Mom to Ezra Alix

Born sleeping December 12, 2011 at 40 weeks 6 days

San Pedro, California

I kind of had a rough pregnancy with Ezra, but he was always “healthy,” and that’s what kept me going.

I started having severe back problems at 21 weeks and was never the same. In fact, it only got worse in the third trimester, until my insurance finally approved me for physical therapy at 36 weeks . It helped, but I still had pain. I also had rib pain and trouble breathing from about 30 weeks due to Costochondritis. But he always had a strong heartbeat and was constantly moving. (Always always on the move and I loved it).

Every doctor appointment I could always pinpoint where Ezra was so they could find his heartbeat (lower right side of my stomach). ALWAYS!! Mama knew best.

The last few weeks of pregnancy I could barely walk, move, or sleep. I started getting really anxious and became depressed; I could not move and he was being a little stubborn. I felt very guilty for being depressed, but I could not help it. I wanted him in my arms. I was sure he would be born in November, not December 7th.

But I kept going. Everyone (Oshin, doctors, family, friends) kept telling me, “hang in there.” “It will all be worth it in the end.” And I kept going. I believed them. NO!! I knew it would be worth it in the end too.

*December 7th rolls around. No baby!! (And trust me, I had been trying to induce labor naturally. I had my membranes ruptured at 39 weeks).

*My 40 week appointment was Thursday, December 8th @ 9 a.m. Ezra had a STRONG heartbeat!! But I was depressed and the resident saw it. So to try to help me, she tried to get me admitted for a C-section that day. (I was GBS +). She leaves. I call Oshin and sister (who was on her way to OH from MI for my delivery). Oshin freaks out, “What!! We’re having a baby today?”  I told him, “maybe.” The resident comes back and says the L & D was full and my doctor was not available, but they have scheduled my induction for Monday, December 12th @ 8 p.m. She said, “just hang in there for FOUR more days. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”  I agreed.

*Andres got a fever of 103 that night (Thursday, December 8th). He had a fever for the next 3 days. 101 during the day and 103 at night. I did not take him to the doctor because he had NO other symptoms and was acting pretty normal. (Night was always the worst, but I was used to his fevers). I was more worried about me going into labor while he was sick and I could not be there for him and baby Ezra at the same time.

*Saturday, December 10th I started having contractions about 5-6 minutes apart all evening. I call L & D and they tell me to wait until the contractions are 2 minutes apart.

*Sunday, December 11th I had been having contractions on & off all day. My sister and I go to dinner at my favorite Turkish restaurant and do some Christmas shopping at Toys R Us. (Oshin wanted me to have some alone time and have a good meal the day before induction). At dinner, Ezra was moving. I even showed my sister my belly and his foot poking out. While at Toys R Us my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and getting stronger. But I kept on going. Shopping. And even had a “discussion” with the manager about two different prices for the same toy on their shelf. We get home and I tell Oshin the contractions are getting stronger and closer, but decided to wait. I did not want L & D to tell me to wait again, so I decided to wait until I could not handle them or my water breaks. My sister, Oshin, and Andres all go to sleep around 10ish, just in case I do go into labor soon. I stay downstairs and watch a French movie on Netflix. My contractions were definitely getting stronger, but still 2 minutes apart.

At midnight, I go to the restroom to pee and saw my mucus plug with lots of blood in it. (I had been losing my mucus plug around 37 weeks). But I felt this time was different. I knew it was time. Oshin happens to come downstairs and I tell him. I call L & D. The midwife told me to take a shower and come in. I wake up my sister and tell her to watch Andres while we go to the hospital (who knows they might send me back).

*I get to L & D at 1:30 a.m. on Monday, December 12th. Pee, put a gown on, and get connected to the monitors. They immediately started having trouble. The first nurse could not keep his heartbeat on the monitor, “because he was moving,” she said. (I was not too worried, even though I thought it was odd. But I knew he was a mover).  Another nurse comes in about 15 minutes later and tries to get/keep Ezra’s heartbeat on the monitor. He kept on moving. She could not. She said it was because he was sunny-side up. (I started to worry, but thought they would have to do an emergency C- section to get him out. Nothing too too serious could be wrong with MY baby). So I have three nurses in there trying to find my boy’s heartbeat and 45 minutes have passed. (Again, I’m worried, but it’s not deadly). The doctor finally comes in and she’s very, what’s the word… Cocky!! She had an attitude like the nurses were just incompetent and they had to call her for a simple thing like finding a baby’s heartbeat. Well, she could not find the heartbeat either. She asks for an ultrasound machine and while they were getting it, she checks me to see how far I’m dilated. 3 going on 4 cm, she says. (I’m getting more worried, but still only think about a C-section being necessary, which is why I was not getting angrier). The ultrasound machine arrives and she is trying to find baby and his heartbeat. (There are now 4 nurses, plus the doctor all trying to find my darling boy’s heartbeat). Nothing.  Her excuse is that she is not very good with ultrasound machines, but this particular machine was not working properly. She asks for another one. So they bring in another ultrasound machine. She is still on my belly trying to find Ezra’s heartbeat, but she agrees he is sunny side up. That’s why it’s difficult. Then she says, “okay, it’s time for me to stop messing around and call Dr. Shield’s in.”  (Dr. Shield’s is the high risk doctor and is a pro at ultrasound machines, so I was told).

They all step out. I tell Oshin I’m really worried now and he reassures me that everything is fine. Ezra is just turned over and not cooperating. Dr Shield’s comes in, presses on my belly with the ultrasound wand, and not even 5 minutes later, she says, “Your baby has fluid in his belly/lungs.” Takes another deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. Your baby has passed. He no longer has a heartbeat. He is a stillborn.” WHAT??? I scream hysterically!!! Oshin says, ”No. That can’t be. What are you talking about?” I’m still screaming and crying. My heart fell to the floor, broken in a million little pieces. A feeling, I never knew existed came over me. It was like I was not in my body. But yet screaming & crying beyond control.

I could not believe it!! A stillbirth? What the hell is a stillborn baby? It was not true. It couldn’t be true. He was just kicking at dinner. He was fine on Thursday. This is 2011. I am in a hospital with modern medicine. Not early America with some family member to deliver my baby and a basin of water. What was she talking about??? Stillbirths don’t happen in this day and age.

Dr Shield’s proceeds to tell me that I’m being admitted and have to give birth to Ezra naturally. Vaginally. I told her, “NO!!! I can’t. You can’t ask me to do that. NO!!”  Oshin even told her NO!! She said this was the best way. She kept on apologizing and saying, “unfortunately, these things happen. I’m so very sorry.”  They move us into the room across the hall. I immediately worry about Andres and tell Oshin to call my sister to check on him.

After that, everything moved quickly and yet so slowly. They give me an epidural and start the pitocin and do all kinds of things to me. Draw massive amount of blood and the amniocentesis. (And I felt that needle going in my belly. I felt it all). So many people (doctors, nurses, specialists, lab techs, as well as the Priest) kept coming in and out of my room. And yet they recommended I rest. REST!!! What they hell were they talking about, rest?  But I was given something to relax/calm down. I look at the clock and it’s 8 a.m.

I can’t really articulate how I felt or what I did in the later hours. It was like I was out of my body. Numb even. Tears kept falling, but I could not always make noise or talk. I still could not believe this was happening. It was a dream. A nightmare. I would wake up any moment now. I was sure to wake up. But I didn’t. It wasn’t a dream.

Before I knew it, the midwife checked me and I was already 8 cm dilated.

I finally fall asleep for a bit, but awaken to pressure. It was time. The midwife and nurse come in and start preparing.

You could hear a pin drop in that birthing room, in-between contractions and pushing. A pin drop. I was exited, anxious, sad, overwhelmed, nervous, you name it. I kept praying to God to help me. To give me the strength and courage. “Please God, just help me.”

It only took 5 pushes…

Ezra Alix was born sleeping on December 12, 2011 at 11:44 a.m. He was 8 lbs 14 oz. 22 inches long. He was perfect!!

I kept waiting for him to cry. To open his eyes. To do something. The doctors were wrong. He was not dead. He was just sleeping. Doctors are wrong all the time. They were wrong.

But they weren’t wrong.

He did not cry. He did not open his eyes. He did not move.

We spent the entire day with him. I felt at ease when Ezra was in my arms. I could not let him go. He was mine. My baby. So precious. So perfect. So pure.

I was still hoping for a miracle. I wanted God to grant me a miracle. I kept bargaining with Him. Questioning Him.

Why me?? God, WHY Ezra??? Why us??

Why the hell would YOU allow me to pregnant for over 10 months and just take my precious boy away? WHY??? What did I do wrong???

We had the Priest come bless Ezra. The bad Catholic I am, I wanted him baptised, but he was born pure so did not need to be baptised. “He went straight to Heaven,” the father said.

A representative from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep came into our room and offered their services to us. I did not have the strength nor heart to take family photos with Ezra, but allowed them to photograph him. I just could not do it. (I will regret THAT decision until the day I die).

*The autopsy came back inconclusive on Monday, January 30, 2012. The pathologist did not see any umbilical cord trauma/incident, nor any infection. He claims that Ezra had been dead within 21 hours from the last time I felt movement. He also states that Ezra was in distress and had passed meconium inutero, which is the cause of his death. Why, he was in distress to begin with is uncertain, hence the autopsy being inconclusive. And the blisters that Ezra was born with (because I failed to mention above that Ezra was born with blisters on his arms and legs) are due to being a stillborn baby, or having died inutero. Nothing else.

But, the day Ezra was born the Pediatric Dermatologist took biopsies of Ezra’s skin. THAT very day, he gave us a theory to Ezra’s death, a rare genetic skin disorder called EB (Herlitz Junctional EB to be exact), due to the severity of the blisters. They were not ordinary blisters. We waited for several weeks and he continued to tell us that he was, unfortunately, correct. He even showed Oshin Ezra’s skin under the microscope and a textbook example of EB. He still thinks it is EB. (Oshin and I are due to meet with the dermatologist soon, so he can give us his exact findings and direct us toward genetic testing).

Now, the high risk doctor and the midwife, who delivered Ezra, do not agree with the pathologist 100%. They have seen several stillbirth babies and have never seen a stillborn with blisters on their skin as Ezra did. They highly recommended us to meet with the dermatologist to do genetic testing, for future pregnancy reference.

So there you have it. Modern day medicine and no bloody answer. We do not have a direct cause of death. Which is unbelievably frustrating, and frankly, just PISSES me off!!!  I know the answer will not bring Ezra back, but I want to not blame myself for the rest of my life. I want to know that I did everything right. I want to know that I never harmed my baby boy, accidentally. Until then, I still believe it’s MY fault!!! He was MY responsibility and I failed him.

Lala blogs at http://missingezra.wordpress.com/.

You can contact her at missingezra@gmail.com or oeababa@gmail.com. 

Mom to Aiden/Abbey

Lost March 15, 2012

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

I was nowhere near ready to be a mother. I was barely out of high school. My boyfriend and I had only been together a little more than half a year. We were close. We were young. We were in love. We had a near perfect relationship. When I missed my period, we both promised not to panic. Despite our promise, we were both scared. And we knew it. I was scared to lose him; I was scared of not being able to achieve my dreams and goals of college. He was scared to face our family; He was scared of putting his own dreams on hold. And yet, we managed to hold strong together. At least for a while.

After taking a test, and having it come back positive, both of us were only more nervous. How would we support ourselves? How would we tell our families? Above all, how were we going to manage to be good teen parents? I had always loved children, but I’d always had a lifelong fear of being a parent. I had a bad relationship with my parents, and I was afraid to end up with a child who hated me just as much as I hated my parents. I remember telling my boyfriend, “I can’t be a mother. I’ll be a horrible mother.” He always reassured me, “I know you’ll be a great mother. I’ve seen it in you.”

Abortion never came to my mind as an option. As someone who loved children as immensely as I do, I could never bring myself to do such a thing. My boyfriend fully supported my decision. But we still had no idea what to do from there on. He kissed my hands, and told me to take care of myself and the baby while he took care of everything else.

I figured out I was about two weeks along. I tried to stay calm, and to look at this entire situation as a blessing. As afraid as I was to be a mother, I was secretly excited to be bringing a life into this world. I would have my very own baby to love forever. The original fear turned into excitement, and I began to actually feel okay with it all. Over the course of the next week, I managed to become excited enough to even make my own baby blankets and pick out names (Aiden, if it was a boy; Abbey, if it was a girl). I let my imagination run wild about what my baby would look like, act like, and even smell like. I thought of my life from this moment on, and how my life would be with my boyfriend. We hadn’t been together long, but I suppose I was just naïve enough to imagine a life with this man.

But before I could even share my excitement with my boyfriend, I began to get terrible cramps. They were enough to knock the wind out of me, and I began to worry. I forgot about all the good things I’d imagined. I started praying in my mind, “God, no. I know I may not be ready for this baby, but please don’t take this away from me now. I want this. I want this.” Unfortunately, I did end up losing my baby. I miscarried by beautiful baby in the afternoon of March 15th, 2012. I was only three weeks along. I hadn’t wanted to accept it at first, but deep down I knew my angel was gone. I’d put so much hope and happiness into that child, and God had taken him from me.

When I approached my boyfriend, he immediately knew something was wrong. Just that week, he had been telling me about all the things he had figured out for us. We would live with his parents while I was pregnant. We’d have the baby, and I’d go to school. He put his boot camp on hold until I was done, and then he would go while I raised the baby. We would work, and eventually, hopefully, we’d live together as a family in the reserves. When I told him about the possible miscarriage, he seemed paralyzed with shock. I broke into tears, and while he held me, I remember him saying, “I don’t know what I should be feeling right now. I don’t know whether to be ecstatic that I won’t be giving up my future, or if I should be grieving for losing my first child.” I remember being so angry at him for that. Now, I realize I probably felt the same way. We went to the doctor and I got checked up. It had been a miscarriage; my baby was gone. But I would be okay.

That’s all my boyfriend was concerned about at that point; that I was okay. But I wasn’t okay. Not mentally. I’m not even quite sure why. I was young, I had such a life ahead of me. I should’ve been relieved. But the idea that my baby was gone; I didn’t understand it or want to accept it. I became angry at everybody. I was sad at everything I saw or heard. My friends were a great support group; crying with me when I needed it; sometimes even hitting me when I needed to knock out of my crazy tantrums. But despite my friends, I had needed my boyfriend during that time more than anything. After the miscarriage, our relationship spiraled down. He never quite understood how I felt, and sometimes even accused me of overreacting when I cried or got angry at God. We could no longer sustain the ‘perfect’ relationship we’d had before. It was too much for me; and maybe too much for him. I was suffering severe depression, and he was drifting from me. Our relationship ended only a month after the miscarriage. He told me he no longer loved me. I cried harder than I’d ever had in my life; for my lost angel and my lost love. In my depression, I remember calling him plenty of times, drunk as a dog, begging him to come back. It only made our relationship more strained.

After more time, the pain of the miscarriage became easier to accept. I convinced myself that my angel had decided to go back to Heaven and wait for me; knowing that I wasn’t quite ready for him yet. To this day, it still hurts sometimes. And I still miss my baby. My depression has become much better, but a ‘normal’ day for me will probably never be normal for everyone else. Most days, “normal” is just being sad on the inside and managing to smile and laugh normally on the outside. But some days, “normal” becomes staring at every baby and imagining what my baby would look or behave like at that age; and then not being able to imagine it. Then, I’d be breaking into tears and wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will never happen. Some days, “normal” to me is standing in the cereal aisle and trying to decide between honey-nut and plain and barely being able to keep from falling apart. Some days, “normal” is bursting into tears at the simplest of questions like “Paper or plastic?”

“Normal” is going to class every day, seeing my ex boyfriend, and feeling a deep pit of anger in my chest. I think it’s unfair sometimes, for me to be angry, but I can’t help it. He hadn’t been there in my darkest time, and he hadn’t even given me the chance to try and understand what had been going through his mind. He and I did everything together; and I mean everything. We were together almost every hour of the day; and now, I did everything alone with him standing only a few feet away. We still ate at the same places, had the same classes, and saw each other the same amounts of time in a day. The only difference was that we didn’t do it together. It’s hard, because every little thing that reminds me of him reminds me of our baby. And because of that, I don’t think I’ll truly ever heal. Some days, my depression still gets so bad that I think I’ll end up killing myself. Other days, I manage to actually smile and live a life.

