The last kick

Today is just as significant as tomorrow will be and will always be for John, myself, and many others. It's the last day I felt a kick from Hudson and the day the world turned upside down for me. I remember knowing something was wrong for a few days, but still feeling movement. That night I prayed and prayed that everything would be okay - then felt the kick. I went to bed not knowing that it would be the last one I felt. All day I sat and counted and waited and ignored the "everything is fine" comments. You know when something is not right - and I knew it wasn't right.

I sat at my desk and started searching; searching for anything that would tell me what was going on. I found all sorts of things, but then a story from a woman stuck out to me. It was a woman from Australia that was pregnant and her baby did not have a heartbeat. I read what she went through, with learning the news and having to be talked into having a natural delivery over a c-section. I sat in tears knowing my fate. I left without a word to anyone and went straight to the hospital to my doctor's office. In most likely laughable hysterics I was taken to the back and sat on the heart monitor. The women tried and tried, they kept "losing" the heartbeat, I was made to drink something like Sprite and still nothing. I was taken to a room and the NP listened on a doppler - nothing. Maybe the batteries are dead she said. Then she took me into the ultrasound room. A room to this day when I walk in I feel as if I am being sucked into a black hole. I remember the screen being on and seeing my lifeless child on the monitor. I sat there waiting and waiting and waiting until those earth shattering words were spoken - "Beverly, I'm sorry I cannot find a heartbeat."

To this day I refuse to go to an appointment by myself. This day, one year ago I was alone with merely strangers while they gave me news that would change my life forever. I had to call my husband - I had to sit there in the darkness with an uncomfortable silence with the woman who spoke my fate - oddly enough the one that called me a nutcase a month ago.

I have been feeling movement for a few weeks - it is so true that you are able to feel your other children move faster than your first. It's not constant, but its movement. Today I am grateful that today was a day that the baby chose to move. It is the best birthday present Hudson could have given me. Today is a day that will stay etched on my brain forever because it is the day Hudson died. It is strange to think that we know tomorrow is his birthday and it is even stranger to think that he was born after he died - it's not something that easily sits on the logical mind.