The story of Peter

In late February of this year - after Penelope’s birthday – Anita suspected she was pregnant again. She had a great intuition in general and had never been wrong about being pregnant. Nonetheless, she sent me to the store to get a pregnancy test. She took it but could not stay in the bathroom to wait for it so she had me wait while she sat in the bedroom. It didn’t take 10 minutes, probably less than one minute. I brought it out to her, a bit unsure about the “one line-two lines” thing. I showed her and she put her face in her hands and she started to cry.

“Oh, God, I’ve failed you!” she cried.

Now this had been a very stressful time for her. She was a year into running her business, but because the income was slow she was presently working 40 hours a week doing document review, two of those days in office (with commute). Her business still took more than 40 hours a week so she was going bonkers trying to get her 40 document review hours billed and servicing and finding new clients. A sleep schedule was non-existant. Sometimes she’d be up late at night, other times she would fall asleep at 7 pm, then get up at 11 and work for several hours, or wake up at 2 or 3 am and start they day. There simply were not enough hours in the day to get everything done that she wanted/needed to.

On top of that, she had just stopped breast feeding Penelope. Penny was still not sleeping through the night, she would wake up multiple times and she wanted Anita to comfort her back to sleep. So that exhausting child care duty only added to the sleep deprivation. Anita simply did not know how she could possibly add a pregnancy/new baby on top of her one year old and massive work load.

Anita reverted to the “angry pregnant woman” state that she experienced while pregnant with Julia. It only lasted a few weeks this time instead of the whole pregnancy. Then she went into a state of denial. She pretended she wasn’t pregnant mentally – even though she was even more physically exhausted. We didn’t tell anyone except her mother (and maybe her sister, I forget) until after the third month was over. Even at that time, she only told a couple of friends and I didn’t tell anyone since Anita was still acting like she wasn’t pregnant.

At the start of the fourth month, she decided to find a doctor – and she was adament about finding a doctor and not a midwife like her last pregnancy. Although midwives shared her philosophy of non-intrusive pregnancy and delivery, she felt that it was likely that “something would go wrong” and wanted a medically trained doctor there for an emergency.

She found a doctor through a recommendation of our pediatrician. We had copies of her medical records sent over and she met with the doctor once a month. We also found a doula online and hired her (we had doulas at the last two deliveries).

The night before they died, Anita and I sat on the floor watching a movie and watching her stomach move. Peter was kicking. I imagined him happy, if that’s possible. Anita had just been to the doctor the previous Monday and everything checked out perfectly.

The next morning, I was sitting in the hospital waiting room with some hospital staff while others tried to revive Anita. I was just in shock. Everything seemed to have this haze about it. Questions echoed in the room, or was it just in my head? Then a woman came in carrying a little blue blanket. “Here is your baby,” she said.

I had forgotten about Peter and I looked up with surprise and hope. “Is he…is he okay?” I asked. “No, he didn’t make it,” she said softly. My heart sunk. I asked to hold him.

He looked fine, just alseep. He was small (almost 3 pounds) but everything was there: nose, ears, eyes, fingers, toes. So I held him and talked to him. I told him he wasn’t supposed to be here yet. I took his picture with my cell phone. I held him when they came in to tell me that they couldn’t do anything else for Anita. I took him in and we sat and stood with Anita. After about an hour, the nurses took him to be photographed and have his hand and foot prints made.

A bit later they came back and his lips were alrady turning purple. For some reason, him losing his color made and still makes me incredibly sad. They presented me a little box with a photo, prints and the the blanket and cap he wore (they had changed him). We placed him in Anita’s arm to be taken away.

Typically, people who die have birthdays and those days bring pain, celebration or many other things depending on the people left behind. But Peter did not have a birthday. He wasn’t ever really “born” although I suppose you could classify him as “stillborn” since he died before he was out of his mother’s womb.

Today, November 17th, was Peter’s due date. If he was anything like Julia and Penelope, he would have been born on December 1st – two weeks late. But I can’t go by what ifs, I just have the date the doctor guessed.

When I imagined November 2009, I thought it was going t be a crazy month of birthdays (Julia, Anita, Peter) and holidays (Thanskgiving). I thought of the possibility that Peter would be born on Anita’s birthday (21st) or Thanksgiving (26th) and where would we be and  what would we be doing at those times when we had to rush to the hospital.

“What are you going to do with another baby?” Anita asked me several times. “You already have a baby! How are you going to take care of two babies? How can we afford to have another baby?” I didn’t know but I was confident that God had a plan for us and it would work out. Anita was right that we seemed to be barely getting by as it was. We didn’t even have a car that would fit 6 people.

“Lean not on your own understanding…”

As much as I feel that Anita’s life was special and God used her during her entire life for His work, there is no way I can understand why Peter never got a chance to live his life. We wish with all our heart that we had one more little brother.

He would have had so much fun playing with Ben.