I’m trying my best to get better, but I know that I’ll never fully heal. A part of me was taken, and can never truly be given back. I can’t even bring myself to blame my failed relationship on my baby or my boyfriend. Perhaps God just knew that he wasn’t the man for me, or the father for my child. I still love both my baby and my boyfriend with all my life, but maybe some time in the future, I’ll get to be the girl who gets the boy and the baby. And when the times right, I’m confident that God will not deny me the joy that he took from me that night of March 15th, 2012. My baby; my little angel.

You can contact Maya at maya.her@hotmail.com.

Mom to Dillan

Lost October 26, 2010

Whitfield, New Hampshire

I was told by my OBGYN that it would be very difficult to get pregnant. This was a difficult thing to hear but didn’t worry me too much at this point since I was 19 years old and wasn’t planning on having children any time soon, but wanted children in my future. My doctor had informed me that I would have to undergo surgery to have the chance of having children one day. I got scheduled for surgery and everything went as planned. The surgery took place in late June 2010. My boyfriend and I were very happy that the surgery went well and that one day we would be able to have children together, and also very happy about my speedy recovery.

Early September 2010 I woke up with this gut feeling that I could not shake. My roommate had 2 pregnancy tests in the cabinet and I felt the need to use one. I looked down to see the (+) sign and was in shock. Although, I had not planned on getting pregnant, I had. A smile shot across my face and took the second test to just double check that I was pregnant, I was.

I called my doctor as soon as her office opened and scheduled an appointment. It was official and I could not wait to tell my family and boyfriend. I was about to have my own family and a child that we could share unconditional love. Things were rocky at first, people talked poorly about me due to my age, but nothing mattered except my little munchkin growing in my belly.

Months had passed and ultrasounds showed a healthy baby growing. Listening to my child’s heartbeat was the most amazing feeling in the world. I was so excited and we had finally decided on a baby boy’s name, Dillan. We hadn’t talked about girls names yet…there was plenty of time for that.

On what planned to be a fun trip to a Bass Pro Shop a couple of hours away from home things went down hill. A long story short, I started to bleed and got rushed to the hospital. After many hours in the hospital with my boyfriend by my side everything checked out. My ultrasound was good, heartbeat was strong and being a little over 3 months, not being certain the doctors believed that my baby was a little boy. The feeling of relief was overwhelming. I was so excited and Dillan was growing strong. We ended up the long trip home where I was to be put on bed rest.

On the ride home the most dreadful thing happened, I lost Dillan. I spent the night in the hospital where the doctors and nurses were so kind and caring. Nothing could take away the pain and heartache I was feeling, but they tried their best.

The next few days were awful, I had nightmares every night and did a lot of research on how to cope with losing Dillan. It isn’t something that was easy and I didn’t think I would ever be able be the same fun loving 19 year old again. My life was flipped upside down. I found many different coping methods that I had tried including, keeping a journal, planting a tree in Dillans memory, talking to loved ones, and many more, but nothing seemed to help.

My boyfriend took me on a trip to a local fun town to get me out of the house and try to put that fun loving smile on my face that he hadn’t seen in almost 2 weeks. We went to a humane society where I found the one thing that made me smile again. Dilly, a half breed maine coon kitten. As soon as I picked him up I could tell that he would be the one thing to make me feel not alone. He is the best thing that has ever happened to me since that awful day. He saved my life.

Dillan was a healthy baby boy growing in my weak uterus. Due to the surgery and timing that I had gotten pregnant the doctors believe that as he grew my uterus weakened and could not support him any longer. Things happen for a reason, that is what I am told. I sadly have not learned that reason but am so grateful for the caring, loving people and Dilly (my companion) that have blessed my life.

To all mothers of the angels in heaven, this is something that you can’t just get over and something that will change your life forever.  Just know that you are not alone in this. Everyone copes in their own way, I found mine and I pray that you will find yours. Talking about it and not being ashamed of what happened is the first step to recovering.

Postscript: Last night Dilly (my companion that had saved me from myself) was shot by my neighbor, the bullet is lodged by his heart. We rushed him to the vet where they are doing everything they can to save his life. The vet there saw my despair and asked if I was okay. I told her the story of Dilly and why he means so much to me. She had gone through the same thing and like me all she has is her pets. Before leaving the vets office she gave me this website and told me to share my story and to read others, at this point I need all the help and support I can get. I don’t know how to deal with losing my little boy… again.

You can contact Sara at BiadaszSarah@gmail.com.

Mom to Eden Elizabeth

Stillborn March 18, 2012

Greensboro, North Carolina

Around 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 17th, I noticed I was having a few small contractions. I didn’t think too much of them since I had been having painless contractions for the past week or so. I had been at the hospital earlier that day for my blood pressure and for the 3 hours I was there, only 1 contraction had been shown on the monitor. I figured that these contractions were either fake or still the very, very start of early labor at 38 weeks. I went about my business, putting my 2-year-old son Isaiah to bed, and then fell asleep on the couch after watching my boyfriend Keith and his friend play a few games of pool. I woke up around midnight and realized the contractions were still coming pretty consistently. I asked Keith to stay up and watch a movie with me, even though I knew it was a bad idea considering it was the last full night of sleep we’d be getting for a while. We stayed up, watching Nightmare on Elm Street and talking about how unprepared I felt while Keith rubbed my back and reassured me that everything would be taken care of. At about 5 a.m., my contractions were about 7 minutes apart. Keith had already fallen asleep and even though I felt un-ready, nervous, and anxious, I decided to try to get a few hours of sleep.

I woke up around 7 a.m. on the 18th and walked around the house, unsure of what to do. My contractions were still about 6 minutes apart, so I decided it was probably time to finish packing the hospital bag that I had put off for way too long. Eden’s coming home outfit still hadn’t been washed so I did a load of laundry while I called my sister to tell her to start driving down to our city. Even though my contractions still weren’t extremely close together or intense enough to go to the hospital, I called my OB to let her know what was going on and to see when I would need to start my IV antibiotics (I had tested positive for Group B Strep.) She assured me that everything would be fine if I waited until my water broke or my contractions were 5 minutes apart to come in to L&D. Soon after that, Isaiah woke up and I became occupied with entertaining him while trying to finish getting everything together for the hospital. I tried to wake Keith up, but decided that it was probably best to let him sleep for a few extra hours since my contractions still weren’t too painful.

Finally, at around 1 p.m. when my contractions had increased in severity and started coming at intervals of 4 minutes, I decided it was time to go. Keith and I dropped Isaiah off at a friend’s house and left for the Women’s Hospital. We arrived at approximately 1:45 and after getting insurance information straightened out, we were taken to our room, Room 166. We were only in the room for about 10 minutes when a nurse came in to hook me up to the contraction/heartbeat monitors. The nurse put the gel on my stomach and tried to pick up Eden’s heartbeat on the monitor. After about 20 seconds of being unable to find it, she called another nurse tech to come help with an ultrasound. Keith and I had started to become a little uneasy, but I tried to stay positive since the nurse had told us that there was a possibility that she was just in a hard-to-hear position. But after another doctor was called in with a bigger ultrasound machine, we saw the looks on the nurses’ and doctor’s faces and knew that something was wrong. I looked at Keith and we both started sobbing. The doctor stayed and looked on the machine for another minute, but he had already started apologizing for our loss.

Keith went out of the room to call his dad and tell him what had happened and nurses were coming in and out of my room constantly. Everyone was apologizing and giving me sympathetic looks and hugs. I was completely broken, crying from both the emotional and physical pain of everything that was going on. My OB, Dr. Richardson, finally arrived at the hospital and she held my hand as she talked me through everything that was about to happen. She checked my cervix and even though I was only dilated to 3 cm., I decided I wanted an epidural ASAP since the pain of the contractions was unbearable in addition to all the emotional heartbreak I was already feeling. After the epidural, Keith’s father came into my room and was able to calm me down a little. My nurse, Heather, sat down beside me and asked me a ton of questions- if I wanted to see/hold the baby when she was born, if I wanted pictures taken of her, if Keith and I had discussed cremation vs. burial. Every time she asked me a question, I just wanted to scream and cry about how unfair the whole situation was. After a couple hours had passed, my cervix was checked again at around 5 p.m. I had already dilated to 5 cm, but Dr. Richardson still guessed that delivery was still many hours away. Being told that, Keith ran to get some food while his dad stayed in the room with me. During that time, I called my mom to let her know what had happened. I had planned to calmly explain the situation to her, but as soon as she picked, I started bawling and all that I could say was that she was dead. I hung up after we talked for a few minutes and I was just starting to calm down when I realized that I was starting to have some intense pain. Dr. Richardson thought my epidural dosage just needed to be upped, but when she checked my cervix one last time, I was dilated to 10 cm. and Eden was ready to be born.

Keith was already on his way back to the hospital when I called him to hurry up and get back. He came into the room and his father and our friend, Kevin, left to wait in the room next to ours. I started pushing at about 6:30 and Eden Elizabeth was born at 6:36 p.m. As soon as she came out, Keith broke down and started sobbing. She was so small and so still. I wanted more than anything for her to wake up and start crying. I tried to calm Keith down while I watched every single move that the nurses made with Eden. They asked me if I wanted her on my chest, I said yes. They laid her on me and I started crying uncontrollably. She was so beautiful, so perfect. I loved her so much, more than I ever thought would be possible. The doctors informed me that she was 5 lbs, 15 oz and was 19 in. long. She had part of the umbilical cord wrapped around her shoulder. None of the doctors were 100% certain if this was what caused her death, but it was their best guess. We chose not to have an autopsy done.

Keith was unable to stay in the room because he was so upset, so his dad and Kevin came in to comfort me and to see Eden. Two new nurses came in to check on me and to take pictures of her. They were so incredibly sweet and they took pictures for about 30 minutes. Don (Keith’s dad) and Kevin both got a chance to hold her and say hello and goodbye. The nurses told me that as long as I felt okay physically, I would be released the next morning. They also assured me that I would be able to hold Eden as long as I wanted to before they took her away. After another hour or so, they took Eden, Keith, and I to our room on the third floor of the hospital. I spent the next few hours holding Eden, kissing her and wondering why this was happening to us. My sister and a few of Keith’s friends came to support Keith and I, and to see Eden. Everyone was amazed by how beautiful she was and cried while holding her. Seeing our friends and families so emotional about everything that was happening was so upsetting, but also reassuring that we had such a strong support system.

Around 2 a.m., Keith came over to me and let me know that a nurse would be coming in to take Eden in ten minutes. I had a huge meltdown, sobbing and holding Eden tight to my chest. I didn’t want to let her go, I didn’t want to say goodbye. That was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. Keith said his goodbyes and handed her over to the nurse. I was shaking and crying hysterically for what seemed like hours. A nurse came in to check my vitals and gave me a pill for anxiety and I was able to calm down enough to get a few hours of sleep. Waking up on the morning of the 19th was absolutely horrible; I wanted everything to be a nightmare, but I knew it wasn’t. Physically, I was exhausted, but I felt okay. The nurse told me that I would be released that afternoon. Keith’s mom had been in Colorado for the past week and had gotten an early flight home. She and Don came to the hospital right after the nurse had signed my discharge papers and removed the IV that had been giving me antibiotics. I was about to get out of bed when I realized that I was freezing. Even though the sun was shining on my bed and the temperature in the room was turned up to 75 degrees, I was shivering uncontrollably. MIL asked for the nurse to check my temperature before I left and I had a fever of 103. The nurse ran out to ask the OB what to do. I was told that I would not be released for at least another 24 hours. For the next 2 days, I was in the hospital fighting off a fever and infection. Being in the hospital for the extra 2 days was horrible, I couldn’t sleep and all I could think about was how much I missed Eden and how I hadn’t seen Isaiah in 3 days.

Finally on Wednesday the 21st, I was released to go home. Going home without Eden in the backseat was devastating. It had really started to sink in that she wasn’t going to be with us. As soon as I got home, though, Isaiah ran to me and gave me a huge hug and I automatically felt better. Going into our room and seeing all of the baby clothes and everything that we had ready for Eden was extremely hard, but hearing Isaiah ask where his baby sister Eden was even harder.

We chose to have Eden cremated and we held a candlelight memorial service for her at our house the following night. Packing up her clothes and returning the double stroller, car seat, and all of the baby equipment to the store was indescribably heart-wrenching. Every day is hard and I constantly think about her and how perfect she was. Even though the heartbreak that I feel will never completely go away and there’s a place in my heart that will never be filled by anyone else, I’m at peace knowing that she really is in a better place. I’m so happy that she will never feel pain or heartache. I know she’s my beautiful angel and that she’s looking down on Isaiah, Keith, and I. I’m so blessed and so lucky that I have such an amazing family and I know that together, we’re strong enough to overcome anything.

You can contact Molly at molly.smith93@gmail.com.

Mom to Ashley Antoinette

Born and died April 22, 2011

Rosedale, Maryland

It was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2011 when I went to the hospital from getting the WORST pain in my life to find out after the hospital nurses took samples that I was pregnant.

I was so shocked and thrilled at the same time. How was I pregnant for so long and not really know? I’m pregnant?! Yay! Wow!

I was told by doctors prior that without medical assistance I would never get pregnant; however, here I am on the phone calling my husband telling him to get here as soon as possible because I was about to go in for my first sonogram to make sure the baby was alright. Still in shock

My husband makes it to the hospital right before they take me back for the sonogram. As soon as the technician starts rubbing my belly with the device, a recognizable baby pops onto the screen. Not dots, not some spots, but a big baby The technician looks at me and says how far along are you? I told her I don’t know. She said you have to be pass your first trimester and she continued to say some other things that I don’t remember because at this point all I could see was my baby on the screen. Tears are flowing because on the screen was the answer to so many prayers. Right there, my baby. Go to find out that I was not only pregnant. I was 16 weeks pregnant! I just thought my butt was getting bigger LOL.

So as soon as I get my discharge slips, my husband and I go straight to Barnes and Noble and I get the book I’ve wanted to get for so many years– What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I’ve dealt with babies all my life growing up through siblings, babysitting, god children, and friends’ children– but this was MY first pregnancy. I wanted to be as prepared as I could be and since I missed the entire first trimester without any symptoms, I wanted to make sure I knew what to do during the second and the third and the pending labor and birth. My due date was August 31st and I felt like I really did not have much time left before my baby would be here. The next stop was Walgreens for the prenatal vitamins (I was already talking a multivitamin every day but I wanted to make sure the baby got everything the baby needed).

I just remember being so happy with my news. We made sure we told all of our family and close friends before we made the ultimate Facebook status update— posting “I’m Pregnant!” with your sonogram pic as your new profile picture LOL.

The next few weeks I was making sure to eat more healthy than usual, drinking tons of water, getting rest, shopping for baby things, and most importantly– rubbing my belly every chance I could get. I would sing to my belly.  Looking back on it now, I am glad I did spend that time with my child.

My doctor sent me for a routine 18 week sonogram even though I had one 2 weeks before to try to see if we could tell the sex of the baby. Let’s just say my baby was not shy about it at all. All the sonogram technician kept saying was “All your baby wants to show is feet and cookies” That’s how I found out I was having a girl. My husband couldn’t attend the sonogram with me because he was at work but the way I told him was I went to Burlington Coat Factory and purchased one of those beautiful dresses they carry for little girls. He was putting together the dresser in the nursery the day before and was going to finish when he got home that day. So I laid the dress on top of the dresser before he got home. When he got home I told him the clue to what we are having is on top of the dresser in the nursery. He had tears in his eyes while holding the dress with a smile on his face.

Ashley Antoinette Simmons. That’s what we decided to name her. By week 19, I actually felt her kick and so did my husband. The next two weeks were just great. Everyone from the people in my neighborhood, to my church, to my job, and even strangers all seemed happy that Ashley was coming into the world. I loved watching my belly finally stick out at week 20 and felt relieved that I made it to the halfway point. Everything was going so smoothly.

Then around 5:30 am on Good Friday, April 22, 2011, I went to the bathroom (I know it’s TMI but there is a lot of going to the bathroom when you’re pregnant that it’s just what pregnant women do). I came back to bed to rest another 5 minutes before going to work. Then I felt the need to go again. Then (DISCLAIMER: This is about to get a little graphic so if you don’t want to read details I suggest going to the next paragraph) I felt what I thought could be the baby’s head (later found out it was the amniotic sac) between my legs. Completely freaked out. This can’t be happening! I’m only 21weeks! This is way too soon!  I get my husband up and get dressed with water just coming down my legs.  He rushes me to the hospital that is thankfully less than 6 miles away. Since this was our first pregnancy, we did not know to go straight to the maternity ward. We went to emergency. I am losing more fluid.

