baby beau tenney — The Tenney house

He was due January 4th, but given my other babies’ arrivals I figured him for a Christmas baby.

We found out we were expecting another piece of our family at 7 wks pregnant and we couldn’t wait to have our addition here with us.

I could just barely see our sweet baby growing as my belly began to peek out, a bit like I had had too much pie. My tiny baby belly.

I arrived to second trimester with the sweetest sound of a tiny, strong heartbeat, joy and nausea (which is really just another word for “a mothers confirmation” that baby is growing and all is well) and we couldn’t wait to share our news.

We needed to wait for Danny to get time off (because, 5th special forces group), to be able to travel from Tennessee to our hometown (since he was deploying within weeks) to get the girls and I back to family and our sweet community we had left 5 years prior.

We prayed and knew it would be wise to be settled into a more long term support system as baby and our girls continued to grow and Danny continued to be shipped from country to country.

I had remembered the kindness of the doctor I had with Leicea a decade before and knew I’d want to see him again (since I was carrying “high risk” and he was one of my only and best options, due to protocol) + if Danny wouldn’t make it back for the birth for some reason, I’d be in good hands.

***Goes to show that kindness and good service is not soon forgotten.

So, I got an appointment with my hometown doc, we arrived a few days early to walk through a few homes and awaited seeing our sweet one for the first time.

It was July 1, a 30 min drive (of excitement) from our hometown to get to his north office for an ultrasound and just moments away from seeing our baby.

A hopeful, yet for some reason DIFFERENT feeling gal walked into that office to see her baby.

Little did I know I was 15 or so minutes from becoming a new kind of parent. A new kind of PERSON.

It’s crazy how a single moment can change everything. A moment before a new experience in life you are just who you always were and then a moment or experience later, you are changed.

Days before I had told a friend that I felt like our baby wasn’t ours and I was afraid of what that meant.

I laid there hopeful and smiling as the ultrasound tech pulled our baby’s picture up on the screen.

My smile stayed and my eye contact flowed like a steady stream from the screen to her eyes, back and forth, waiting for her smile to meet mine. It felt like 3 hours and 3 blinks in the same moment somehow.

She was calm and controlled. Professional. She took pictures, pointed to the baby for us to see and clicked buttons.

With a quick look over at me and one of those half smiles you give a stranger as you pass them on the sidewalk, she excused herself and said she was going to get the doctor.

A moment later, an “unfortunately, your baby has no heart beat, we can begin labor next week” and a cold, protocol, procedure-ness tried to fill the instant hole in my heart.

I couldn’t speak.

I looked at Danny and he knew.

He made them leave the room, so we could talk. He told the dr we would call him and let him know what we planned to do.

(Sidenote: There was a sweet receptionist there that I knew from high school and he kindly asked her to step to the back, as my broken heart walked out of the office moments after the dr left the room. She was so sweet and broken for me and stepped to the back, so I could live in my space of emptiness, without words, alone for a moment)

We got in the car and nothing felt clear.

How could I be carrying my baby and not carrying my baby at the same time?

How could I deliver a baby that wasn’t mine to take home and care for?

What did God want me to learn, feel, say, do here?

I remember telling Danny I felt like my thoughts were “like a cloud”, so clear, yet almost translucent. I couldn’t grasp it.

I could see it, but I couldn’t hold it.

In more ways than one.

I was devastated.

We were devastated.

Danny let me sit quiet for the 30 minute drive home, only with a few outbursts of tears and gasps for air and understanding.

Leic knew we went to the appointment, our family knew we went to the appointment, we planned to announce to our friends at Leicea’s birthday the following day, we planned to walk in and celebrate and carry on.

But now what.

As all things do, things fell into place just as they should.

We drove to a park and told sis and mourned alongside her. Danny told family, so I could rest and mourn quietly.

He knew I needed to be alone with the Lord, my full belly and my empty heart.

I carried our son for 10 days after I knew he was gone. Daily I watched the fight between my heart and my head every time I would naturally hold my sweet baby belly. He was there, but he wasn’t. Was I lying to myself to hold him?

I scheduled a procedure (not induction) to help me naturally go into labor and delivered our son Daniel Boaz (“baby beau”) Tenney on July 11, 2016 around 10pm.

He was tiny, perfect, precious.

No less the Lord’s than any of our other children.

No less a part of us as the babies we hold here on earth.

No less our precious, firstborn son.

A few things I’ll never forget:

A room filled with people we love
Feeling vulnerable and broken and very aware of the love of God
Me admitting I didn’t know how to let go of our baby
Having my precious friend speaking truth and praying over me and my body calmly and naturally delivering our boy moments later
The nurse Beka, caring for me as family rather than a patient, calm, kind and “anything” I needed
When we found out he was a boy
Immediately changing his name from what we had planned because Daniel Boaz (“baby Beau”) was his name
Seeing his fully formed, tiny little body and being even more in awe of God
Crying and holding a baby I had to arrange funeral/burial arrangements for
A 2am talk with Danny about being “richly blessed”
How kind the staff was and how gentle they were with hard decisions
A saint named Miles that served our family beyond earthly love

Of course it’s hard to look back on, but I knew this needed written. To honor our baby boy, to mend another area of my heart that longs to run and play with my son AND to say “YOU ARE NOT ALONE” to the mamas who have an angel baby or several.

Our baby’s lives were not in vain. Their bodies were planned and formed and delighted in.

They were NOT wasted. What greater joy than to have a son or daughter that is loved as much as the ones we got to hold and watch grow, yet runs in the safety of the literal Kingdom of God.

There is no greater love than the love they carry. Mama longing to run to them. Papa longing to play with them. The Lord keeping them in His care.

They may not be in our arms currently, but our arms are limited... our hearts are not.

I pray for mamas currently walking through this, still aching through this and/or feeling richly blessed as mamas of an angel or angels.

My heart is with you.