telling us whats wrong, I'm crying, my husband is crying, next thing ya know i got IVs all over me, nurses just scattering everywhere and finally a doctor comes in, and my husband demands to know whats going on and they told us i was 2 cm dilated and i was going in to labor. My husband said he was taking me home to my doctor and hospital and they told him if he did that we would both die. He lost it!! They did not have a NICU there and i was only 23 wks so they had to fly me by helicopter to the Disney's Florida Children's Hospital in down town Orlando. They wouldn't even let my husband Bill come with me in the helicopter, he called my sisters and they picked him up and all of them met me there, they already called my mother cause she was in Okeechobee and that was 2 hrs away.
I was in such shock, scared out of my mind, didn't know what was going to happen. Well, once i got to the hospital and they got me all hooked up and gave my baby some steroids to help make his lungs stronger, they brought a team in from the NICU to let us know what was going on and what his chances were. He only had a 10 % survival rate, so they were giving me a bunch of different drugs to stop the contraction and it worked! They told me that i had an incompetent cervix and that i am to remain in the hospital on COMPLETE bed rest until my due date, i was not going home!
My husband had to go back to West Palm Bch to work, so he would come visit me in the hospital on the weekends, my sisters would also come see me when they could. I was alone up there and all i did every day to get thru was listen to Billy's heartbeat on the monitor 24/7. I ended up going into labor 1 other time, but again they were able to stop it. It was hard being there alone, the toughest thing was my sister came up to tell me my grandmother passed away and there was nothing i could do, i couldn't even go to her funeral or be there for my mother. My mom ended up flying home to Canada for the funeral and to spend time with her father and brothers, she told my sisters to stay and take care of me. My mom arrived back in West Palm Bch on July 14. I ended up going into labor again, we thought this time was it, but , Thank God they were able to stop it. They were taking me back to the High Risk unit, cause they moved me back to Maternity when contractions started. i went 24 hrs no contractions i was good. So I'm back in my old room, hubby and i are getting ready to order dinner, then it all started. My contractions were hard and bad, Bill got the nurse and they ended up doing an exam to see if i dilated more and at that point i was 5 cm. They RUSHED me back over to labor and delivery and my contractions kept getting worse, its 5:15pm July 15th, 2009. They gave me meds, but nothing worked, my baby was turned and ready to come out, i am now 26.5 wks pregnant! A little before midnight my water broke, they ended up giving me an epidural for the pain. then just before we were going to the ER for me to start pushing they gave me one last ultrasound and my little boy decide to turn sideways, like he changed his mind again, so they ended up giving me heavier drugs in my epidural cause we were going in for a c-section. I ended up having my son at 3:11am on July 16, 2009 he was 1lb 12 oz and amazingly doing ok, he was quite a little fighter.....