They finally get me into a room. The emergency doctor comes in and get a sample. The nurse tries to comfort me. The doctor just as cold as he could be. Even the nurse looks at him as if she too could not believe how much of a jerk he was being. Once they left, my husband let out a cry I never thought was humanly possible. I tell him to come over to me and comfort him. In the moment, I was holding on to hope. God would not allow this miracle to come into my life to just take her away. No way!

The nurse comes back and transport me down the maternity ward. Thinking back on it, the room was beautiful. Very spacious. In the moment though, I did not care. I just wanted them to do whatever it was they needed to do to save my baby. The midwife who is my doctor comes in to let me know that my membranes ruptured and that they would do a sonogram to see how much water I had left. Thinking back, I knew from how much water came out that it was probably not much but since I wanted so desperately for my child to live I was really hoping for a miracle.

I go down to radiology. This was the last time I saw Ashley inside me. It was close noon that day. Hours have gone by and even though I had no water left, she was in no distress. Her heartbeat was still going like nothing was going on. The head of radiology came in to explain to me that even though she was a perfectly formed baby that without water Ashley’s lungs would not develop (she was right on schedule for forming her lungs) and therefore she would not ever survive outside of the womb. The head of radiology and my doctor both gently explained that my options were to either allow my daughter to die inside of me or to deliver her and she would die anyway. My options were death or death. Death now or death later. What really hurts is I had to make a choice. Not a choice to take my baby home but how do I want her to die.

Well, so much was happening that I could not fathom having her die in me. So I went ahead and allow them to induce the labor. Everything was becoming so surreal. How did my dreams become this nightmare all in a matter of weeks?! I got an epidural; however, my epidural did not work. The first technician put it in but I could still feel my legs, toes, and everything. Then another technician came in to check it and still– full feeling. That’s when the head of anesthesiology came to administer a direct injection into my spine and check the epidural again— However, during labor I FELT IT ALL.

At 4:51 p.m., Ashley Antoinette Simmons was born alive at 13oz and 10 inches long. My husband cut her cord and she was placed into my arms. She was sucking her thumb. I kissed her and told her I loved her. I handed her over though because the doctor was having a world of a time getting out my placenta. I was in worst pain with the doctor’s efforts to get out the placenta than I was with the actual labor. I came coming in and out. Before I left the delivery room to be rushed to the operating room for a D&C for my placenta, I held Ashley one last time and told her I loved so much and that I was so sorry. The last thing I remember after that was being asked my birth date and to count down from 10 before they performed my D&C. I don’t even remember leaving the delivery room to get to the operating room.

Once I woke up from out of the operating room, it was after 9:00 pm. I just popped up and demanded the nurses get me back to my room. In my heart, I knew my daughter was gone. But I had to see her. I had to…even if her little soul was no longer there. I had to see her. So they rushed me back into my room and I saw my husband. I asked him where is she? He went to the incubator that was in the room and picked up her. He handed her to me and she was already gone.

My husband told me Ashley died at 7:16 p.m. and he assured me that he held her to the end.

Even though my baby’s soul had already left hours before, I just held her body and looked her over. Tried to take in as much of her as I could because I knew that when this day was going to be over, I was going to have to leave this hospital without my baby.

Shan-Nel blogs at http://deathofababycopedealandheal.blogspot.com.

You can contact her through her blog.

Mom to Mariah and Juliette

Born and died March 5, 2012

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

My husband and I have been married seven years and through patience, hard work, dreaming, and a bit of luck – we have managed to build a beautiful and fulfilling life together. A couple years ago we decided we were ready to start trying for our family.

Unfortunately the journey to make our family larger than just the two of us has led us down an unexpectedly rough road. I had an early miscarriage a little over a year ago and struggled with  adiagnosis of “unexplained fertility.”  We finally decided to try IVF and I got pregnant with twin girls – my Mariah &Juliette!! I was over the moon with happiness. I experienced a fairly normal pregnancy until my water broke when I was at school (I am a teacher) at twenty weeks. I didn’t realize at the time that my water had broken but I knew something was wrong. My husband rushed over to my school and drove me to the hospital. That is where I was told that my water had broken and that I would most likely deliver my girls within the week and there was nothing they could do at this early stage to prevent it. My husband held me as I cried at this devastating news.  Just a week and a half prior I had a detailed ultrasound where I learned my babies were girls and that everything was perfect!  I couldn’t believe this was happening to us! They gave us the option of inducing but I wasn’t showing signs of infection and both my girls had strong heartbeats so I didn’t feel that was an option for me. I was put on bed rest at the hospital and prayed for a miracle.

My Mom and one of my sisters were able to drive in from out of state that day and were with me in the hospital every day. My husband slept next to my hospital bed every night. I truly don’t know what I would have done without them!! Every day I had an ultrasound and saw Mariah’s fluid was decreasing but her heartbeat remained strong. Everything remained perfect with Juliette. After just a few days of bed rest I went to the bathroom one night and started frantically yelling to my husband to get a nurse because the cord to one of my babies was hanging outside of me. They told me Mariah’s cord had prolapsed and now I was at a much higher risk for infection. The doctor on call that night told me I should be induced immediately. I couldn’t stop crying but I refused to be induced as long as my babies had heartbeats.  Again my husband was strong for me and held me while I cried and supported me as we stepped further into our nightmare. The next few days were a struggle. I was told that as soon as I showed signs of infection that I would be immediately induced. I prayed every day for a miracle. The cord hanging out of me was so strange, but at the same time it created a unique connection between Mariah and me. Every time the cord moved I knew it meant my Mariah was moving and that she was hanging in. For two days I felt her moving for the first time inside of me along with the cord moving.

However, just a few days later I woke up one morning and knew immediately something was wrong. The cord was no longer moving or spongy looking – instead it was totally limp. When they did the ultrasound they confirmed that my brave little fighter’s heart had stopped. I was so heartbroken. The doctors then did a procedure where they clamped her cord and cut off the part that had been hanging outside of my body. I then had to pray that my body would somehow keep Mariah inside for a few weeks to give my Juliette a chance for survival. That night I felt Juliette moving inside and my husband felt her move under his hand for the first time. In the midst of our nightmare we had a moment of pure happiness!

The next morning I woke up and again knew something was wrong. I didn’t feel well and contractions had started. As long as my fever didn’t reach a certain temp the doctors wouldn’t induce me and maybe my body would deliver Mariah but keep Juliette inside. I struggled the whole day but deteriorated physically. I tried meditating, praying, everything. But my temp escalated and the doctors finally did blood work and they said I definitely had an infection. By this point I was so weak that I couldn’t even rise from the bed without assistance. The doctors told me they needed to speed things up because now I was at significant risk. They gave me a low dose of Pitocin and my doctor just sat on the bed with me while I pushed Mariah out. She was so tiny and the infection and lack of fluid had wreaked havoc on her little body but she was still breathtakingly beautiful!!She even had my long and skinny nose. She came out with her arms crossed over her tiny chest – her delicate hands touching her shoulders. My heart was broken but I couldn’t stop smiling at my beautiful little girl.

The doctors immediately stopped the Pitocin to see if my body would keep my Juliette inside. Unfortunately Juliette’s water broke not too much later and my fever remained high… so the doctors said they had no choice but to give me another low dose of Pitocin to speed things along. I then gave birth to my perfect Juliette. It broke my heart to see her perfect little body and what should have been had I been further along in my pregnancy. My sweet baby looked like she was just sleeping and had the same features as my husband! Everything about her was perfect and she had one hand by her head… I couldn’t stop touching her tiny fingers and toes. My heart ached with how perfect she was and again I smiled at my beautiful baby girl.

My husband and I got to hold both of our girls for a while that night. I never wanted to let them go. My heart cries every day for my girls. I love and wanted them so much. I don’t understand why I didn’t get to keep them here on Earth. I will love my angel babies forever and I hope they know how much their Mommy loves them. XOXOXO

Jen blogs at http://www.mybeautifulgirls-march5.blogspot.com.

Mom to América

Lost at 9 weeks October 24, 2011

Seville, Spain (originally from Walpole, Massachusettes)

I am American, living abroad in Spain.  We found out on September 14th, 2011 that I was pregnant with our much-desired baby number 2.  Our firstborn, Manuela, was just eleven months old, but truth be told, we had been trying since soon after she joined us.  There was “no rush” but we did want them to be close together in age (they would have been 19 months apart).  We were thrilled with the positive result and began to make plans for our new baby’s early May arrival.

I was very laid-back about the pregnancy and knew what to expect from the health system in Spain this time around.  I got in to see my midwife, had my first round of blood tests, and scheduled our first 12-week ultrasound for October 24th, the Monday after Manuela’s first birthday party and the day we had also chosen to finally sign paperwork to become civil partners.  I figured it would be one big day of celebration.  Boy, was I wrong.

We headed to the ultrasound first thing in the morning of a day that ended up fitting my mood – it was pouring down rain, gray and dark outside.  We were a little late for the appointment but they took us almost immediately.  My husband was in there with me when the doctor discovered that the fetus had no heartbeat.  I’ll never forget his words as he spoke to the nurse and then directed his words towards me, “Latido negativo.  Señora, esto es un aborto”.  (Translation: “Heartbeat negative.  Ma’am, this is a miscarriage.”) I started bawling and didn’t stop that entire day, except for the few minutes we were in the government office to sign paperwork for our civil partnership.  We decided to go through with our second appointment of the day despite the dark turn it had taken, if only to give it some ray of sunshine.

The doctor sent me to the hospital for a D&C, but they told me to come back the following day, since they would need to pump me with medication for my bleeding disorder (Von Willebrand’s disease) before the procedure.  We got there the next day and the whole process turned into a bit of a fiasco that I’d prefer to just forget about, but it was all finally over by the following day.  I was diagnosed with a missed miscarriage (called aborto diferido in Spain), which basically means I had no bleeding and the baby just stopped living, for whatever chromosomal reason.  They calculated that the baby stopped growing at around 9 weeks.

There were two things that were very important for me to do in order to deal with this loss.  First, we decided to name the baby América, since s/he was conceived during a trip we had made to the U.S. in August.  Second, I wanted something physical to remind me of this pregnancy.  For Christmas, my husband gave me a beautiful emerald charm necklace that represents the month of May, when Baby América would have been born.  I wear it almost every day and it gives me strength.

As with Manuela, the news of our pregnancy was public pretty much as soon as we found out.  I have a hard time keeping secrets, and I’ve always believed that there is no reason to keep a pregnancy secret in the first trimester, since I would want people to know if I were to miscarry to have the support.  I do stand behind that belief, as having the support turned out to be amazing, but on the other hand I can’t lie and say that having to “take back” the pregnancy news those first few weeks was not the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  I think in retrospect, I would probably do the same thing again, but will probably be a bit more reserved about spreading the news until we have our first ultrasound.  It was so comforting in the days following my miscarriage to hear from so many other women who reached out to me and shared their experiences, and lauded my bravery for making mine so public.  When I found facesofloss.com I knew I had to share my story here too.  Reading others’ stories and discovering that miscarriage is such a common occurrence takes away the stigma around it and makes recovery that much more tangible.

A couple months after this experience, in early December, I found out I had gallbladder stones and had to schedule surgery to have my gallbladder removed, which finally happened in early April.  A part of me wonders if Mother Nature knew my body was not ready to carry a baby because of this issue and took care of things for me.  Whatever the reason was, I will never know, and can’t beat myself up about what I might have done wrong.  It will always hurt when I think about losing this baby.  May 8th (América’s estimated due date) will be a particularly tough day for me, but I know I will get through it with the love and support of those who surround me.

Sarah blogs at http://www.babblesandbibis.blogspot.com

You can contact her at gemba17@gmail.com.

Mom to Baby Sawtelle

Lost September 14, 2005

Etna, Maine

My name is Donna. I met my husband Jerry through a mutual friend of ours, and I think I had some idea right from the start that we would spend the rest of our lives together. 

I always knew, ever since I was a little girl, that I wanted to be a mother.  I had a book that chronicled my school years when I was young, and for every year there was a section in the book asking what you wanted to be when you grew up.  I had some of the typical things, nurse, movie star, etc.  But I always put “Mommy.”

When I first met Jerry, I wanted 2 children, but he didn’t want any.  I never saw this as a deal-breaker, I knew I could change his mind.  I knew that we loved each other enough that we could find some middle ground to agree upon, and we did.  We agreed on one.

Jerry proposed to me on January 3rd, 2005, I was so excited!  I knew I wanted a fall wedding and we decided to plan for October 14th, 2006, I figured that would give us plenty of time to plan.  Plans changed.  In July 2005, I found out I was pregnant.  I was terrified and thrilled all at the same time.  I went for an ultrasound in August and found out that I was about 6 weeks along, due on April 7th.  I still have the pictures of my little bean, framed in my bedroom.

We decided, September that we would move the wedding up by more than a year (call me old fashioned, but I wanted to be married when I had my baby.)  We set a date of October 1st, 2005.  That gave me a little more than 3 weeks to put something together.  A little more than 2 weeks before the wedding, something was wrong.  I was convinced that I had a UTI, but my doctor said I was just dehydrated and just needed to drink more.  I went along with that until I started bleeding after my first OB visit.  I was told then that it was just because of my internal exam, and I would be fine.  I went along with that too, until I woke up one night with what felt like the worst cramps ever!  We took a trip to the ER and after some blood work I was told that my hormones weren’t where they should’ve been.  I was devastated.  We went home and I took the rest of the week off from work to stay at home so I could grieve and eventually miscarry.  I was told that the bleeding I experienced could be very heavy, but not too worry, it was normal. 

Within the next day or so I knew what I was experiencing wasn’t normal.  I was in unbelievable pain and I was bleeding, a lot!  Back to the ER we went.  I was hemorrhaging, and the doctors felt that I may not have miscarried on my own, like I was supposed to.  Now this is the point where I pretty much stopped grieving for the moment and had to worry about my own health.  I was shipped by ambulance to the hospital that my OB worked out of, and the following morning I was sent down for an ultrasound to confirm what the doctors had said.  Looking back on it, I feel like the ultrasound tech was a little bit unprofessional in letting me see the screen, but I’m almost glad I did get to see my baby.  There on the screen was my little 10 1/2 week baby, it looked pretty much like any other ultrasound picture, except in this one there was no movement, no heart beat.  I was in shock, so I didn’t really register what I was looking at. 

After the ultrasound I was taken to the OR to have a D&E, and I was sent home later that afternoon.

Everything hit me the next day, Thursday.  I cried I think the entire day, and then off and on for the rest of that weekend.  What really bothered me was people telling me that it was meant to be, and there’s nothing that could’ve been done.  Now, I don’t know if this makes any sense, but it bothers me that there wasn’t anything to be done, because it was my job as this baby’s mother to protect it at all costs. 

To this day, I will tell my story to anyone who will listen, simply because miscarriage and infant loss is still such a taboo subject.  I had no one to talk to almost 7 years ago, I felt like everyone around me ignored the elephant in the room, simply because they didn’t know what to say.  All I wanted was a shoulder to cry on, and I never really even got that.  I cried all by myself.

After the loss of our baby, Jerry promised me we would try again.  We still got married on October 1st, and by that November we were given the ok to try again.  In July of 2006, almost exactly a year later, I was pregnant again, with a due date of March 28th.  I feel like it was more than a coincidence that I was pregnant at almost exactly the same time as I was with our first baby.

On March 25th, at 3:24pm I gave birth to our beautiful baby girl, Jenna Louise, our one and only.  Even though, I had always wanted 2 children, I wholeheartedly agreed with Jerry in only having one by this point, mostly because I was terrified of having to go through a miscarriage again.  I didn’t think I could handle that again.

Jenna is 5 years old now and she is the light of our life!  We would be lost without her. 

I wear a small silver bean pendant every day, in remembrance of our little angel, and sometimes Jenna will ask me about the ultrasound picture on my bedroom wall.  “Mama, were you sad when that baby died?”  I tell her yes I was very sad, and I still think about that baby every day, but that it’s okay to be sad, and to talk about it.  I hope by the time she is ready to have children of her own, if, God forbid something like this should happen to her, or to someone she knows, that people will be aware, and educated enough to talk about such a horrible loss, and it will no longer be an issue that is swept under the rug.

 You can contact Donna at donna.sawtelle@gmail.com.

