It would be 19 days since we said hello and goodbye to our gorgeous boy when Father's Day arrived. Normally we would have brunch with my Dad, step mum and siblings. But this year, it didn't seem right. We couldn't even watch Father's Day ads on TV - at one point I would mute them or change the station. This Father's Day would be a childless day to celebrate everything my gorgeous husband has done in the short time we had Sebastian...except when they day arrived it was too much. We just went about the day like it wasn't significant. I gave James (and my dad received one too after) a key ring that read "daddy of an angel, Sebastian James 17.08.15" (my Dads read the same but referred to him as "Poppy of an angel").
Father's Day gave us some time to reflect on our favourite pregnancy moments - we had been to the ice hockey (USA vs Canada), we had been to all our favourite shops and restaurants, spent time with loved family and friends, all of which we believe Sebastian was able to sense, feel or hear.
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After being told of Sebastian's prognosis and how little the amount of time we had left being pregnant with him, we decided to show Sebastian everything we had planned to show him as he grew up. obviously we couldn't take him to Hawaii where we got married or to Disney World but we could take him to our local favourite spots, so that's what we did.
One of the outings was to our favourite picnic and New Years spots, we sat and watched the ferries comes past and took photos of my belly in the same spot we had taken photos of us when we first met. We walked around the boat docks and talked to him about the different boats and the fish we could see in the water, we showed him houses that we had admired and told him stories about previous visits there. It sounds lame, but we felt better knowing that we went here with him and when we return (which we have since his passing) we could feel a little more connected to him.
That night we went to Matilda the Musical (James had already purchased the tickets prior for my birthday, it was just fitting it was on that night, especially as it is a kid's musical). The first scene was the heavily pregnant mother in a maternity ward and saying she didn't want to have the baby and begging the doctors to take it away.. This made me visibly upset and I started sobbing. James held my hand until the scene was over, but I couldn't help start to think about all the people who have unwanted pregnancies or the poor children who grow up in abusive or drug affected families - how did they get healthy babies!?
(It's not that I would swap Sebastian with them, I was just angry at the universe for making Sebastian so ill -why did it have to pick on our little boy!?)
I tried to focus on the musical as much as possible as I wanted Sebastian to enjoy it (I also made sure he got to try some delicious food s and desserts).
The next day we went to our favourite beach. It was too cold to swim, but we just walked the length of it and explored the rock pools (which we hadn't done before). Again we talked to Sebastian about what we could see and smell, we told him about the beach and how we dreamed of bringing him here on warm summer days. We took some more photos and collected some shells (some for us to keep and others to send with him to his resting place). As we returned to our car on a slightly grassed hill we saw two rabbits. We had never seen rabbits at a beach before, so we were a little amazed at them. We don't know if Sebastian had passed away yet, and we will never know. However, we believe that these two rabbits (one for me and the other for James) were signs that we would be OK.
For the rest of the remaining days, we still did things and went to places that were meaningful to us. I began singing (the song choice came from nowhere) "you are my sunshine" and I found a really nice version of it by Elizabeth Mitchell on YouTube, so I would hold my phone against my belly and play it to him. We were a complete mess that week. We would cry non stop and pray that this was all a bad dream. We hardly ate any food and it wasn't unusual for me to stay in bed and read aloud all the children's books we had purchased for him. I would cuddle the bear James had bought him many weeks prior and cover myself in the blanket that my aunty made for us to remember him. I would sing twinkle twinkle little star and talk to him about how sorry we were and how much we love him. We wrote down all our feelings in a letter to him which we would end up reading part of at his funeral and put with him in his resting place also.
In a panicked moment I also bought an expensive but quick delivery of a home Doppler, I was able to use this to hear his heartbeat and record it for the last time. I only used it twice, the third time, I couldn't find his heartbeat after a while so decided to stop trying... I would never hear his heartbeat again.
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