When I left the military after ten years, it was a shock. It felt like yesterday, I was an Army Aviator, and today, I was a housewife and mother. I had left behind multiple rounds of deployments to Iraq where I would go for months without even seeing a child up close. My professional career as a soldier began a year after high school when I studied to become an Army linguist. Three years later, I left military intelligence for Army aviation and flew medical evacuations for most of my flying career. I was proud of the work that I did. I worked very long hours and had very little home life.  

Now, I was a mom to one little boy with another little boy on the way. Still three months from delivery, we had recently found out the sex of the baby and selected a name, Bret. I was at the department store having Christmas photos of my newly mobile toddler. At checkout, the employee asked if I was having a Christmas baby. I laughed and said, “I hope not. He’s not due until February 16.” Little did I know that it would all change in a matter of a few days. 

On a Friday afternoon, two girls from church came over to help out around the house. They weren’t quite old enough to babysit but enthusiastic enough to be a big help. I noticed that I wasn’t feeling well when they first arrived. I quickly grew sick and called my husband to come from work early for help. Stomach pains started that evening. I thought they were cramps from whatever illness I was fighting. It took me hours to realize that the cramps were labor pains. I was only 6 months pregnant. It didn’t even occur to me that I could be in labor.  

We were in the military and had been stationed in Michigan less than a year. We didn’t know a lot of people. We packed up our toddler and headed to the hospital together. Surely, they could stop the labor. I had no idea how sick I really was. And really, I wasn’t that sick. I had a fever, nausea, and cramps. My regular doctor was on vacation, and one of her partners was on call. She quickly determined that she would not stop the labor. My fever refused to budge with Motrin and the baby’s heart rate was elevated.  

We were in a strange state of shock and denial. I was laboring in a hospital in the middle of the night while caring for a toddler as my husband napped in the corner. My labor increased slowly at first and then at a terrifying rate. I was having contractions that lasted 5-10 minutes with no progress to a delivery. It was excruciating and unnatural. I didn’t know then that my body was naturally aborting my sick baby. I have delivered 9 children in one way or another over the years. This labor was different.  

Eventually, the decision was made for an emergency C-section, but the OR was full. I had to wait. I wasn’t dilating. The nurses chatted amongst themselves while I screamed in agony from the bed. The warmer was turned off and ready to move to the OR. The doctor decided to check one more time, since there was nothing else to do. My husband stood next to me holding our screaming toddler. By then, he had witnessed more than a little boy could process. And suddenly, my baby was born. In one violent wave, my baby was on the bed, blue and lifeless. The doctor was screaming at nurses. The warmer was plugged in and someone found the neonatologist. 

The ambulance came. A friend from church came for my toddler. My husband and I were alone. I slipped into a state of shock and stayed that way for hours. I acted as if nothing was wrong. My baby was fine. They assured me that the Children’s Hospital would call if things were anything but fine. Everything was fine. People from the church visited and I assured them that everything was fine. I had an IV of antibiotics. Doctors explained that I had listeria. I could be released tomorrow and go to the Children’s Hospital to be with my baby.  

The following evening I got ready for a night in the hospital and called the Children’s Hospital just to hear again that all was fine. They told me my baby was dying. I asked why they hadn’t called. They said they couldn’t call because they were at his bedside all day trying to keep him alive. I finally burst free from shock and into panic. 

I ripped out the IVs and left for Children’s immediately. There was a terrible snowstorm, and we slid all the way to downtown Detroit. My baby had sustained a stroke. The doctors told me he wouldn’t live.  

The neonatologist said Bret was the sickest baby that he had seen ever leave the NICU alive. He was alive but not whole. He was severely, multiple disabled. He was afflicted with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy, GERD reflux esophagitis, congenital hydrocephalus, spasticity, seizures, contracture of joint of multiple sites, scoliosis, disorder of visual cortex associated with cortical blindness, and other diseases of trachea and bronchus. We would return to the hospital for weeks and months over the 6 years that we had him.  

After fighting to keep him alive, he eventually grew into a little boy. He suffered frequent infections that left him in hospitals for weeks at a time. As a mama who desperately wanted to comfort her baby, there was a little I could do. In the hospital I grew to hate the dreaded hospital gown that left my son exposed and uncomfortable. So while I would sit at his side waiting for his body to heal, I would take knit pajamas that I had purchased at the store and cut them up the sides. I sewed snaps so that we could snap him into pajamas that a typical little boy would wear. It was a small thing. But it was a way for me to provide comfort and dignity to a little boy who suffered so much. 

My son passed away in 2013. My heart has healed, and it’s time for me to do something for other children who face terminal and chronic illnesses that frequently leave them hospitalized. My vision is to make these pajamas for children in hospitals to give them a small amount of dignity and comfort in spite of the struggles they face.