Mom to M. R. S.
Born into Heaven February 2011

and

J. Q. S.
Born into Heaven February 2012

Bowling Green, Kentucky

When I had my third child, I had only been not-pregnant for 16 months before getting pregnant with her. Unfortunately, in our humanness, we are broken people, and I was pretty resistant to having a baby so soon after having my second child. Her pregnancy was not a pleasant one, and neither was my attitude towards it. When she arrived though, and spent 7 days in the NICU, my attitude changed drastically. This sets the premise for the story of my first miscarriage.

Two years after my third child’s birth (exactly), the cycle of my fourth child’s pregnancy began. Three weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant. While having a fourth child when not financially stable and with three other children under the age of seven wasn’t ideal, I resolved that I was going to be happy about this baby and enjoy the time I had with her in my womb. I had had no previous complications with miscarriage; my three previous pregnancies had been relatively normal, why wouldn’t this one be also? I had had bleeding with this pregnancy, but told myself it wasn’t uncommon. I went to my doctor, who did an ultrasound, and at 5w6d gestation, there was my baby’s perfect little heartbeat. The doctor told me to take it easy over the weekend and come back Monday if bleeding persisted.

On Saturday over the weekend, I went to the bathroom and wiped, finding purple mucus (or what I thought was purple mucus), and inside somewhere, I knew it was my baby.

Monday, which was Valentine’s Day, I walked into the ultrasound room confident that my child was still within me. I was wrong. The scan showed nothing within my uterus. Secretly, I wanted to tell my doctor to keep looking, but it’s not like an endless cave in there and my baby was hiding somewhere in there, so I kept my mouth shut. I was 6 weeks pregnant when my baby left me.

Afterwards, the year that followed was tough. When God tells us to tell Him the desires of our heart, we have to remember that if it is not in His perfect Will, it won’t be granted. I forgot that, so not only had I lost a precious baby so soon, my faith with my God was bruised, even broken. Neither the loss of a baby nor the loss of some of one’s faith is something I would wish on my worst enemy. Recovering from one is hard enough; recovering from both is near impossible, and I have yet to completely, and in my opinion, satisfactorily, recover from both.

About nine months after my first loss, my husband and I decided to finally lay our will down at the feet of the Lord and let Him decide if we were ever going to have another child. Three months later, I was pregnant again.

For 11 weeks, I prayed to God that whatever happened, for good or bad, with this baby, He would give me the peace and strength to deal no matter what the circumstance. At my 11 week appointment, He showed up to answer my call.

Nothing ever prepares you for the moment your doctor tells you that the baby within you has died. More than once I had seen that tiny flicker of a heartbeat, and for the second time in a row, my baby’s heart stopped beating, and died. It’s not a miscarriage because my baby was still in his carriage; it’s not a loss because my baby was right where I left him, in my womb. It’s a death, because what once was alive is no longer living; what life was in me ceased. My baby died.

I had a D&C the following day. It’s not for everyone, but it was the right decision for me. When I was called back to prep for surgery, the attendant told me to pee in a cup so the lab could run a pregnancy test before my surgery. I didn’t bother telling her I was there for a D&C; rather, I did what I was told because I didn’t have the strength to tell her that it would come back positive, but I wouldn’t be pregnant for much longer because the baby in me was dead and that was why I was there.

I cried the three hours before surgery.

I cried during the pre-op questionnaire.

I cried during the I.V. placement.

I cried when my doctor came to tell me they were ready for me.

I cried when they gave me the anesthesia.

I cried as I was wheeled into the operating room, and as I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up I immediately started crying because my first thought was, “My baby’s gone; it’s all over.”

Shortly after my second loss I thought I was dealing well with it, but every day I find something that reminds me of my baby that should be in me right now. I fight thoughts of negativity towards my best friend who was due four days before me when I see her belly. I cry. But I remember something God whispered in my ear during the grieving process of my first miscarriage.

The Bible repeatedly talks about our days being numbered (ex: Ps. 39:4), and God knows that number. In those days He has a perfect Will designed for each of us. There is peace in knowing that my two children, who were never born onto this earth, satisfied the number of days they were appointed, and in that time, carried out the perfect Will of the Father. While I still don’t understand what their lives were meant for, what God’s Will for their lives were, I know that they completed their time here fully, performing the Will for their lives, and now rest in Heaven with God in perfection. They’re lives may have been short, but they were FULL lives according to their number of days, and in that I find great comfort <3

After the deaths of both of my unborn children, my husband and I chose names for them that only we and God know. One thing that I believe whole-heartedly is that every child deserves a name. It gives them an identity and reminds us that these were real people, not just cells and tissue (for all of us are that also, and we have names and identities). I also have a bracelet with my children’s birth stones and first initial on it. It includes both my living children and my children who live in Heaven. I am a mother of five, and I choose not to uninclude the existence of two of my children just because they were never in my arms

I have memory boxesfor both, each containing ultrasound pictures in frames which have their name on them, and one that has a baby blanket that I made for the impending arrival. They are in my closet next to each other with their first initial on the top of the box. I don’t look in them often, if at all; the pain is still too fresh. But I know if I want to feel close to them, they’re just an arm’s reach away from me, and I can see them in the only pictures we have of them. And that makes dealing with their deaths a little easier.

Vanessa blogs at http://noordinarylovesong.blogspot.com.

You can contact her at isthisgirl@gmail.com.  

Mom to Samuel

Stillborn February 16, 2012

Berkshire, United Kingdom

When we got pregnant we had tried to conceive for a few years and had also added two cycles of IVF to the mix of building our family. To finally be pregnant was a victory and we couldn’t wait to meet our baby. A true miracle it was.

My pregnancy was pretty uneventful, I had just a little nausea, heartburn and general tiredness but otherwise I was feeling good and healthy. From week twelve I started more and more to believe this was real and my fears of something going wrong decreased significantly.

But I never in a million years thought it would come to what we discovered at the anatomy scan at 19 weeks. It was found that our baby boy suffered from a congenital heart defect which is incompatible with life: Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.

We were going from the joy of finding out the gender to a deep emotional crisis in the matter of hours. It shook our world. After a lengthy appointment with experts we had the full diagnosis clear and learned just how severe this heart defect is.

We didn’t say much on the way home but looking back I can see that we knew deep inside early on what we needed to do.

Another week went by and we had a follow up appointment with our doctor. After a lot of thought, research, many tears, soul-searching and talks at length with doctors, friends and family, we decided to let him go.

We learned the hard way just how powerful Love can be; we strongly believe that it was our way of showing our baby boy the ultimate Love and protection. It was the most heart-wrenching and difficult decision to make but when it was taken there was a shift in me. The acute stress and anxiety was gone, the grieving had begun and I cried more peaceful tears.

Samuel was born still on the 16th of February 2012. Three weeks later his memorial service was held. We found it very comforting and helpful to be able to let go of his physical body and acknowledge his short life with us.

Maria blogs at http://www.marwil.org.

Jennifer

Mother to Jude Allen

December 21, 2011

Parker, Colorado

Jude’s Story (from my blog)
Jude was the child God had for us from the beginning. We will probably never know completely why we weren’t able to spend this life with him, but we wait with eager anticipation for the day we will all be together again in Heaven.

This is how his story began:

He was our first. We’d been trying for a while, and were absolutely elated when we found out I was pregnant. Our lives seemed to be going according to plan. My nursing career was in a good spot for having a baby (though my immediate plans for graduate school had to go on hold) and thanks to my job and Jess’ Air Force scholarship for medical school, we felt financially prepared. Everything seemed perfect.

The first doctors visit it felt like I had a rock in the pit of my stomach. I wanted so badly for my baby to be healthy, and I was so nervous! Then I saw that little flutter on the screen, and I knew I really was going to be a mama. I was so happy, but still tried to guard my emotions. I knew that we were still in the “danger zone” for miscarriage, but simply knowing that a beautiful little human being was growing inside of me,… well the joy of that miracle is inexplainable. The love that Jess and I both felt the minute we saw that little fluttering blob on the screen is stronger that any emotion we had ever experienced previous to that moment.

Everything went smoothly with the early pregnancy. I had almost no morning sickness, and few other symptoms. I did have spotting off and on throughout the first trimester. My doctor always said that it was within the normal boundaries, but I now wonder if it wasn’t my body recognizing that there was something drastically wrong. When everything looked good at our 12 week ultrasound any attempts at being careful and trying “not to get my hopes up” went out the window. I was having a baby, and I was in love!

We had an elective gender ultrasound at 18 weeks, and found out that we were having a BOY! My husband was bursting with pride. They way he said: “I’m having a son!” made me so happy, it brought tears to my eyes. We named him Jude Allen, after Jess’ dad, who passed away when Jess was in highschool. We researched, registered, and started buying cute little outfits, cloth diapers, baby carriers, a co-sleeper; I started crocheting hats, and working on nursery projects,… the works. Right at 18 weeks I also started feeling him move. It felt like he was doing kickboxing in there! The next three weeks were a gift; probably the happiest of my life. I was a carefree “glowing” pregnant lady planning all the little details of my child’s life with hardly a concern in the world.

I had very little nervousness going into my 20 week anatomy scan (which we actually didn’t have until 21 weeks). We were just excited for another chance to see our beautiful boy (it was on my birthday, happy birthday to me!). The tech started the ultrasound, and got quieter and quieter. She mentioned a few things like uneven measurements, he was measuring small, he didn’t want to move so she couldn’t get a good look at his organs. She seemed pretty serious, and we were worried, but our doctor said that it was likely just his own growth pattern. “Every baby grows a little different.” She wanted us to go see a perinatologist though, just to be safe. She said it was probably nothing.

The perinatologist appointment was a week later. It was such a long week, but half-way through Jess was able to feel Jude move for the first (and only) time. We felt lke this was reassurance that everything was going to be ok. We went to that appointment expecting good news, but that’s not how it worked. The ultrasound tech was fighting back tears as she left the room to go get the doctor. That’s when I started to think it might really be serious. The doctor came in and started listing the abnormalities that he saw,…. it was a long list. That day he mentioned several different possible diagnoses (Trisomy 13 and 18 were at the top of the list), almost all of them fatal, and recommended that we have an amniocentesis. We had the amnio two days later, and got the results 2 days after that. November 19th, 2011 (my husband’s birthday, happy birthday to him!): our Jude had Triploidy. A rare and fatal chromosomal anomaly where the baby has triples instead of doubles of every single chromosome. A healthy baby has 46 chromosomes. A baby with Trisomy 13, 18, or the most well-known trisomy: 21 (Down Syndrome), has 47 chromosomes. Our baby Jude had 69. The doctors were amazed that he had survived this long, as most babies conceived with Triploidy are miscarried very early on. (At times we felt like their science experiement; because our situation was so rare.) It was unlikely that he would survive to term, and would almost certainly be born still. If by some miracle he was born with a heartbeat, then he would die almost immediately thereafter because his anomalies were so severe. Severe enough that no conscientious doctor would even have tried to treat him because it would just be causing unnecessary pain.

At this point I was about 23 weeks along, and we were encouraged to “terminate” (I HATE that word!) right away as this diagnosis can hold life threatening risks to the mother. Cancer, Pre-eclampsia, future infertility, and hemorrhaging to name a few. One practitioner I spoke to said that there was up to an 80% chance of pre-eclampsia if I tried to carry Jude to term. The way he was positioned inside me caused a high chance that if he kept growing to term he would be the only child Jess and I could ever have. The placenta also looked suspicious for a complication associated with Triploidy called a partial molar pregnancy which causes increasing risk of cancer the longer the placenta is attached. It was scary. But losing my baby was scarier. We couldn’t fathom it. We sat at home stunned. We spent hours in each other’s arms sobbing and praying. I didn’t seem right that the world just kept spinning, when our lives had come to a complete standstill. I could still feel him moving inside me, but he was slowing down, moving less and less. Sadly, when I did feel him, there was little joy; mostly fear of the day that the movement would stop. We had to make decisions, big decisions, but life was such a fog. The pain was so overwhelming. Through it all we felt God’s presence so strongly and the love of our church family so keenly. This, the support of our families, and the prayers of an army are what kept us moving through those difficult days.

Several weeks later, after much prayer, fasting, and seeking wisdom from people we trust, we finally made the decision to induce. It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life; but we feel as though God claimed Jude’s life from the beginning. It was so hard to try and prioritize my life vs. his life. That’s what the decision felt like. And the lives of our potential future children were also on the line. We believe that all life is sacred, and if there had been any glimmer of hope for Jude’s survival I would have continued to carry him as long as my body would have allowed. Jess and I were willing to take that risk, but given the absolute hopelessness of Jude’s condition we felt that taking that risk was foolish. God gives life and he takes it away. He claimed Jude’s life from the beginning, and in the end we felt as though we had the freedom to release Jude’s life to God sooner rather than later in order to preserve my life and the lives of our future children. God has provided us with the means to have great medical knowledge, and we felt that the wise decision was to take this medical knowledge into consideration. We believe in miracles, and we prayed for one up until the moment Jude was born. We felt that we had received God’s answer to our prayers. Jesus wanted Jude in Heaven, and we were at peace with our decision to allow him to go. But oh, it hurt.

We went in at 8:00am on 12/20/2011. (I was 27weeks pregnant; a survivable age for an otherwise healthy baby to be born.) I was given an obscene dose (16x higher than for a normal induction) of meds to kick my body into labor. Right after the second dose, early that afternoon, we had the nurse check for Jude’s heartbeat. That was the last time we heard that precious sound. His tiny heart may have only had two chambers, but it made the most beautiful noise I’ve ever heard. It took a while, and several more dosages. All that day and night we waited. I did have an epidural; though I always wanted a natural labor. I had even wanted to use a natural birth center with midwives at the beginning of the pregnancy. But with so much emotional pain and anguish, I just didn’t feel it necessary to put myself through the physical pain as well. And to what gain would it have been? Now, I’m very glad that I did have the epidural. It worked like a dream. I still couldn’t sleep that night because I was so anxious, but at least I didn’t feel the physical pain.

Finally, at 6:35 am on December 21st, Jude Allen was born. He had already gone to Jesus. The room was silent. No apgars stated, no infant’s cry, no “congratulations mommy!” I had just given birth to my son. My firstborn. And I wanted to feel the joy that should be attached to that event; but there he was: tiny, blue, broken, breathless… and yet still beautiful. He weighed in at just under a pound; 14.8 ounces, and was 12 inches long. His little form was clearly not made for this world; merely a vessel for his beautiful soul. Even still, we could see bits and pieces of ourselves in him. He had my chin, Jess’ eyebrows, and the cutest little button nose and rosebud lips you’ve ever seen. I could tell that if he had lived he would have had an epic pouty face, and would probably have gotten his way far too often.

Thanks to the help of several fantastic organizations we were prepared with tiny clothes and craft supplies for making as many memories as possible in the short time we had with him. (I have a separate resource page on my blog for more info on the organizations that helped us prepare for Jude’s birth: here ) My parents, and Jess’ mom were all there so Jude’s grandmas both helped give him his first bath. They dressed him, Jess and I read him several books we had brought, my dad (who is a pastor) dedicated him to the Lord and read several beautiful Bible passages (also listed on the resource page are these verses, as well as many more that have been special through this whole experience.), we had a photographer take family pictures, and got footprints on everything we could think of.

We spent most of that day with him; trying to give him a lifetime of love in a few short hours. He was so fragile, that it was difficult. I wanted to kiss him all over, and examine every little piece of him; but we mostly kept him swaddled in the beautiful blanket my mom had crocheted for him. I was afraid I would break him even more. I regret these inhibitions now, but at least we got the time with him that we did. At least we loved him the best we knew how in the limited life that we were honored to share with him.

The funeral home came for him late that afternoon. Kissing him goodbye, and handing my baby to a complete stranger was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I knew I’d never see him again. I wanted to give him just one more kiss, tell him one more time that I loved him; but I knew I would never be ready to say that final goodbye. The funeral director put him in a little box with a lid to carry him out. I hated that. He was my baby, and he didn’t belong in a box, but I understood that they couldn’t just carry him out of the room in view of other laboring and new moms, that wouldn’t be “appropriate”. So, into the box he went, and then he was gone. We were able to check out of the hospital that night and go home. Walking off the OB floor carrying flowers and footprints instead of a baby felt so lonely; but we were immensely blessed to have each other and our family around us for the days and weeks following Jude’s birth.

I know that I will meet him again someday in Heaven, but it’s hard to wait. I miss him so much. It’s still a marvel to me that I could love that tiny person with such passion. I never really knew him after all, but I loved him more than life itself. And while each day brings us farther and farther from that awful goodbye, it also brings us closer and closer to a glorious “Hello!” This is what I choose to focus on.

