Swiss Cheese Effect

I get so angry when people tell me..."oh everything happens for a reason" in response to our son's death.

Though I don't believe in that, I think we find reasons from these losses. For example a reason to be stronger, a reason to reach out to others, a reason to appreciate what we do still have left.

I was initially supposed to be with a different OB but I did not like her, I was not comfortable with her and I always felt thrown out and like I wasn't worth anything, after my visits. I don't know how to explain it. So I quickly was put on the midwife waiting list. She accepted me at 36 weeks and I was ecstatic. But something inside of me just thought "this is a turning point". Something told me this is where things will go wrong. Not with the midwives but somewhere else. Up until that point I didn't feel it so strongly but I did feel something all throughout my pregnancy. I knew we were never to bring home our baby. But I didn't want to accept those weird feelings and I pushed them aside and attributed them to being "first time mom" nerves.

Well changing to midwives meant changing to a different hospital. The chain of events lead from there, that I couldn't push baby out, and the on-call OB just happened to be "her". Had it been the other OB, I have a strong feeling that things would have panned out much differently. So there's my Swiss Cheese Effect. We learned this in SMS 101 in College. There is not one reason for an event. It is a chain reaction that leads up to the accident/event.

I feel like I was, or rather my choices were, the beginning chain link in a reactionary sequence that lead to this terrible demise. How do I go on normally when I know in my mind, had I stayed with the initial OB we probably would have our lively little 9 month old son here with us now? This is something I've been trying to cope with, and something that will take me years to accept and come to terms with, if ever.

I don't believe everything happened for a reason. If it did, then we along with our son and our families are being punished for something we do not deserve. In my circumstance there was a chain of events. But again, no reason for it...just the wrong place at the wrong time from my wrong choices.