Jacy's Blog

My friend asked me to share the story of Ivan for a series on her blog called "My Name Is". Here is the link to her wonderful blog.  Also, I've posted the story on my blog below.

My Name Is Jonah

The story of me and Ivan is a lot like the story of Jonah and the Whale.  I'm Jonah in this story.  Not the whale like you were thinking.  Though I was pregnant and very much whale-like with Ivan for forty-two weeks and a day.  But I guess that's more like being an elephant and not a whale.  Aren't elephants pregnant for like two years or something?  Anyway, I'm Jonah.  You're Jonah.  We're all Jonah. 

My name is Jonah and I'm a bereaved mother.

Very early on in my pregnancy with Ivan, I knew something was wrong.  I just knew.  Nobody believed me.  My belly was measuring small and my morning sickness didn't abate at twelve weeks like it did with my two other children.  And somehow, don't ask me how, I knew it was anencephaly.  Long before an ultrasound, I was already trying to come to terms with burying my baby.  I had already cried.  I was already asking myself questions like where would I bury him?  How would my five-year-old daughter cope?  I tried to talk myself out of it but I knew.  I knew the heartbreak was great.  I could feel the trauma reaching back from the future to get me.  This event was out there in space-time and had somehow already burned me.

In the car on the way to my eighteen-week ultrasound, I chided my husband for being so upbeat.  I  said, “Don't be so happy.  You're about to find out your baby doesn't have a brain.”  

A few moments into the ultrasound,  I thought I saw the profile of a nice, round skull go past.  Phew!  My baby has a skull!  See, Alana, everything's going to be fine.  I wondered if it was a healthy baby boy or a healthy baby girl.  Then the ultrasound tech said, “I'm just going to tell you right away...there is something seriously wrong with your baby.”  Before he said another word, I said, “Is it anencephaly?”  He was shocked.  “How did you know?” he asked.  “I just knew,” I said.  He asked me several more times how I knew before conceding,  “I've been doing this long enough to know that Moms just know things.”  Yes they do.  

My baby's neural tube didn't close.  Part of his skull never formed.  He was going to die.

I started crying immediately in the office and fell apart completely by the time we got into the car. Why?  How?  Is it my fault?  Not my baby!  Not my sweet baby!   But I want him!  I want my baby!  I really want my baby!  I wondered why this felt so bad.  After all, I had been through the sudden death of my father and the suicide of my brother.  This was just a little baby I hadn't even met, I reasoned.  Why did it feel as bad and worse than losing someone I had known and loved my whole life?  

After finding myself alone in the house later that day, I fell on my face on the carpet of my living room floor and out of the belly of hell cried I!   I sort of thought it would be a good idea for God to take Ivan home then and I told Him so.  I couldn't hold my baby in my arms and watch him die. Then a thought was whispered to me and it went like this:  Maybe God knows better than you do, Alana. I started laughing deeply and out loud.  My laugh startled me but it was appropriate.  I had just grasped for the first time ever that God is God and He must know best, right?  My will compared to His was ludicrous.  Like, really funny.  Of course He knows best...He's like, God!  Duh!  

Ivan wasn't leaving me just yet and I knew it.  I knew I would get to meet him and had about five months, I figured, to enjoy him.  I treasured each kick, each hiccup. Whenever I had my other two kids in the bath tub, I would sit on the tile floor and revel in that fact that all three of my kids were alive and kicking and with me in that moment.  I tried, I really tried to soak Ivan all in.  It turns out, though, I didn't soak enough in!  It turns out you don't appreciate anything 'til it's gone, no matter how hard you try.  If I had no regrets or guilt, it simply wouldn't be death.

My due date came and went.  My doctors were ready and willing to induce me any time and  I could tell they wondered at the source of my patience. They didn't know what I knew:  If was induced, I wouldn't meet Ivan alive. Labor would be slower, the contractions longer and harder.  A long delivery would be too hard on his fragile head.  I knew if I wanted to meet him alive, I had to go into labor naturally and deliver quickly without an epidural to slow things down.  Moms just know things.  

Each day was a gift and I was fully prepared to carry forty-four weeks.  Or two years like an elephant.  Or forever.  At forty-two weeks and a day, labor arrived.  I paced the house between contractions, singing lullabies to Ivan and crying.  I wasn't ready!  I wasn't ready to let him go.  Please not today, I thought.  Please not yet.  Oh, God!  Let me keep him!

At the onset of each contraction, I visualized looking up at a tall island mountain.  Then I would imagine going under the ocean and down, down, down to the bottom of that mountain.  After the contraction peaked, I would imagine slowly coming back to the surface of the sea. This visualization technique had arrived in my mind uninvited while I was in labor with my previous son two years prior.  I was surprised by it then and chuckled upon realizing my mind had borrowed this whole bottoms-of- the-mountains business from the the story of  Jonah in the Bible:

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.  And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.  Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fishes belly.  And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me;  out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.  For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about:  all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.  Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.  The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.  I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever:  yet thou hast brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.  When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord:  and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.  They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.  But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.  Salvation is of the Lord.  And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

Did a great fish literally swallow Jonah?  I don't know.  Maybe. I don't really care if it's literal or figurative or both.  That's not the point.  The point is redemption.  The point is having the weeds wrapped about your head and the waters compassing you about, even to the soul!  The point is feeling cast out of God's sight. The point is being in the fish's belly and how to get out.