Our ongoing prayer is that Jude’s story isn’t over. It isn’t for us, and it never will be. God has used Jude’s short life to change us. We have a different perspective on life, relationships, the love of our Savior, and eternity, all because of Jude. We have been told by many that this is true for them as well. I feel that as long as God is using Jude’s story to grow people and bring them closer to Himself then his story isn’t over. God is still writing it, and I look forward to seeing it unfold.

Isaiah 61:3
To all who mourn in Israel,
he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
that the Lord has planted for his own glory.

You can view Jennifer’s blog at http://jessandjennanderson.blogspot.com/

Jennifer can be reached at jessandjenn@gmail.com

 Amy

Mom to Anna

Born still April 25, 2011

Early loss December 2011

Troy, Michigan

In honor of my daughter, Anna, who would have been 1 year old this April 25th, I have decided to share her story in hopes of creating awareness and helping even just one person experiencing the death of a baby.  When we unexpectedly lost our baby girl after a completely healthy full term pregnancy, I needed to know that I was not the only person this had ever happened to, and I found this website to be, by far, the most helpful resource.  I was able to select from categories that applied specifically to my type of loss and what I found was story after story of women like me.  Their stories were very sad to read, nightmares in fact, but their words often felt like my own, which was oddly comforting.  As of the day I write this, I am joining 95 women who have shared stories of full term loss and 40 women who have shared stories of umbilical cord accidents.  There are also 37 Michigan women who have shared stories of all kinds.  This is difficult to do, but it is my gift to Anna, and my obligation, to use this experience to help others.

I once read that stillbirths typically happen in textbook pregnancies, and I would consider that to be true in our case.  Throughout the pregnancy, we had 11 doctor appointments and 6 ultrasounds, never missing one.  Everything always checked out great.  My blood pressure, weight gain, baby’s heartbeat, and growth were always on track.  With each appointment and each milestone, we had more and more reassurance that our baby was thriving and healthy.

I battled “morning” sickness the entire first half of the pregnancy (until 19 weeks), but like most expecting moms, I was so excited and did everything I could to ensure a healthy baby.  I ate right, drank lots of water, exercised, took prenatal vitamins, read lots of pregnancy books, and of course steered clear of all the bad things.  I was very aware that many things could go wrong, but by the halfway point, I seemed to be worrying less.  I was definitely showing now and feeling movements, and the big 20 week ultrasound had indicated we were having a little girl.  A girl!  I dreamed about putting barrettes in her hair, enrolling her in gymnastics classes, and of course that she would one day marry my best friend’s baby boy.  But more importantly, all of her major structures appeared normal (heart, limbs, brain, spine, etc.) and we got to see that she in fact had 2 hands and 2 feet, four chambers in her heart, and the cutest little button nose.  We had also opted to do the full genetic screenings, which revealed “beautiful” results, meaning there was very little risk for birth defects.  Around 24 weeks, I had passed the glucose screening test and our baby was now considered “viable”, meaning if she were to be born prematurely she would have a chance of survival.  This was good to know since we had ordered her nursery furniture and had already been researching and selecting all the latest baby items for her registry.  We read about her growth and development each week and continued to prepare for her by “interviewing” a pediatrician, touring the hospital, and taking an infant CPR class.

At 28 weeks, we entered the third trimester and began to see the doctor more frequently.  I was getting bigger now and having lots of discomfort around this time, but I absolutely loved being pregnant with Anna and feeling her move and kick.  I don’t think I have to tell anyone that having a baby is one of the most exciting things that life has to offer.  So we celebrated with two beautiful baby showers, at which we received tons and tons of stuff.   Of course I agonized about having the right amounts of everything, making multiple trips to the store in the final weeks.  My husband assembled the baby gear, as I read the manuals to familiarize myself.  We took every class we could to prepare for her arrival (Prenatal Education, Childbirth, Breastfeeding, Baby Care and Safety) and all of our thoughts began to center around the labor and delivery just around the corner.  When would it happen and what would it be like?  And were we ready for this big moment?  A few clothes and blankets had been washed, the car seat installed, and the hospital bag packed.  The nursery was all decorated, in creams and browns with touches of girly pink flowers, ruffles and bows.  I could write an entire story about the memories and the love that went into each detail of her nursery.  It was a room I had dreamed about before I was even pregnant.

And then, just after we had reached 37 weeks, full term, and could hardly wait to lay eyes on this mysterious little person that had been growing inside of me, captivating our hearts and occupying our minds all these months, she died.  Before we even got to meet her.  Our first child.  Our baby girl.  I can’t even begin to explain the shock, heartache, and agonizing pain we felt, and still feel at times.  Everything had been fine all along including a strong heartbeat at Friday’s doctor appointment, but by Monday she was gone.  Just like that, and without warning.  She simply just stopped moving over the weekend.  I had not fallen or been in an accident.  There had not been any prenatal diagnosis indicating she was sick.  There had not been any contractions, bleeding, or illness that the books and doctors had said to look out for.  Even so, we were past the point of being concerned about preterm labor and certainly didn’t imagine our baby would just suddenly die in the 38^th week of pregnancy.  This was just not something we had heard of happening.  But I had become concerned with her lack of movement on Easter Sunday and by 3am, we found ourselves driving to the hospital, where an ultrasound revealed no heartbeat and changed our lives forever.

In writing this story, I wanted to focus on the love we felt for Anna without reliving every painful and personal detail of losing her.  It was obviously a nightmare.  So I will just say that the enormity of this news was so much to bear that I couldn’t even cry in that initial moment.  My logical mind needed answers.  What could have possibly caused something like this to happen?  This was the year 2011 and our medical care was supposed to be top-notch.  How could my doctors have missed something during all those appointments and ultrasounds?  I was angry.  And then I turned that anger inward.  I began to wonder if perhaps I had somehow done something to cause this and my irrational mind started to analyze every moment of that weekend and of my entire pregnancy.  Deep down, I knew this was not my fault, nor my doctors’ fault.  But I needed to understand what had happened in order to fully be convinced.

Unfortunately, the doctors could only speculate at that point and it was possible that we would never know what went wrong, so I would just have to wait and hope for answers.  And I would have to wait to fall apart too, because I had a job to do now.  I was still having a baby, after all.  So, over the course of 8 hours, I was given medication to induce labor and another 8 hours later, Anna was born.  She was so beautiful, I couldn’t believe it.  She was 5 lbs., 6oz., 19 inches, with brown hair, a cute button nose, tiny little chin, and chubby cheeks.  The love and pride I felt as her mom was no different than had she been born alive and I continue to be grateful for all the things we did to prepare for her and celebrate her.  She deserved it.

Anna was perfect.  But her umbilical cord was not.  It was later determined that she had developed fully and normally, but her blood flow had stopped due to an umbilical cord accident.  There are all types of umbilical cord accidents, but in Anna’s case, her cord happened to grow very long with many twists, causing it to become constricted and compressed, essentially cutting off her lifeline.  It was a very rare thing that happened and this information didn’t make us feel good or better, but we were very grateful to have answers and a doctor who was willing to explain things, over and over.  It is very unlikely to ever happen again, but we have since had another loss, right out of the gate, at just five and a half weeks.  Unfortunately stillbirth does not make you immune to miscarriage.  If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading about Anna as we remember the day she was born, one year ago.  Of course, this is only a small part of her story and only the beginning.  But it is my hope that someone reading this will identify with something I’ve said, and Anna’s existence will continue to serve a very special purpose.

You can contact Amy at spartan81780@aol.com.

Karen

Mother to Nicholas John

Born in the arms of angels 19 March 2012

Gold Coast, Australia

I can’t believe it has been 3 weeks and 3 days since it happened, it feels so much longer – certainly longer than the entire 9 month pregnancy! Three weeks and three days since we said hello and goodbye to our little man. Three weeks and three days filled with questions, guilt, “what if’s”, “why me’s?”, and tears; more tears than you could ever think possible to cry. Even though we know what happens at the end, it is important to start at the beginning:

Our journey began in August 2010 when we were thrilled to find out we were expecting a little person – a sibling for our little boy Christian. We had been trying for months and finally all our hard work paid off – we just couldn’t be happier. Unfortunately nature had other ideas.  At the 10 week mark the worst nightmare for any expectant mother happened – bleeding and cramping. You want to believe the best but deep down you just know that you aren’t going to be pregnant for much longer and all those dreams you had for your little one disappear in that instant. My doctor recommended I get an ultrasound straight away and not only did this confirm what we already knew, but it showed that there was never a baby there in the first place! I had what they call a blighted ovum. I felt completely cheated and betrayed by my body – my heart and emotions were grieving but my body had given them nothing to grieve over – it is a horrible place for a would-be mother to be in! I don’t really remember much about those days but I do remember being left in a hospital room for hours by myself while waiting for a D&C and the specialist on duty trying to reassure me that I should be relieved because no baby had actually died.  When he said that I made a conscious decision to tell people I had a miscarriage because even though my body didn’t lose a baby, my mind and heart did.  It took me weeks to get over it, but onwards we went and finally settled back into our family routine, and still determined to give Christian that sibling we all really wanted.

That dream finally became a reality when in July 2011 we found out we were pregnant again – 5 weeks to be exact. Those double blue lines were the focus of our attention for the following 3 weeks; we had to keep looking at it to reassure ourselves it really was positive, but we were very mindful not to get our hopes up too high after our last experience. All we had to do make it to our 8 week scan and see that little heartbeat. And what a heartbeat it was! The relief we felt was so overwhelming that I cried; now I have a life inside of me to plan for, not just a fantasy.  We also confirmed our due date – 27^th March.  Even more exciting was that two women I work with also found out they were pregnant and we were all due within 10 days of each other – someone to share the pregnancy with and swap war stories – it made the experience so much more enjoyable.  Apart from the morning (all day) sickness the pregnancy was a smooth one.  Being over 35 they monitored me more closely than normal and about half way through I started getting heart palpitations often which saw me meeting with a specialist on a regular basis.  But other than that it was a “dream pregnancy”, or so they told me at each appointment.  We found out we were having a boy at our 20 week scan (we didn’t need to be told, he flashed us a number of times!) and the debate over names immediately began.  We were thrilled – a little best mate for Christian.  We involved Christian in the pregnancy right from the start and he was so excited.  He even went through his toys and picked out all the ones he wanted to give to Nicholas.  Each night he kissed my belly goodnight and every morning said hello to him – it was so very special.  At the 30 week appointment I tripped over on to my stomach right outside the hospital, while trying to navigate some road works – they monitored me for a short time but my little Jackie Chan was kicking up a storm like normal so was sent home with a clean bill of health.  The next 9 weeks went by so quickly – we were busy organising things for our wedding which is coming up in June and were thinking that we must start unpacking Christian’s baby things at some point.  We didn’t even buy Nicholas anything ourselves (not even a little vest) as I wanted to wait until we unpacked everything to see what we needed, a decision I now deeply regret.

The 16^th March was my last day at work.   I had noticed that his movements had slowed down somewhat but because my Braxton Hicks had been stronger and more painful over the previous 24 hours I thought that must have been the reason.  When I got home that night I felt so nauseous and so unbelievably tired that I had to go to bed by 7pm – very unusual for me, but I just thought I had overdone it that day.  The next morning I woke to very little movement again; it only felt like slight hiccups, but once again I put it down to the Braxton Hicks or probably just preparing himself for labour (I really wish I hadn’t read on the internet that babies slow down just before labour – it gives you false hope).  I carried on with my day and by 2pm realised that I hadn’t felt him at all since 8 that morning.  But then at 3pm a huge sigh of relief – he rolled over!  But it turned out to be the very last time I would ever feel him move.  By 6pm I was very concerned and bundled my fiancé and Christian into the car to go to the hospital.  They put me in the delivery suite and strapped me to the Doppler machine. When I heard a heartbeat I felt so relieved, but the next instant completely deflated when I saw the midwife mouth “maternal”.  She silently walked out and got the doctor who did an ultrasound straight away.  The doctor then said the words I will never forget: “I am so sorry, but there is no heartbeat”.  I broke down into tears; I just couldn’t believe this was happening.  My poor fiancé – he was trying to keep our boy occupied and calm while at the same time trying to process the news himself.  We called my mum to pick up Christian and after she left with him we just sat in the delivery room, staring at the happy baby posters on the wall and listening to the screaming woman next door giving birth, while trying to comprehend what had just happened.  After a long time of waiting, another ultrasound, lots of blood tests and some people trying to talk to us, we decided to go home and spend one more night in our bed with our baby before being induced.  We finally made it back there at 1am.

The next morning we had the awful task of letting our families know.  We are both from very large families so the task was very torturous.  We are glad we did because the support and love we received from them over the following two days was amazing and really got us through.  We arrived at the hospital at midday on 18^th March (unfortunately my fiancé’s birthday) and were assigned a room at the far end of the delivery ward, with two rooms beside us which were to remain empty for the entire time.  We were both made as comfortable as possible and the midwives we had were absolutely amazing.  Nothing was too much trouble and we were allowed as many visitors as we liked at any time day or night (not that we really wanted any).  I was finally induced at 3pm that day.  I honestly didn’t think it would take long so I didn’t pack anything – not even a toothbrush!!  The 19^th March arrived and after having very little sleep my contractions kicked in with a vengeance and was immediately given an epidural.  The midwife that was assigned to us that day was such a beautiful soul.  She stayed with us the entire time and made sure we were keeping sane – even in such an awful time boredom does set in when you are bedridden looking at the same four walls and not having the ability to even focus on a TV or magazine.  The whole day really felt like we were waiting for the executioner as we knew how the day was going to end- you just wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.  Because of the epidural I couldn’t tell how strongly my labour was progressing but I do remember being fully dilated at 2pm after only being 2cm at 10am.  They didn’t get me to start pushing though until 4pm. When it was time to start the midwife turned down the lights and closed the door and the room suddenly became very calm and peaceful – no one made a sound during the next 45 minutes.  Even though it was so heartbreaking to think that we will not get to hear any cries when he arrived, I felt incredibly blessed and honoured to be able to give birth to my baby boy – it really was beautiful.

He finally arrived into the world at 4.49pm weighing 7lb 4oz and 52cm long.  We got to hold him straight away and I just drank in every bit of him, from head to toe; he was perfect in every way, except he wasn’t breathing.  I watched his chest for the longest time willing for it to start moving, to start rising and falling, but it never did.  He looked so much like his father and had the biggest hands and feet I had ever seen on a baby.  He was also very fragile, that just moving him slightly made you think you were going to break him.  It was the most emotional and peaceful time of my life – even the midwife cried with us.  After about an hour he was taken away to be cleaned, dressed and measured and then he was brought back.  My mum and sister came up to meet Nicholas, they brought their camera and took a lot of pictures, which I am so glad they did because I look at them a thousand times a day.  We wanted to spend more alone time with him so they left but unfortunately all the doctors and specialists started coming in so was a little impossible to do.  The pediatrician came in to examine him externally right next to me.  Although I knew he had to do it, it was a very upsetting experience and I couldn’t bear to watch it.  Unfortunately his little body had been manipulated that much that he was starting to not look so good and I was completely petrified that my lasting memories of my little angel would be of him like that, so after saying our long, teary goodbyes we asked the midwife to take him away.  It was devastating watching him being wheeled away knowing that we would never see him again.  Leaving the hospital that night was the hardest thing I have ever had to do; to leave without your baby you have just given birth to is something that no parent should have to go through – EVER!  We had made the decision to keep Christian away from the hospital, but it is a decision that I now question because he keeps asking where his little brother is as, even though we have tried to explain it to him, he doesn’t fully understand what has happened.

The shock of what had just happened rendered us completely useless and was in no state to organise a funeral in those early days.  We finally got our act together and said goodbye to Nicholas again in a most beautiful service on 30^th March.  All of our families came and some had even travelled to be there.  My dad and brother who live in New Zealand were also skyped in.  It showed the level of love there was for Nicholas even though they never got to meet him.  Our wonderful celebrant was amazing – she gave Nicholas a voice and made every part of that service about him.  She is now marrying us in June and we couldn’t think of a more fitting, perfect person to do it – it is like she will be Nicholas’ representative.  We didn’t have his little coffin at the front of the chapel as I didn’t think I could bear it, but after the funeral was over my fiancé and I went to say our private goodbyes to him.  Seeing that tiny white coffin with his name inscribed on the top broke my heart even more, just when you think there is nothing left of it to break.

