The Grief Recovery Handbook : The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death Divorce, and Other Losses

This book kept me from killing myself.

On Jan. 3 2008 my wife and I found out that she was pregnant. We went through all the new parent jitters, preparations, announcements, etc. On. Monday, Aug.11, 2008 she was stillborn(my wife was 37 weeks along). We went to the hospital expecting one of the best days of our lives, but as they were checking my wife in, I noticed something unusual. As they were hooking her up to a monitor(which monitors the heartbeat of the baby, as well as the contractions of the mother. I noticed they were having troubule finding the heartbeat of our baby girl Charity Lynne. So they brought in a sonogram technician who observed the sonogram screen in silence as the screen pointed away from us. As he did so, a couple of nurses came up behind him and also watched in silence. After about a minute the nurses walked over to the nursing station, quietly spoke to the nurses at the station then came back with yet another nurse, and again watched the screen in silence. The technician turned off the sonogram machine hooked up the monitor only for the contractions and one of the nurses took us into a room, smiled and informed us of my wife's doctor's short arrival. I had a horrible feeling something was wrong simply because the monitor for the heartbeat was purposely left not hooked up,(I made sure as to not let onto it as I did not want to upset or stress my wife without knowing anything for sure). After about 1 hour my wife's doctor came in explaining that she was taking a little longer than expected because she was trying to find the words to tell us that she had some "not so good news", and then she told us she was so sorry to inform us of our baby's death. That day dragged on minute by minute as the doctors waited for my wife to begin labor, all the while calling loved ones to inform them of the terrible loss, and receiving them into the room as the day crept by. I wanted to kill myself to escape the pain, but decided it would make things even harder for my wife, so for her alone I deci...