Childbirth is agony by the way.  Losing a loved one is agony.  That kind of pain (both physical and spiritual) is for me, visually,  beneath the sea, at the bottoms of the mountains and inside the belly of a great fish where it feels like God can't even see you.  

I know you know this place.  I know you've been there too.  

I labored several hours in a warm bath at the hospital with the lights dim and the room quiet.  My husband knelt beside the tub and poured water over my belly during contractions.  Some tears formed and fell silently from my eyes while in the tub but not for sorrow.  For sacredness.  That was the only time I've ever cried because of sacredness.  I don't know how else to describe it.  It was beautiful.

I had come to realize in those last months that the reason I could grieve so deeply for this tiny, supposed stranger was because time isn't the way we perceive it and that's a scientific fact.  I have a relationship with my son that exists out there somewhere.  It already is and has been. He's my son from all eternity to all eternity.  Just because our paths were only going to cross here and now briefly didn't mean our love was less.  He is my son and I knew him when I saw him.  

Contrary to the original diagnosis, Ivan was born with exencephaly, not anencephaly.  He had his entire brain but it was protruding through an opening in his crown.  He had a chromosome disorder called Trisomy 18 which is what caused his neural tube defect.  He also had enlarged kidneys and a single umbilical artery. And bless his precious thumb on his right hand...it looked like a pinky in the wrong place.

Meeting Ivan face to face was magical.  My Mama eyes couldn't have seen his defects with a microscope.  He was perfect!  Oh, my sweet, sweet baby boy!  He had a lot to say to me.  He made many baby sounds with his very own little voice, told me all about it.  He yawned two adorable yawns.  He opened his eyes a lot and looked into mine. I was so very, very happy. 

There was no way of knowing how much time we would have.  Ivan seemed so strong and pink and definitely wasn't waning yet.  My five-year-old daughter had expressed a desire to meet him before he died.  I felt nervous about my husband driving home to get her.  What if Ivan dies while he is gone?  But I was  more nervous about my daughter missing the chance to meet her brother.  I let the nurse bathe him so he would be cleaned up and not startle his sister.  While the nurse wiped Ivan down, I  turned my gown around, wiped off some blood and practiced my normal face.  It was during his bath Ivan started to weaken.  I started to panic and wanted him back in my arms immediately.  I had an incredible midwife who came to the hospital with me to be my doula. She told Ivan to hold on until his Daddy got back and that's exactly what he did. I knew he would wait for his Dad.  Ivan knew that was important.

My daughter experienced a little panic of her own and decided she didn't want to come to the hospital after all so my husband rushed back to the hospital without her.  In retrospect, I'm sick with guilt that it went down that way.  I'm sorry my husband missed thirty minutes of Ivan's short life.  I'm sorry I gave up those precious moments to bathe him when he could have been in my arms.  I worry that leaving my warm, bare chest made him weak.  But what if we hadn't tried to give our daughter the chance to meet him while living?  I would regret that too. It's tempting to waste wisdom on the past.

Once Brandon got back, I told him Ivan was weak and I thought he was going to die soon.  Ivan's eyes had been shut but after Dad got there and everyone had left us alone in the room, he opened one eye and took a last peek at Mom and Dad.  I can still hear his last gasp for air in my mind's ear as he died in my arms with my husband by my side.  Each time I had imagined that moment, I had winced.  But the moment had come and gone peacefully, quietly.  He died two hours after he was born.  Two very precious hours!  I feel spoiled I got that time.  It is a privilege denied to many.  

Ivan and I were like subatomic particles and having collided and interacted for a nanosecond, it was over.  Poof!  Like a flash!  Our trajectories had crossed and we would have to wait a really long time to be together again.

Every motherly instinct was insulted as I walked out of that hospital without my baby.  My legs were collapsing as I made my way for the car, my husband literally holding me up.  (He has held me up in many ways.) We buried Ivan four days later. Spring was just arriving, which I found heartily appropriate and welcome.   Hope.  Resurrection.   

How does one find oneself vomited out upon dry land?  A bold clue is the fact Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.  I believe my heartbreak was made bearable and healed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. You don't have to believe the same thing I do.  The principles that get you out of the fish's belly are legitimate, no matter what 'being redeemed' means to you. To escape the belly of hell, I had to submit my will to God's, dwell in an energy of gratitude, pay what I had vowed, and be merciful to obtain mercy.  Ivan taught me about God's grace.

I read once that problems come to you with gifts in their hands.  Weird, huh?  I thought so too.  Except it's true.  I love deeper.  My capacity for joy is greater.  My marriage is stronger.  The name Ivan means 'gracious gift from God'. 

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains but I am happy. The sweet will be sweet only because we have tasted the bitter.  It has to be this way.  The Lord prepared a great fish to swallow us up. 

Wherever you are, Ivan, I love you.  Our reunion is out there in space-time somewhere and its sweetness is reaching back from the future to get me.  I just know it.