The making of a Mommy

Over the next week or so I will be featuring some guest posts written by friends of mine. I asked each of them to write about certain hardships they have faced as Mothers. Each of them have been presented with difficult situations and each of them have risen above and gracefully accepted the challenges that motherhood throws at us day in and day out.


The post below was written by my best friend during our High School years. We lost touch along the way but reconnected through Facebook about 2 years ago. As you read her story – keep in mind that a mother is made the moment that precious seed begins growing inside her.

I Will Fight to Win, But on This Day I Lost.

Let me start by saying that when My Dear Friend from High school asked me to do this I Jumped at the chance. You see I am a Mother that has had to bear the heart wrenching loss of a child, my first and only child. Anytime I have an opportunity to tell people about my daughter I do. I want her to be remembered by more then just her Daddy and I.

My Husband and I have always wanted children and we tried for years to no avail, soon we began the Dr. Visits first him then me. We then began Fertility Specialists one after the other, a total of 3 I think. We were told I have no Fimbriae on my right ovary and no working ones on my left, so it was Impossible for us to conceive on our own. We immediately started saving for Invetro treatments. I had been poked and prodded too many times to count and I’m not even talking about my husband (insert smile here), these were coming from all the tests and blood work that had to be done. =) We had been together 12 yrs already and a few months before our first appointment to start treatment for Invetro, I thought I had the flu. Just wasn’t feeling well at all. I was a few days late for my cycle but I had been sick with an upper respiratory infection, so I just assumed it was from the antibiotics I had been on the week before. The fact that we had been told we couldn’t conceive naturally had always made me feel like a failure, but every time I was even an “hour late” I took a pregnancy test just HOPING! I could probably own a Yacht with the money I have spent in the past on pregnancy tests and this time was no different. I took a test and it immediately said I was pregnant…I thought yea right, so I took another one…Positive, so I waited an hour later and took the other one. It was positive as well. I couldn’t believe it; I told myself it must just be a bad box. I went to Walmart took all the tests off the Shelf and got the Box from the VERY Back, you know to make sure it wasn’t even in the same case as the others. I took it as soon as I got home. Guess what? The big Fat P!!!! I still was in shock so I called my OBGYN and had them take blood…it wasn’t til the next day when they called me to confirm I was in fact with child that I completely collapsed, We were finally going to have the Baby we had wanted for so long. I called My Husband he rushed home both of us in tears. Finally, a Family. Everything was fine for the first 5 weeks then I began bleeding a little, then a lot. This went on until the end of the third month and then stopped. The baby’s Heartbeat was healthy and strong the whole time. We had started the baby a journal so every night we both made an entry about our thoughts that day. This would be given to our baby when he or she were older. My husband went to every appointment with me and at 16 weeks the ultrasound tech asked us if we wanted to know the sex we said yes. She said “it’s a little girl” my Husband told her to “Shut Up” (I had asked him if he wanted a boy or girl and he said it didn’t matter, but secretly I think he really wanted a girl). His post in her journal that night was “When they told me I was having a girl, my heart almost jumped out of my chest and all I could think was I’m going to have a little princess of my very own.” We were over the moon. We already had her name picked out. I mean let’s face it we had 12 yrs to come up with the perfect one…

Briarlyn Summers Spittler

Everything was great all the way up until the day I was exactly 20 weeks (5 mo). I had, as you can imagine, bought all kinds of girlie things and was washing towels, onesies and such, when all of a sudden I felt a sudden rush of water run down my legs and onto the floor, I had already enjoyed a few peeing when she wanted me to spells at this point so my first thought was “ If this keeps up I’m just gonna wear a swim suit until she gets here” for 2 reasons: to cut down on laundry and I could be hosed off anywhere even if public if I needed to. I think in my heart I knew what was happening but I just kept screaming “Please No, Oh God Oh God Its too Early” over and over again. My Husband was out so I called him and told him something was VERY wrong come to the hospital. I drove myself just repeating “Oh God Please NO! “