Our journey isn’t over yet.  We opted to get an autopsy done to try and find out what happened and we are still waiting for the results.  We know that we could come away from all of this with no answers to any of our questions, but we hope that it will relieve some of the guilt that we have, or erase a lot of the “What ifs” that currently crowd my head.  I try and take comfort in the fact that he passed away in the warmest and safest place a baby could possibly be: surrounded and held completely by his mum and love.  As we chose to get him cremated we are still waiting to lay his ashes which we hope to do this coming Saturday.  I choose not to look at this as yet another goodbye, but rather as a “welcome home my baby” – somewhere where he can finally be at peace.  He may not get to have his own bedroom or his own bike but he will have his own piece of paradise in the children’s garden which is full of colour and light.  I am having a small part of his ashes placed inside a locket and inside a teddy bear.  Our wedding rings will be tied to this bear and he will be carried by Christian up the aisle, that way we get to have both of our boys by our side when we get married – the way it was meant to be.

To make things even harder – those two women at work are now having their babies.  One had a healthy baby girl last week and the other is now overdue.  Everyone is waiting on the news of this new baby with such excitement but I am waiting for it like an executioners axe.  I want to be happy for them, I really do, but I just can’t be right now.   In fact the thought of it makes me really nervous and filled with dread, because I know in the coming weeks, months and years I will be looking at their children knowing that my boy should be with them playing, laughing, running, living.  And while they get to feed, cuddle, show off their babies and complain over how tired they are, I just get to look at pictures of mine and touch the locket that holds a part of him.  I do get to tell everyone I have two beautiful boys but then I get to watch their faces drop when they realise one is an angel.  That is our next, new heartbreak.  Life really is not fair.

Through all the sadness, tears and devastation I feel proud, blessed and privileged to have known my little baby boy – he was such a special boy…and always will be.  He has taught us so much already and he will remain a huge part of our lives for the rest of our lives.  I am comforted by the thought that he is up there surrounded by other angel babies and knowing he will be happy and looked after until I see him again.

Rest easy my angel boy xxx

Karen can be reached at klgrosvenor@hotmail.com

Heather

Mom to Everett

Born sleeping February 10, 2012

Wakefield, Rhode Island

Before his delivery date, my son had everything he could possibly need. We made sure he was registered for the car seat with the highest safety ratings.  We chose organic cotton onesies that were softest to the touch.  We even had the warming machine for the wet wipes.  Sisters were knitting hats, friends were making quilts, and grandmothers were already decorating the nursery in their mind’s eye.  Finally, he had a name.  Believe it or not, it came to me in a dream.  Maybe he told me himself – his name was to be Everett.

The morning after my dream, I told my husband about Everett’s name.  He loved it. We were so excited!  We were ready to meet him.  Little did we know we would meet him so soon.  That day, the day after my dream, I went into preterm labor.

I was rushed to Women & Infants hospital.  I was given medication to stop the labor and to increase Everett’s brain and lung function in case he was born early.  The nurses were caring and attentive, and the doctors were some of the most respected in the country.  Everett was getting the finest care possible.

Once my labor stopped, the doctors told me to just hold on for 48 hours.  This would give the treatment time to take effect.  After six and a half months of wishing time would hurry up, I was begging time to slow down.  “Please stay in there!” I kept telling Everett, “we’re not ready to meet you just yet.”

Tuesday at 5 o’clock came, and he was fine!  We had increased his chances of survival.  He was so strong!  Wednesday came and went and all was still ok.  We had our family and friends sending word that they were thinking of us and praying for us.  We were strong and we would make it.  Thursday morning was great and our spirits were high.  I was even enjoying the hospital food – the chocolate cookies were delicious.

Thursday afternoon was when we heard the devastating news.  They could not find a heartbeat.  Our son was gone.  He would no longer need a car seat or a crib or a knit hat.  He no longer needed the best medicine or the smartest doctors.  He didn’t even need me to eat cookies for him anymore.  When we met him later that night, he was beautiful.  He had my husband’s nose and my big feet, and he was perfect.

In the weeks that followed, my grief was unimaginable.  I found that I wanted to tell everyone about my son, but I held back, understanding that such a sad story is not always welcomed.  I learned, however, that there are many people who have similar stories to mine.  Whether the grieving parents called their babies they lost simply “baby,” or had a name picked out at conception, I believe that acknowledging them by name is appreciated.  Although it is not a tangible object, Everett’s name is the most important part of his memory.  It encompasses all that he was and all that he could have been.  Everett is our son.

*

After writing the essay above, my husband and I learned what happened to Everett.  His heart never formed correctly from the beginning.

He had multiple “major” congenital heart defects. The doctor’s theory was this: because the valves did not operate properly, the blood was getting backed up into the placenta. Due to this, the placenta got heavier and thicker than it was supposed to be, which led to it tearing away from the uterus, which caused the blood clot and then the preterm labor.  Then, since he was not getting any blood at all after that, his heart gave out and he passed .

Here are the details :

1) HLHS – this is the major defect he had.  It affects 3-4 in 10,000 “live births.” This basically means the left side of his heart did not develop at all.

2) Bicuspid Aortic Valve – His aortic valve only had 2 “leaflets” instead of 3

3) Aortic Stenosis – his valves did not open and shut all the way.

The good news – he didn’t have any other abnormalities at all – he was perfectly healthy, and my placenta was also perfectly healthy. Sometimes physical abnormalities can occur with HLHS, but he didn’t exhibit any of them.

Also – what causes these heart defects is unknown.  It is probably a genetic mutation, but there is no test for it yet.  We should be able to try again.

My husband and I have faith that we will have a healthy baby.  We miss Everett every second of every day, but we are also so grateful for the strength he gave us, and we are so blessed to have had him in our lives!

Heather can be reached at Heatherbiben@hotmail.com.

Jianna

Mom to Mackensie Owenn

Born still November 2, 2011

Parker, Colorado

I’ve always dreamt of having a really big family of my own, I love being around people (shocker, I know!) and I absolutely love that we have such a HUGE family now (between Brad and I, we have 5 siblings and 9 nieces and nephews).  I love watching all of the kids play with one another and knowing they will all be able to grow up together (and get into trouble together)!  I remember telling my Mom that I thought having an ‘odd’ amount of kids is better than even, why, I have no idea; I think I just always wanted more than 2, so an ‘odd’ amount sounded good to me.  When Brad and I had Jace we instantly knew that we wanted a big family- 3 to be exact! 

So early in 2011 we decided to start working on a sibling for Jace Daniel and in early February we found out we were pregnant!  Now let me back up for a second- for those who know me, I am a total planner and had ‘certain’ months that I wanted to have kids in and some that were on the “NO WAY” list (I totally believe in zodiac signs, never mind that they RECENTLY changed…what a crock…HA! And never mind the reason I have ‘certain’ months picked out).  SO, having a baby in October was great, in fact it was perfect- my ‘plans’ were going just the way I had, well, planned!  Brad and I were so excited that I got pregnant right away!, we couldn’t keep it to ourselves, so we ended up telling our immediate family shortly after I tested ‘positive’.  Obviously everyone was SO excited and couldn’t wait for Baby Wright to come along in early October!

Meant To Be?
It was early February (the 8th to be exact) and Denver was set to get a nasty snow storm and of course I had a work trip planned to KC during the same time the storm was coming in!  The thought of getting delayed or stranded at an airport stressed me out, so I ended up rescheduling my trip for later in the month.

The morning of the 8th started out as usual, Jace got into bed with Brad and I while he drank his “milk latte” and watched ‘toons’, Brad and I were getting ready for the day and so on..  As I headed into the bathroom, I remember having a ‘flash’ of an uneasy feeling, just a quick sense of something was not right.  As soon as I sat down, I noticed I was bleeding!  I remember shaking and not knowing what was going on.  I needed to find Brad…I knew what was happening, but didn’t want to believe that it could happen to me, to us!

Brad and I instantly started (thank you technology for instant gratification) looking things up on our iPhones.  Of course the internet gives you one extreme to another, so I ended up putting mine away and just tried to calm myself.  Being we had just moved down South, I hadn’t yet changed OBGYN’s, so I called my doctor up North as soon as I could and made an appointment with him right away.  Now, remember, Denver was getting a storm (it wasn’t as bad as they had thought, but it was still a nightmare driving), and we lived about 45min. away (on a good day) from the doctor’s office.  The drive up North was silent, neither Brad nor I were saying a word, I think we had so much going through our heads, that we couldn’t muster a word to each other.  We finally made it up North (1.5 hours later) and sat silently in the waiting area till we were called in.  As soon as our Nurse brought us in the room, I just started crying, I was shaking with fear that they would confirm our worst nightmare (or what we thought would be our worst).

I was about 6 weeks pregnant, when we lost that baby!  I thank God that I had cancelled my work trip. I can’t even begin to imagine if I were on the road by myself and would have gone through this alone.  I was devastated.  I would wake up in the middle of the night just sobbing asking God how this could have happened to us. I remembered one night, during a total melt-down, asking Brad when I would stop crying.  He gently and lovingly held me tight and said, “Today will be the last time”, and it was!  I had faith that it, for as hard as it was to admit, was meant to be.  I knew I could ‘make’ a baby; Jace Daniel was living proof of that!  He is perfect in every way.

Strength and Courage
Brad and I were at a Holiday party and ran into some friends who (in the past) had gone through something similar to what had just happened to us.  I told them about our recent loss, knowing they could give words of comfort and encouragement.  I will NEVER forget what they told us, “It takes strength and courage to keep trying and not give up.”   I walked away, thinking to myself, “she’s right, it would be so easy to allow the pain to overtake my life and give up, but I have to have strength and courage to keep going.”  Two words that made a huge impact on my life, two words that will be with me forever.

We were determined to expand our family and to our surprise, in March, we found out we were once again EXPECTING!  I honestly, can’t say that I jumped in the air with excitement nor was beaming with joy.  The truth was, I was SCARED, scared to death, scared that I would lose this baby as well, so I moved forward with hesitation and a guarded heart.

Since I had just miscarried, as soon as I found out I was pregnant (which was pretty early on, again); I called the doctor and went in for some blood tests.  I ended up needing to get on Progesterone to help sustain the pregnancy, so in a way, I think that the miscarriage actually helped ‘save’ this baby.

As hard as it was for us to go through, without the miscarriage we may never had known that my hormone levels were so low and we may have even lost her much sooner.

Our Wish Come True
I had gone out shopping early April for my two best friends’ b-days that were coming up and decided to stop in a boutique shop to look around.  I was immediately drawn to a jewelry tree that had some necklaces hanging on it.  One stood out and spoke to my heart and soul- it was a small, simple Wishbone on a red string!  It was perfect!  I put that necklace on that day, holding tight that our ‘WISH” of having another baby would come true.  I never took that necklace off, ever!  This baby was our WISH come true, a WISH that we had made so long ago- a WISH that I wasn’t going to let go of anytime soon!

As the months slowly went by, I became more comfortable and optimistic that everything was going to be ok!  I still hadn’t told everyone (and by ‘everyone’ I meant, everyone on Facebook), I wanted to wait till my 20 week appointment to make the ‘official’ announcement!  Every appointment I made sure to make an extra effort to listen intensely on the heart beat, it made me confident that the baby was healthy and that everything was going well.  When our 20 week appointment came, Brad and I decided NOT to find out the gender.  Remember how I mentioned that I was a ‘planner’, well after the miscarriage, I was really hesitant in ‘planning’ too much this time around.   Therefore, we waited to decide on a name and waited to find out what we were having.

 Everyone kept asking me how I was able to ‘wait’, and to be honest, it was easy and really fun.  Although we didn’t find out the gender, 99% of people (including STRANGERS) said we were having a GIRL!!  I always saw myself with 3 boys, not sure why, just did!  After SO many people kept telling me I was having a girl, I started to think I was as well!  I always said that it would be SO fun to have 2 boys and a girl (a statement that I will forever regret saying), but I’d take any gender as long as they were healthy!  I was carrying differently- I was smaller and more ‘round’ than I was with Jace.   I really deep down did think I was having a girl, but didn’t want the baby to think I would be disappointed if  she/he came out a boy, so I kept telling myself (and others) that I really didn’t have a ‘feeling’ of what the gender was.

We had two beautiful showers for our baby.  I believe that every child deserves a welcoming party, no matter what ‘number’ they are in the birth order.

 I am so grateful to have had these parties, although we would not be able to officially ‘welcome’ our baby into this world (as I had dreamed of), we at least were able to celebrate ‘her’ (I am going to refer to ‘baby’ as ‘her’ now) life during the showers.

As we inched closer and closer to my due date (which was scheduled for induction on November 9th), I was definitely ready to meet this amazing being that moved like an animal inside me.  I was even blessed to capture her crazy kicking one night on our phone and was able to share it with so many on Facebook- again, this has SO much more meaning now. Had I known it would be the only time I would see my angel moving I would have videotaped my stomach 24/7! 

I did talk to her every day, I made sure to tell her how much I loved her and how excited we all were to meet her!  Even now, I feel at ease knowing that she was able to hear me (and Brad) tell her EVERY minute how much we loved her and how Jace was so excited to meet her.  It is something that I will hold close to my heart till the day we meet again and I can speak directly to her!

November 1st, 2011
I was 38 weeks pregnant and was on my way home from my doctor’s appointment.  Everything went well, I felt ok, the baby’s heart rate sounded good – everything was on track for the scheduled induction date one week away! 

As I drove down the highway, I felt her move and said, “Hi Baby, I’ll see you in one week…I love you so much!”  That was at 12:30pm and that would be the last time I would feel her move inside me.  As the day went on, I knew something was not right.   I hadn’t felt her move in a few hours, so I made a call to a friend (who also happened to be a labor and delivery nurse at Avista) telling her I was worried.  Around 5p Brad and I decided to make the drive back up North to check things out.  Once again, we found ourselves completely in silence, not saying a word, not looking at each other.  And once again, I found myself WISHING that it wasn’t what it seemed to be, WISHING it was going to be ok.

I remember getting out of the car and thinking I had felt her move and for a split second, I thought, “we can go back home, it’s alright, I felt her.” 

We headed into the triage room at Avista Hospital and were greeted by my dear friend, Shannon, who just held me and told me everything was going to be ok.  I laid down on the bed, thinking to myself, “maybe they’ll induce me tonight”, maybe we’ll get to see her sooner than we thought.  The nurse circled my belly trying to find the heartbeat, feelings of emptiness, confusion and fear slowly took over my body and mind.  “Certainly the machine must have a problem”, that could be the only reason why we heard nothing.  The doctor was called in to do an ultrasound, it wasn’t two minutes later she confirmed our worst nightmare.  Our baby, our sweet angel, was gone.  

Silence. 

Anger.

Confusion.

I was in such shock, I couldn’t even cry, all I kept screaming was, “How is this happening, why is this happening, PLEASE GOD give her back to me!”  Over and over and over- I don’t even know if I was making any sense.  But it was all that came out, all that I was able to say.  Brad was in the bathroom throwing up; our mothers were collapsing on the ground gasping for air, and I was just sitting on that bed repeating the same thing over and over again- PLEASE GOD GIVE HER BACK TO ME.

It was an out of body experience- I couldn’t comprehend what was going, it was just chaos all around me- HELL… it was HELL.  How could He let this happen, WHY did He let this happen?  I WISH I knew the answer and I WISH any human on earth could tell me the answer, but the reality is, no one knows and we will never know (at least, not while on earth).

“Why?  That’s what we ask; the truth is we may never be able to know for sure why.
But we do know that there is no single ‘should have done’ or ‘could have done’ or
‘did’ or didn’t do’ that would have changed that why.

All that love could do was done.”   ~ Unknown

My doctor gently told me that we could either start the induction process or we could go home and come back.  “What? Come back?  No, I can’t go home knowing that my baby is not alive inside!”  But the alternative- how in the hell could I go through delivering my baby knowing that she wasn’t going to come home with us?  I was convinced that it wasn’t possible, that I did not have the strength and courage to go through with this.  I remember telling everyone that I wouldn’t make it through this, that I would never ‘heal’ from this, how could I deliver a baby that wasn’t living?

As soon as we got to the room where I would be for the next 3 days, my doctor wanted to give me a sedative to help calm me down.  I couldn’t bare the thought of being ‘out of it’, I had to be present, I had to try and understand what was going on and the thought of being ‘looped’ up scared me even more.  I am not sure how I did it, but at that moment, I completely calmed myself, to the point that everyone thought they had already given me the sedative. 

