What if...

I went to a dangerous place today, if you've ever lost a child, you know the place, it's a land called "What if"...

Being Father's Day, today was tough for me. It was tough because Paul doesn't have his baby to hold. He doesn't have his baby to be a father to. And that was hard for me. It took me to that dangerous land, that land you visit from time to time, but you need to be very careful with because you can get caught there, you can get stuck there, and it can be very hard to return.

Today, I found myself in "what if" land...
What if I had known the symptoms of preeclampsia ~ would I have recognized that I had it, and would my baby had been born alive...
What if I had known about HELLP syndrome ~ would I have recognized the "rash" as a symptom, would I have placed the timing of my HUGE weight gain as well as the development of the "rash" together and thought about HELLP...
What if I had seen a different doctor, the OB on-call in the ER took one look at me and immediately tested for HELLP, he was right, what if he had been my OB ~ would my baby be alive...
What if I had a scale at home ~ would I have noticed a 6 pound weight gain in 5 days and called the doc...
What if I had went to L&D first instead of to the doc ~ I would have been hooked up to the fetal monitoring and would they have been able to save my baby...
What if I had insisted something was wrong when I went to L&D at 32 weeks, we listened to Landon's heartbeat for hours, we listened to him kicking like crazy at that fetal monitor - he hated it :) it was so funny - but they sent me home and told me if my contractions increased to 6 an hour or more to come back...
What if I had said I can't feel my tummy, how will I know if they increase ~ would they have kept me just to make sure, would they have noticed more contractions, would my baby be alive...
I now know that I had been having contractions for at least a week, but since I couldn't feel my tummy, I didn't know, and I thought it was the baby moving...
What if I had insisted on more monitoring since I couldn't feel my tummy...
What if I had insisted on more monitoring since I couldn't do proper kick counts...

...would Landon be napping with his daddy right now?

What if... It's a dangerous place, you can get lost there. There is so much sadness, so much heartbreak, so much sorrow, so many tears.

Today, on the day that was supposed to be so special for my husband, the day that was supposed to finally be his first "Happy Father's Day", today, I found myself in that land. Wishing my husband had his baby in his arms, today all I could think of, was -- What if...