Meeting Kyler

I was so scared to meet Kyler.  I was scared of what he would look like and how I would feel.  Our wonderful nurse pushed us to hold him, she said that after her experience knows she would have regretted not meeting her baby.  We agreed to meet him.  Clay held him first.  Kyler was beautiful.  After Clay held him for a few minutes, I was ready to hold him myself.  The previous month or so I had fallen into a lot of self doubt, I wasn't sure I could be a parent, was even doubting that it was what I really wanted.  The minute I held him, that all went away.  I knew I could have done it, I knew it is what I wanted, I knew I was meant to be a mom.  We only spent a little bit of time with him then as we were really emotionally and physically exhausted.  We turned him over to our wonderful nurse and got settled into our new room for the night.

The nurse took him and weighed him, gave him a bath, took all his measurements, took foot and hand prints and took pictures of him for us that she put on a CD for us to look at later.

The next night we had him brought back to us and had a professional photographer from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep come in and take pictures of all of us.  When they had first offered to do the pictures I was a bit taken aback and said no, but then as I thought about it, I realized we would never get the chance to take pictures with my baby again.  I knew I wouldn't be ready to look at the pictures right away, but I realized we could just put them away for how ever long we wanted and then look a them.  We also had a hand and a foot cast done of him by a local company who donates the service to parents who have lost infants.

We saw Kyler for the last time on our third night in the hospital.  We had a chaplin and CNA, both of whom had lost babies and were very comforting, come in with us and we spent some more time with him, talked to him, and said good-bye.

The next day I was discharged.