It wasn’t until I was reading another woman’s blog (who had gone through almost the EXACT thing as us), that I realized that the Lord must have been by my side, calming me, protecting me, crying with me.  As mad as I was at him- and trust me, I told him how upset and hurt I was at him (and still am)- I have to believe that He was there with me, hurting the same as I, feeling the emptiness I felt, crying with me over and over. 

I have to.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”  Psalms 34-18

I had been induced to start labor around 10:00 pm.  As the night continued on and we inched closer and closer to delivery, our AMAZING delivery nurses (Celia, Shannon and Katie) held our hands, hugged our mothers, and gave comfort during a time of so much pain and chaos.  They assured me that I did have the strength and courage to do what NO mother should EVER have to do- deliver an Angel!

An Angel is Born
It was November 2nd, 2011 at 6:22am, our Angel, ‘Baby Wright’, was born sleeping.  A girl, a beautiful, PERFECT little girl (with a TON of dark hair unlike her older brother Jace), weighing 6.5 lbs. and 19.5 inches long.  My labor was short and her delivery was VERY peaceful, emotional, but peaceful. 

Again, I now believe that the Lord was with us the entire time.

The next few hours are a blur to me, I remember holding her, crying, telling her how sorry I was, how sorry I was that I couldn’t protect her, that she wasn’t with us. 

I was waiting for a miracle, HE performed miracles, right?  Why couldn’t HE give us one now, when we needed it the most?

Telling Jace was something that Brad and I were dreading.  How do you explain to a 3 year old that the reason Mommy’s tummy was so big, is no longer with us?  How do you explain that we wouldn’t be taking a baby home with us, that he would never get a chance to hold her and read books to her?  I was dreading the moment we would have to tell him that.  When Jace arrived at the hospital, he was really excited to see both Brad and I, but was immediately drawn to Brad.  He was terrified and confused why I had so many ‘tubes’ on my arms and wouldn’t come near me.  We sat him down on the bed next to us and started to explain to him what had happened.  To our surprise he had fully known and understood what had happened.  He looked at me and said, “Mommy, is our baby dead, did the baby die?  I want her to come back; can we put her back in?”  Brad and I just melted, we had this whole ‘speech’ planned on how to tell him, but he already knew and he was DEVASTATED.  His eyes filled with tears and he just started to cry.  He asked a lot of questions about God and Heaven and his baby sister. It was awful; it was the most painful thing to see our three year old try to comprehend death and understand why we can’t ‘SEE” God and Heaven. 

“But I have tears in my eyes.”  Jace kept telling us and everyone that he had ‘tears in his eyes’, it just broke my heart to see my child so upset and sad.

We were able to keep our Angel with us for the 3 days I was in the hospital- I am forever grateful that we had this time with her.  They are the only memories we will have of holding our daughter, memories that will last a lifetime. 

We left the hospital on a Friday afternoon, we had taken pictures with our daughter, dressed her in a cute outfit, kissed her a million times and said good bye.  It was and will be (I pray) the hardest day of my entire life.  I was leaving the hospital without the life that Brad and I had created, that I had carried for 9.5 months. 

The only explanation for her passing was that it was a ‘cord’ accident- she did have the cord around her neck and there were indications (from the autopsy) that the cord was pinched.  People have asked me how I feel about that and my answer to them is, “it does not change the outcome, it does not give her back to me.  It was something that I could not control.”  I feel empty.  I feel life isn’t fair and life isn’t always how we plan it to be.  But I do have FAITH and I do BELIEVE that God will bless us again, over and over. I have to.

The following days, weeks were crazy.  We were mourning the loss of our daughter, planning her service and trying to make life as ‘normal’ as we could for Jace Daniel.  Again, a blur…

Our daughter’s service was held on November 12th, 2011 at 9:30am.  It was beautiful.  There were hundreds of loved ones that showed up.  I never looked up to see it, but am told it was absolutely amazing.  I am so humbled that so many people came to support and love us, we are absolutely blessed. 

Our Angel is Named
Brad and I had a ‘list’ of names that we liked, but we hadn’t officially decided on anything for certain, we wanted to wait to see what our baby looked like before we chose a name.  During my entire pregnancy, we had called her, “Baby”, that was our ‘name’ for her during that time.

How do I name a baby that isn’t here? How could I decide on what name ‘fits’ a baby that isn’t alive?  Questions I kept saying to myself and others so many times.  Her name for 9.5 months was “Baby”, and now we had to decide on a ‘name’ to give her?  I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t go down the list and pick one out.  I struggled with this for SO long, people kept asking me what her name was, was I going to give my daughter a name. 

I had this burning desire and need to name her.  Every child needs a name, and although we had named her, “Baby”, I couldn’t go on in life referring to my beautiful daughter as “Baby”.  I would wake up in the middle of the night, dreaming of her and what her name was, what she would look like, and simply calling her by “Baby”, haunted me.  I ran the ‘names’ on our list over and over in my  head, looking at her picture to see which of the ‘top two’ names ‘looked’ like her. 

Neither of them!  She didn’t look like either one of them…The name that kept popping into my head was a name on the list, but it was further down, not really an option. 

I came home one night and told Brad that I had to talk to him.  I sat him down in the kitchen and just started sobbing, telling him that I couldn’t go on anymore not naming our daughter.  I told him that a name just kept coming up in my head, a name that only she could have and a name that would be hers forever!

Mackensie Owenn Wright

A name that I have always loved and a name that fits her PERFECTLY!  Owen is a family name and happens to be Brad’s middle name- I just added an extra ‘n’ to make it more ‘feminine”. 

I love it and finally feel at peace knowing that she has a name to answer to when I call on her every night.  My Angel, Mackensie Owenn, oh how we love you so much and WISH that we could have enjoyed this life together on Earth, but we have faith that you are watching over us and we will one day be together.

Angels on Earth
We would not have been able to go through what we did without the love and support of, Jody Elliott, and her team at Avista New Life Center. They gave us LOVE and HOPE!  They gave us an experience with our daughter, they gave us resources to use, pictures to cherish, footprints to copy, and hands to hold.  They gave us love, support, protection, strength and courage. 

Bereavement teams (and family and friends) are the glue that holds parents together during the unimaginable.  We were so touched and blessed to have been able to walk through this journey with this amazing team, that we decided we had to honor them in some way.  We had to  make sure that ALL hospitals are able to provide this support to families going through this journey.

Welcome, the Wishbone Foundation (www.wishbonefoundation.com).

You can contact Jianna at jianna.wright@wishbonefoundation.com.

Andrea

Mom to Baby Angel

Lost March 27, 2012 at 9 weeks

Watertown, New York

I found out I was pregnant with my second child on February 9, 2012. I had wanted to have another child for a while now; my daughter will be turning 4 at the end of April so it had been a year or two since I wanted to try. I do a daycare in my house. I’m around kids all day I just love them and wanted my child to have a brother or sister.

My husband and I were not exactly trying to get pregnant but definitely where not “not” trying. So, the day after I was supposed to get my period I took a test. My period is never late so just by being late one day I just knew. So I took the test and it looked like a negative, and I looked at it again about ten minutes later and sure enough it showed a big positive! I was so excited I can’t even describe how excited I was! I had wanted this for so long and it finally happened! I found out at about 5 weeks. So I called and made my first appointment and started telling family.  Usually they say most people should wait a few weeks or even until after 12 weeks, but I was so excited I just couldn’t not tell people, and also there were about 9 family members and friends pregnant at the same time between my family’s side and my husband’s, so I just wanted to share my great news with everyone! The next few weeks seemed like the best ever! Talking about what we would have, how our daughter would be a great big sister! How my parents would have 7 grandkids! How holidays would be with 2kids!!! What we would need to buy what the baby would look like. Just pure excitement on my end! 

I wish sick with my first daughter, I mean the normal morning (all day, all night) sickness during pregnancy, getting sick maybe one or twice a day depending on what I ate or smelled, but it went away right around the start of the 2ndtrimester, but with this one it was a lot different. I was very sick, I had such a bad week that for like three days straight I couldn’t hardly keep water down, I was puking at least 6 to 10 times a day if not more on those three days. My body was in so much pain from my stomach hurting from the muscles well I got sick, to my stomach hurting from being so hungry to my whole body from being just so exhausted. And the rest of the few weeks I was still really sick I could manage a few days here and there that where “ok” meaning only getting sick like 2 to 5 times a day but actually being able to get a meal in during the day I may have puked it back up but at least being able to eat something.  The bad week I could barely even eat anything at all, not even a cracker hardly, the only thing I could sometimes manage to keep down was pears.

 I had made my apt with my baby doctor but in my town there is a short supply of baby doctors and a lot of pregnant women I guess. So my appointment was booked but not till I was 14 weeks along and at this point I was 9 weeks and need to get in somewhere, hoping someone would give me something for being so sick. (Some friends told me their doctors had given them stuff when they were nonstop puking because it isn’t good for you and the baby.) So I made an appointment at another doctor’s, got in on March 8th and they wouldn’t give me anything because the doctor said I had a fever and I had the flu, but did an ultrasound just to check. I saw the baby and he said everything was fine, so scheduled me for my blood work. I was so mad, how can you say I have the flu when I have been puking all day everyday for almost 3 weeks? That isn’t the flu. But they wouldn’t give me anything so I went to do my blood work the following Monday on March 12th.The doctor never called me to tell me anything about my blood work.

The doctor’s office scheduled me an ultrasound for March 27th and that’s the day my life changed… My husband my daughter and I went in for the ultrasound. I was so excited…it would be the first time my husband got to see our baby since I got to see the baby at the ultrasound the doctor did on the 8th of March.  So we go in, the lady turns the screen so we can see and I see the baby -  little, but I did see it -  and I remember her doing the thing where she listens to the heartbeat and normally you see the little waves going across and hear something. This time, I saw no waves and heard nothing. She instantly said, “Ok, you can talk with your doctor,” and had us leave. I knew… I just knew something was wrong.

I called the doctor when I got into the car and they said come in at 1. This was at 11:30. I knew something was wrong and they wanted to make me wait. I was so mad. So my husband, my mother and I went in at1:00. The doctor comes in and tells me I was 12 weeks along and the baby only measuring just about 9 weeks and had no heartbeat. We had lost the baby. I honestly think and feel I lost part of myself in that room that day. I have never in my life felt such heartbreak. I knew by the look on his face even before he told me I knew by the nurse and I just knew by the ultrasound. They had told me my baby was gone and that I had to make a decision right now whether I wanted to go through the miscarriage at home or have a D&C. I couldn’t talk, all I could do was cry on my husband’s shoulder, praying, praying so hard this was just a dream. I was sad, mad, angry, confused, pissed off, heartbroken and just broken in general. They left the room for a few minutes. Well, I cried with my husband and mother. I remember my husband and mother talking about how a D&C would be better so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of that at home on top of the emotional pain of losing my baby. The doctor came back in. I couldn’t look at him, I just had my head down and said. “I will do it, just not today.” They scheduled it for that Friday, 3 days away. They did some blood work and the nurse started telling me that when I had my blood work done on Monday, March 12th that my hormone levels were off and that it is a sign of miscarriage. I just didn’t understand why they didn’t call me and tell me that they knew this was going to happen or possibly going to happen. They also told me that I probably lost the baby a few days after the blood work. Like I said, I just don’t understand why they didn’t let me know this was going to happen if they knew…maybe then I wouldn’t have been carrying around my not alive child inside me for weeks. For those weeks that I didn’t know, I bonded even more and planned even more. My heart was just broken!

I remember going home and getting into bed and just feeling so lost. I wanted it to be a dream. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen because the thought of my child who I was already in love with being gone just didn’t seem like an option to me. My head was spinning around in circles and my mind was just gone. I remember crying so much I remember crying myself to sleep every night. The night before my D&C I actually didn’t even want to go to bed. I was walking around my house just trying to find something to keep my mind off the fact that I was so tired and had to go to bed, but I knew what would be happening when I woke up in the morning and I just couldn’t stand the thought. I remember waking up that morning of my D&C and getting my daughter ready to go to my parents’ to spend the day with my dad and just crying. I was so thankful that I had her…so thankful for her and yet so angry for losing my baby. I think the worst part for me was when I woke up after the D&C, and just knowing the baby was actually gone made this whole thing I prayed was a dream really a reality!

I remember not wanting to leave the hospital after the D&C because I just didn’t want to face everyone out there yet. I didn’t blame anyone for what happened .I know these things happen for a reason, but I was just so angry. I am still just so angry! I waited so long for what I wanted and then when I got it, it was taken away from me! Taken away too early, too fast.

The pain after my surgery was horrible. For about 4 days my stomach felt like I was beaten, which didn’t help, the physical pain on top of the emotional pain was just so much to deal with.  I have my good moments and my bad moments just like most people. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t just think about the baby at least 100 times, it’s like sometimes I just forget I’m not pregnant anymore and then the heartbreak hurts more. I know someday in time it will get easier, but right now…it just doesn’t seem that way. Every day I try and smile a little more for my daughter. She needs me to be a strong mommy.  It has been two weeks today since I found out I lost my baby… I will never forget the child that I fell in love with instantly. He/she will always have a place in my heart forever and ever…

You can contact Andrea at orange3230@yahoo.com.

Mom to Aliya Amy and Bennett Paul

Lost August 5, 2011

Tenino, Washington

Paul and I were introduced in April 2005 by my friend Amanda, who was engaged to Paul’s younger brother (she’s my sister-in-law now). Even though I was dating someone else at the time, she declared me Paul’s perfect match and would not let it go! She was right, of course…although very different, we were perfect for each other. Our paths crossed again in July 2005, and since I had broken up with the other guy, Paul found the nerve to ask me out. We had our first date a couple of weeks later and have been together ever since. We got engaged Thanksgiving weekend 2005 and married in September 2006. We started trying for our first child in October 2007, one month after our first wedding anniversary. I’d been on and off birth control for years to prevent pregnancy…little did I know how difficult it would actually be for us to get pregnant.

After trying for nine months with no positive pregnancy tests, I went to see my OB. I worried she’d turn me away because I wasn’t quite 34 years old and we hadn’t yet been trying a year, but I had a feeling something was wrong so I went anyway. My doctor asked me to start using ovulation predictor kits (OPKs, which the woman pees on daily from days 11-18 after her period to detect the most likely time of ovulation) and wanted Paul to get a semen analysis. When he finally got that done six months later, we knew we’d have a challenge: he had low count, low motility and poor morphology.

Still, we persevered and kept trying. It wasn’t until Paul’s 20-year high school reunion in 010, when he learned that two of his old school buddies also had issues getting pregnant, that he accepted we should seek help. We had our first appointment at a local fertility clinic in July 2010 and had our first non-medicated intrauterine insemination (IUI) the very next cycle. It didn’t work, nor did the next two. My blood tests and hysterosalpingogram (HSG, or tubal dye test) all came back normal, but based on my long history of heavy, painful periods, my doctor diagnosed me as either having endometriosis or unexplained infertility. The next course of treatment, whether I had the laparoscopic surgery to diagnose endo or not, would be back-to-back IUIs with injectible hormones. The plan was to make as many eggs as possible and release them all at once, in hopes that one would make it through my tubes to be fertilized by Paul’s sperm, which would, as in all the previous IUIs, be cleaned and filtered of all the sperm cells that were misshapen or couldn’t swim correctly. We were excited to give this a try.

Our first superovulation IUI, as the procedure is called, resulted in a conversion to IVF because I had “too many follicles” during monitoring…but only two eggs were actually retrieved, one fertilized in a Petri dish, but our little embryo didn’t implant into my uterus. It was a very stressful time and we weren’t emotionally prepared for the rollercoaster that is IVF. We took a break to save more money, pay off the bills from that cycle. Finally, in May 2011, we did our second superovulation IUI using mini-Lupron and Menopur shots, plus a trigger shot of pregnancy hormone to make my body release the eggs that had developed.

The last weekend of my “two week wait” between the second IUI and our scheduled blood pregnancy test, or beta, I was extremely forgetful and a little testy, but all during that time I felt fine. I could attribute every symptom I had to either PMS or the progesterone in oil shots I was taking each night. I told Paul I’d be completely shocked if I was pregnant. Little did I know! On Tuesday, May 24th, I felt very moody and unwell at work, so I left early. I was surprised to find I had one leftover home pregnancy test in the bathroom, so for fun, I peed on it, certain to get a negative result like I had 43 times before. I was stunned when the digital display almost instantly read “Pregnant.” I ran to Walmart to buy more tests and find a way to tell Paul the news. He beat me home and I ratted myself out – that I had left work early, peed on a stick and we’re pregnant!! We were ecstatic and in total disbelief! Our scheduled beta the next day, May 25th, at 14 days post-IUI, confirmed it…we were finally, finally pregnant! Not only that, but Sierra, the medical assistant, called to say, “Girl, you are SO pregnant!” My first beta level was 227. Anything over 5 is positive. My fertility doctor, Dr. M., only checks blood pregnancy hormone levels (human chorionic gonadotripin, or hCG) once per week, and we were holding our breath between each of the three tests. The second was 3800. I wondered if we had multiples in there. The third test was over 54,000, and Dr. M. actually wondered if there were triplets! At our 7 week ultrasound we saw two little embryos and heard their hearts beating strongly. Dr. M. confirmed we were expecting fraternal twins. We were over the moon, and scared to death. Going 43 cycles straight with no positive pregnancy tests had made us a little jaded and we waited for the other shoe to drop.

