Debriefed

I said this before, but I'm gonna say it again.  It's amazing how God works!

There is someone I work with who was expecting his first child back in March of this year.  I had no idea that his wife was pregnant until he emailed me about the picture I had of Logan in the signature of my email.  I don't usually have a picture of him in my signature but this was during the time right before the March of Dimes walk and I was trying to raise money.  My friend emailed me to tell me that he thought of Logan and I everytime he got an email from me and that it really touched him because he was expecting a son.  I'm not even sure I knew I was pregnant with Eli when the initial conversation started.  As we neared the end of March, we all knew that his baby could be coming any time and we were waiting for the day when he had to leave work to go to the hospital.  His wife went past due and they continued to wait.  Finally the day came at the very end of March that the little boy was born and I got an email from my friend with his birth info and mentioning that there were a couple of small issues and the baby had been transferred to a High Risk Nursery.

It wasn't until after my cerclage that I heard that the little boy had passed away.  He had a rare disease and there was nothing anyone could do.  His passing was kept from me because some of the people were afraid it would worry me too much in the days before my surgery.  I immediately got their address and mailed them a bear as well as adding them to my prayer list.

Right before I left for maternity leave, my friend told me that they were expecting again.  Yesterday I spoke to my friend for the first time since I returned and he asked about Eli and I asked about his baby.  They are expecting another boy around the same time that the first child was born.  He started telling me how this pregnancy was soo very different for his wife than the previous one.  He said she had had nightmares about the baby dying during her first pregnancy (I had nightmares with Logan as well) and now she was dreaming about food (my dreams with Eli were centered around kittens). 

Talking to him, I felt like I was being debriefed about my own post-loss pregnancy.  As many people as I have supporting me, I don't know many that have lost a child.  It is always so much easier to talk to those that have lost.  While we talked, we said our angels' names, we referred to them as children, not just dead babies, as so many people do.  Our journeys have been very similar and yet very different.  I almost cried tears of joy and sadness talking to him.  It was as if talking to him helped me finally shed the last layers of stress and emotion from my pregnancy.  And at the same time, I realize that they are currently carrying that load. 

It's amazing to me that we were put in each other's lives.  That God chose to have us work together even though we work miles apart.  I wish we had never had reason to make this connection, but I'm so glad that when we are travelling a tough road, God puts people in our lives to help us through.