They checked and sure enough my water had broke and I was in labor. I kept saying “PLEASE GOD TAKE ME, LET HER LIVE” I wanted to die, to give her my last breath, which was a little strange to me at first being that I had never even met this little bundle that had been making me do things I wouldn’t normally do in public like, belch, pee, fart and walk off while looking at someone else like it was them. After about 2 hours they strapped me to a contraction monitor and a monitor for the babies heart beat, her heart was beating strong all the way until the end. 7 hours later, On April 23, 2010 I gave birth naturally, but her lungs were not developed so she didn’t make it. We held her as long as they would let us. She was Beautiful, Perfect…10 fingers 10 toes, and looked just like her Daddy. When they ripped her from my arms and they had to, all I could tell her was I’m Sorry, which I must have screamed a thousand times. I lie awake at night wondering if I even told her I loved her. My Husband says I did, but is he just telling me this to keep me from hurting and blaming myself more? I know I tell her everyday now, but will never know for sure if it was said that day. Her beauty is permanatly burned into my eyes, my heart and my mind. Unfortunately so is all the Chaos leading up to her birth. We had just put down some flooring in the hallway leading to what was to be her room and that’s where my water broke. When I came home from the hospital, on the way to my room I had to enter this hallway. I have a baseball bat leaning against the wall, you know to kick the shit out of an intruder if I ever had one, so I picked up this bat and began demolishing the floor in which we had just laid. I was so angry and had so much frustration that seeing where it all began was too much to handle. Although they cannot tell me EXACTLY what caused (my heart to be ripped out of my chest) her premature birth, They told me there could have been a small pin hole in the amniotic sac and over time my body thought my beautiful little girl was a threat, and I got an infection which ultimately led to a premature rupture of the membranes. There has not been a night since that I have been able to sleep with out first reliving every moment of the day I gave birth to, held and then lost my only child. On the nights I am able to sleep its only until I dream of her and then I wake again to the reality of her being gone. I was not able to be around anyone for sometime. I tried about 3 months after we lost her, I thought the air and friends would do me good, only to find out that some of the people I thought were my friends were very vocal (behind my back and didn’t know I could hear them) in the fact they thought I should be “Over it” by now, apparently I wasn’t being as much fun as they thought I should be. After that it was a few more months before I ventured out around people, by this time I was getting involved in the March of Dimes walk for babies and raising money for research in Honor of My Daughter. Again I was Surprised at the lack of respect in some folks. Someone had asked how I was doing since her birth and death so I began to explain, as soon as I mentioned I was keeping busy with the March of Dimes Website, I was told by the “HOST” of the Party that it was her Party not a Donation Party!!! As you can imagine I had been pushed enough by Selfish, Un-grateful people and I LOST IT! (In both instances these people have beautiful healthy children of their own) I told them with every Profanity I could and some I think I even made up to let them know what kind of people I thought they were. Trust me when I say that by the time I left there was NO confusion on where they stood with me, and for those who know me well can verify that I have no problem getting my point across. As I was walking out I left them with one final thought: Bury a Child and then come talk to me about how important a party is to you.

It’s been almost a year since her birth; My Husband is a gift and is helping me become stronger everyday. I have had to come to the hard realization that what happened to me is not, nor ever will be, as important to others as it is to me. Until it has happened to you, you cannot understand. One thing that really chaps my ass is when I hear a parent call their child an idiot or I hear a parent complain because their kid wants them to play… I would give anything for my Daughter to be able to get on my nerves. If I hear one more person tell me “Just have another one that will help ease the pain” or “Everything happens for a reason” (I’m going to scream) Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, everything just happens, and that phrase is what we use in the place of where the reason should be…you know when we don’t know the reason. For some just saying “everything happens for a reason” helps them to move on from a tragedy that the majority of the time is not even theirs. To those people I say” let something to this degree happen to you and then tell me how comforting that phrase is.” I fight through tears everyday when I see certain things, little girls from birth on up, Thinking of all the things I will never get to experience with my Daughter. And then there is the thought of… Will I ever have another chance to have a baby? I wasn’t even supposed to be able to get pregnant with Briarlyn. Over this past year I have learned that it’s almost impossible for me to be around people (for any length of time) that have never experienced this type of loss. We have had the support of some amazing friends that sadly lost two of their own children early. It is a pain that never fades no matter the age of the child lost. I will never be the same, I miss her more everyday! People have said: “Someday you will know the Reason Why”. To that I say “Maybe, But whatever the Reason is, It will Never be Good Enough!”

An Angel wrote in the Book of Life the Day of Our Baby’s Birth, and then Whispered as she closed the Book “ She’s To Beautiful for Earth!”

Briarlyn’s Mommy and Daddy

Tami and Jeff Spittler


Wanna find our more about the March for Babies? Visit the link below and support this beautiful mama.
www.marchforbabies.org/Briarlynsmommy