This post may be a challenging read emotionally. Just a heads up. This is continuation of the previous blog post.
I stopped on my way home and got Sierra some sunflowers. I hadn’t gotten her flowers in a long while and knew she loved them. Something told me to stop and get them. Once I got home, I was making dinner and Sierra got home and said she hadn’t felt the baby kick in a while. I thought maybe we’d have some food and check afterwards. Still no kicks. I thought we should go to the ER and just make sure everything was ok. I didn’t know where else we should go. Our OB never told us if we had concerns to go to the delivery hospital. They rolled in an ultrasound machine and a ultrasound tech looked and looked for minutes.
It seemed like forever, she kept moving the ultrasound transmitter over and over. I sat there praying continuously. “Please be a heartbeat”. After a while the doctor came in. “We can’t find a heartbeat, I’m so sorry”. I didn’t know what to even think. I hugged Sierra. So tightly. I know the first thing that I said to her was “This is not your fault”. She was bawling. So was I. A lot of emotions all at once.
After a while, the doctor came back. They said they had contacted someone from our OB office at the hospital and we were supposed to go there and talk with them. The car ride there was hell. Sierra called her mom and dad and told them. All of us sobbing. I was driving. I tried calling my dad. He was in a meeting. I called 3 more times. No answer. He called me back a few minutes later. I was driving and just trying to keep the tears away enough to see the road. I told him that we hadn’t felt the baby kick in a while and they couldn’t find a heartbeat. I could hear him crying. I don’t know that I have seen my dad cry many times in my life. We were all just so heartbroken. Didn’t know what was next.
We got to the hospital and there was a doctor we had never met before. She said she was so sorry. That there was nothing else really to say. She gave us a folder with some pamphlets. And said that they scheduled an induction for tomorrow night. We went back home. That night was so hard. Sierra cried all night. I did too. I didn’t know what to do or say.
The next day we went to take some pictures in the field by our house with James’ teddy bear. It was a really hard day. Hard not to cry all day. Exhausting. That evening we went to the hospital. Our nurse was super nice and they got Sierra hooked up to IV’s to start things.
I don’t remember a ton of this very vividly and it’s really hard to try to revisit in my mind. I tired to sleep on that uncomfortable chair next to Sierra. Holding her hand. She is so tough. She wanted to try to go through the plan we had made. Natural birth with no medication. It was about 20 hours from when we got to the hospital until when everything ramped up. About 3:00 Sierra was getting really uncomfortable and we talked for a while about getting something for the pain. We talked about that this is not punishment for anything she did and that she should be as comfortable as possible. Eventually we got the epidural, and her water broke a little while later.
I did my best to support Sierra in pushing. I yelled at her like my personal trainer used to when I needed to do one more rep in my workout. I think she hated it, but I was just trying to help and be involved. Sierra is so tough. I don’ think I could do what she did.
Eventually a head poked out, and soon after out came the baby. It was quiet, silent even. The opposite of what delivery of a baby should be. I tried to look to see if the cord was around the neck, or twisted, but there was nothing obvious wrong. They brought our baby up to Sierra on her chest. I forgot to look to see if it was a boy or a girl. “It’s a boy” I said as I started bawling my eyes out. Our sweet baby boy. His body here with us, but his soul already up in Heaven.
We got to take as many pictures as we wanted. It was really hard for me. I knew that James was no longer with us. But here we had this little baby boy’s body. We had outfits we brought. A little wild jersey, his onesie, his blanket with a J on it (and another blanket with a different letter if we had a girl), teddy and other things. They had a photographer come in and take some professional pictures. They all turned out great, I’m so thankful we have them.
They moved us to a different room. We had James in a basinet with us. He was on ice packs they would come change every once and a while. It was so hard to be there with our baby boy’s body. We held him together. Took lots of pictures of him. We discovered he had a messed up toe just like me, and short thumbs like his mom. His hands and feet were so perfect. So precious. And he had a cleft lip – you know the one that we paid $2,600 for a professional to tell us he didn’t? Yeah, I’m still a little upset about that. But he was perfect. Our perfect little boy, James Jerome.
We watched Disney movies together, and some episodes of Thomas and Friends from the 90’s. It was a good time together, healing I would say. Our parents all came and visited, and sierra’s two sisters. It was hard for them too. We had two full days in that room just us with James.
Eventually the time came to start getting ready to go. The funeral home person came with a box to put him in and take him away. The last time we got to see our son. Our sweet baby boy James. We followed the car to the funeral home, crying the whole way. We saw a bunch of swans on our drive. Every time we see swans now, we think of James. That must be him thinking about us too. We stopped at the funeral home for a few minutes and said one last goodbye to our son.
James Jerome Pollock went to heaven on August 20th, 2025. His mom and dad got to see his earthly body on August 22nd, 2025 at 8:45 p.m. He was 35 Weeks along. He weighed 6lb 7.9oz and was 20.5” long. He had his mom’s nose, ears and thumbs and his dad’s goofy toes and curly hair.
I love you, James. More today than any day before. And I’ll never stop loving you, nor will I ever forget you, my son.