I read up on twin pregnancies and learned they’re difficult, often fraught with risks, bedrest and early delivery, and learned I’d need to gain weight, as much as 50 pounds, the first 24 pounds by the 24th week of pregnancy. Given the constant nausea and frequent vomiting that started up in week 6, I was very concerned, because was dropping weight rather than gaining it. (At time of delivery I had just finally made it back to my pre-pregnancy weight. When we got home from the hospital, I was 6 pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight, so all my weight gain was due to increased blood volume, amniotic fluid and two tiny babies.)

Paul wanted to scream our news to the world, but I wanted to wait. I knew it’s unwise to spill the beans in the first trimester, and I was determined not to. However, his constant nagging at me to tell his family coupled with my extreme fatigue and horrible morning (all day) sickness wore me down, so I agreed that we could tell his family as my 40th birthday gift to him during our annual family camping trip. We told them around the campfire the first night of camping, way up in the mountains, at 7 weeks 2 days pregnant. Everyone was overjoyed and surprised.

The next day, on June 18th, in the middle of our first full day of camping, I was trying to take a nap in the tent when I felt a little gush. I had been experiencing some urine leakage thanks to my ever-expanding uterus, but my heart sank when I realized it was pink liquid…not blood, but definitely not urine. Thankfully, Paul rode into camp at that moment on his quad. We grabbed the dog and our clothes and raced down the mountain into cell phone range to call my doctor. He couldn’t see me until the next day, and suggested we either go to the emergency room or wait to see him for an ultrasound the next day. I was positive I was miscarrying, so rather than waste the money on an ER visit where nothing would be done for me, we decided to wait to see him in his office.

That ultrasound was shocking – both babies were just fine! I’d had a “maternal bleed” that had already clotted. (We didn’t learn until weeks later it was actually a moderate placental abruption with Baby A, the twin closest to my cervix. Baby A also had placenta previa, meaning the placenta was attached over top of my cervix. This is something that usually corrects by week 20, but if it fails to, it can lead to catastrophic consequences. The abruption could have been a fluke, but most likely happened because I kept bending at the waist to get into and out of the tent.) I was placed on bedrest for a week, not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds, or bend over or exert myself in any way. Paul transformed into Superman and assumed all household and farm chores (we had a flock of chickens and 5 Scottish Highland cattle, plus a dog and two cats, plus a 2000+ square foot house…and he works full time, too).

I continued to spot and bleed, even though that “maternal bleed” had clotted and was no longer active. I was cleared for light activity, but no bending, lifting, exercise, or sex. My doctor figured the culprit behind the continued bleeding was a cervical polyp, since none of our additional ultrasounds showed any indications of blood in the uterus. The original abruption had healed, and, little by little, Baby A’s placenta was moving off of my cervix as my uterus continued to grow by leaps and bounds. My fertility doctor released me to regular obstetric care at 11 weeks 1 day, just as planned.

I had two appointments with the HMO’s obstetrics department, first with a nurse to have all my blood work taken, then two weeks later with a midwife for an annual exam. In both cases I expressed concern about when I – a high risk twin pregnancy – would see an OB, but I was assured that “they do twins all the time”, I wasn’t that old (37), and bleeding during a twin pregnancy is perfectly normal. My first regular OB appointment was scheduled for August 23rd, at 16 weeks 6 days pregnant.

Meanwhile, Paul and I traveled 1.5 hours north up to the University of Washington for a nuchal translucency (NT) scan, which is an ultrasound technique used to detect the risks of birth defects, mainly trisomies. The car ride, what with my giant uncomfortable twin belly, was a difficult much for me, but we made it, and were thrilled to learn that both babies were as healthy as could be! The risk for trisomies in a 37-year old woman is 1:170, but twins doubles the odds to 1:85. Amazingly, Baby A received a glowing 1:749, and Baby B stunned us with 1:1049! With odds like that, there was, thankfully, no reason to do any further testing, ruling out the need to undergo either an amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling (CVS), both of which carry risk of miscarriage. We happily entered the second trimester – the “safe” zone – at 13 weeks on Wednesday, July 27th, and, relieved, finally felt safe enough to share our pregnancy news with friends and the outside world. We visited Babies ‘R’ Us that weekend to check out strollers and car seats – finally feeling confident enough to look at those big items. I’ll never forget the sight of my silly husband popping wheelies and making racing noises with the double stroller in the middle of the aisle! Our car had a notoriously shallow back seat so we had more research to do, but really liked one stroller/car seat combo that had elephants on it. I know in my heart, looking back, that’s the one we would have selected.

The evening before the store visit, on Friday, July 29th, at 13 weeks 2 days, my “normal” vaginal discharge (which had been mostly spotting but had recently gone to clear) changed to peach-tinted mucus. I had read to expect a change in discharge in the second trimester, but I still thought it was weird, so I called our HMO’s consulting nurse line. I was seen Monday, August 1st by an OB, who said it was just my cervix acting up; I was not dilating and the babies were fine. The very next day the peach color turned to red, so I called the consulting nurse line again, who immediately paged the OB on call. They arranged for me to have a very detailed ultrasound the next day at Providence St. Peter Hospital on Olympia, who has much better equipment than the HMO (necessary for checking on twins), followed by another OB visit afterward.

The ultrasound took 1.5 hours and was horribly uncomfortable, but I was able to watch on the wall-mounted flat screen and delighted in seeing my babies. Just like all our other (six) ultrasounds before, everything appeared fine. The babies were very active, causing trouble for the techs, who were trying to measure femurs and head circumferences and check for two hands and two feet for each baby.   Once the ultrasound was finished, I saw an OB, who said I’d had another moderate placental abruption with Baby A. Unlike the first time, this doctor did not recommend bedrest. Instead, he told me to take it easy but resume my normal activities. He did say one thing I will never forget: the presence of blood is an irritant and could cause premature rupture of the membranes. If it happened close to full term everything would be fine, but if it happened earlier it might not be fine. Since my first abruption healed and I had been told time and again that spotting was normal for twins, I didn’t let his words worry me too much.

That same evening I started feeling my big belly harden and soften. I even had Paul feel it. It didn’t hurt and there was no regular pattern, so I thought it must be early Braxton-Hicks. Everything with multiples pregnancies happen earlier than singleton pregnancies. I wasn’t worried…but in hindsight I should have been…

The next day, Thursday, August 4th, I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. My entire body ached. I had an appointment scheduled with my osteopath that morning and stayed home, but decided perhaps he could help my body feel better. He did some work on my back, neck and painful round ligaments, and I left his office moving slowly but feeling a little better. I spent an hour or so at work while my manager taught me to use a VPN fob with the laptop that had been checked out to me, so that I could begin working from home full time, starting the very next day. I felt so crappy when I got home that I just stayed on the couch, watching TV, the laptop and fob forgotten. Then, at 4:50 p.m., a mere 26 hours after hearing the OB’s comment about ruptured amniotic sacs, I felt a gush. Every time I moved it gushed more, like I was peeing but I couldn’t control it. I checked in the bathroom; this was not urine. I called the consulting nurse line, who paged the on-call OB, who told me to head to the St. Pete’s ER. I called Paul, who was at his brother’s house 20 minutes away, and told him to hurry home. We sped the 30 minutes to the ER as soon as he pulled in our driveway.

In the emergency room waiting area, we joked and kept it light. I guess we were both in a bit of denial, but given our early experience with “gushing” and Baby A’s abruption, we thought the outcome might be the same.

Of course, time in the ER moves at a snail’s pace. It took the ER doctor – who, for the record, was a total jerk, saying things like, “They told you that 25% of these things end in miscarriage, right?” with a smirk on his face – over 5 hours to get me in for an ultrasound and vaginal swab, while I lie there in a puddle of amniotic fluid ordered by the HMO’s on-call OB. (Thank God for her, because it seemed like the ER doctor wanted to send me home.) This time, the flat screen monitor – in the same ultrasound room I’m been in just two days before – was not turned on. The ultrasound tech was very serious. Paul stood by my side, watching the screen, straight-faced. (I had coached him to look for black around both babies, since that’s what amniotic fluid looks like on ultrasound. He’d said he wouldn’t know the difference. Only later did I learn that he knew what he was seeing, and that it was very, very bad. It breaks my heart that he’ll carry that image in his mind forever.)

Once back in the ER, Dr. A., a very compassionate, caring OB from our HMO, confirmed the bad news: Baby A had had a complete, catastrophic rupture of the amniotic sac and there was virtually no fluid left, plus both babies’ heart rates showed signs of distress, possibly due to infection. There would be no happy ending here…it was impossible.

She gave us three options: go to the Family Birth Center for induction of labor; go home and wait for labor to start, and then come back for delivery; or wait for the babies to pass away and do a D&C. There was no way to save the babies…it was too early and what had started could not be stopped. We chose to be admitted and have my labor induced, and we’re so glad we did. We wanted to experience this most important event in our lives and see our babies who we had waited for for so long and wanted so badly.

At about 12:30 a.m., once I was comfortably in bed, they gave me Cytotec by mouth and an IV Dilaudid pump for pain. Paul, still filthy from his logging job, starving for having not eaten since 8:00 a.m. the day before and desperately tired, went home to shower, eat, grab some things from home and feed the dog. Our nurse, Stephanie, set up a bed for him next to mine when he returned and we both tried to get some sleep. (Stephanie was the same nurse who was called to the ER to swab my vagina to check for amniotic fluid. It was weird, but we were both relieved to see her sweet, familiar face, knowing she would care for us when we needed her most.)

Hours later, having dozed a little bit and realizing I was pushing the button on my Dilaudid pump quite frequently, I called Stephanie, saying I had to pee and that the Dilaudid wasn’t working anymore for some reason. I had no sense of time, so didn’t realize what was actually happening. Stephanie came in to help me and as I stood up, holding a giant pad thing between my legs to catch the leaks, I felt something “big” come out. When I sat on the toilet and looked into the pad, there was our daughter, all 5 1/2 inches and 1.2 oz of her, born at 6:14 a.m. Stephanie took her, gave me another pad and quickly helped me back toward the bed. I immediately started to vomit and couldn’t stop. Our son was born four minutes later, in my bed, at 6:18 a.m., measuring 5 inches and weighing 1.3 oz., Paul standing next to the bed, groggy, trying to get his clothes back on.

Time really stopped then; I think I was in shock. It was definitely an out of body experience. I recall looking at the clock, then at the nurses sitting between my legs, holding handfuls of giant blood clots as they dug through them, looking for the placentas, asking me to push, and pushing on my belly to massage my uterus. In the end they rushed me in for a D&C for retained placentas. I don’t even remember signing the consent forms, but I know I did. Paul said later he was so scared. I was oblivious to everything and remember those moments only in strange, dim mental snapshots.

Paul called both our families as they wheeled me to surgery. Before they arrived, our day nurse, Vivian, carefully washed and arranged our babies, singing softly as she did it, and placed them in an isolet, wrapped together in a blanket. She painstakingly recorded their hand and footprints on paper, and later transferred them to a card for our memory box. Our family members arrived in waves a few hours after my surgery (they live two hours north and nearly two hours to the southeast, so they had to drive a ways to get to us.) I think they were all stunned to find the babies in the room. Paul and I were surprised and overwhelmingly grateful for the opportunity to stay with our children, and to have our families meet them, even though I’m sure it was scary to see them. Babies born earlier than 28 weeks have not yet accumulated body fat, so their skin is transparent, giving them a beet red appearance. Plus, our little 14 weekers were tiny and yet perfectly formed, with 10 wee fingers and toes each, little eyelids that were closed, round little heads. It meant the world to see both my mom and my grandma hold the babies on their laps, and I know they both said prayers over them as well.

We stayed in the hospital and let our nurses care for us for a total of 30 hours, and the babies were able to stay in the room with us the entire time. Nurse Vivian called the chaplain and social worker to come visit us, which was helpful, and called a professional photographer to take pictures for us. This extra time and care meant the world. In the hours after I delivered the babies I was numb, both from the hormones and from the drugs I was given during surgery. I later heard that I seemed very pulled together, while Paul was a mess. Later, at home, as we read through the bereavement information we received from the social worker, we learned Paul had exhibited all the classic signs of shock: extreme cold, shaking, etc. I was just drugged and numb. The last family members didn’t leave our room until after 7:00 p.m. I was grateful to finally have some time alone with my husband and our babies. Still, my tears didn’t come until 2:30 a.m., when the Ambien they prescribed to help me sleep failed. I stood in my hospital gown and fuzzy green socks, holding my babies to my chest and sobbing, while Paul slept the sleep of the dead in his cot.

That last morning in the hospital was very difficult. The on-call OB, Dr. C., visited and verbalized my discharge instructions. (For the record, we both hated her. She – plus the fact that I wasn’t taken seriously as a high risk OB patient by the HMO – are the reason we switched our insurance in January so that we can see the doctors of our choice.) Finally, our morning nurse came in with the written instructions, and it was time to go. She brought in our beautiful memory box, a pale teal satin-covered box, tied with a bow, containing the card with hand and footprints (the first I’d seen of them), the birth stats (the first I’d learned of their weights and measurements), two little preemie hats that could have fit their entire bodies, a card and journal, and the hospital bracelets I would have worn had they been born alive, months from then, like they should have been. When it was time, we kissed our babies one last time, and our nurse wheeled me out in a chair, holding my bag of person things and the memory box. It was surreal.

The days after delivery were a blur. There was a lot of crying, lots of talking and tender moments, forced meals and showers, a couple of day trips away from home as we attempted to make ourselves feel better. So many tears. So many “what ifs” and regrets have flowed through our hearts; we know this is all part of the grief process. One thing that ate at me for days was the memory of having our children blessed the night they were born, and having no names to give them. We weren’t supposed to have found out their sexes for another 6-8 weeks, and hadn’t even started talking about names. Seeing “Baby Girl” and “Baby Boy” on the blessing certificate was crushing to us both. It took us four days to name our son and three more to name our daughter. Aliya means “to ascend” and her middle name, Amy, means “beloved” and is my name and my grandma’s name. Bennett means “little blessed one” and his middle name, Paul, means “small,” and he shares that name with his daddy and his grandpa. I made birth/name announcement cards for our families so they could have something to hold onto, see our children’s names in writing, and know the meanings.

Recovery from the D&C wasn’t bad. I wanted to gush blood or feel excruciating cramps, or have my breasts become engorged and painful with milk that I couldn’t use, anything to feel the physical punishment of what had happened, but it hasn’t been like that at all. Recovery was gentle, fairly easy. It felt unfair. I was seen by the OB who told us the bad news in the ER about three weeks after our loss. She was wonderful, very concerned about my emotional health and physical health. She put me on both vaginal and oral antibiotics to kill whatever bacteria had caused the infection in my babies and cleared us to try again when we were ready. We visited the fertility doctor, too. We tearfully told him the events that led up to our loss, and he reviewed my thick chart, saying, “This one was a bit of a train wreck, wasn’t it?” To this day, while he suspects that bleeding polyp in my cervical canal caused the whole miscarriage…all that constant bleeding would have ruined my mucus plug, which easily could have let that infection in, and my body, trying to protect itself, started preterm labor, which ruptured Aliya’s amniotic sac. None of it could have been prevented…nor could it have been foreseen. As of September 2011, all evidence of the polyp was gone.

Emotionally, recovery was terrible. I had a history of clinical depression in my 20s and was very concerned about postpartum depression, but always assumed my “normal” feelings of sadness and anger – anger toward my body and especially some of our family, who were not talking to me about our loss at all, as if it never happened – and to help myself, had joined two support groups with my husband and was seeing an acupuncturist and a hypnotherapist. The hypnotherapist referred me to a counselor in February – five months after our loss – after the depth of my anger concerned her…well, that and my short term memory loss. It turns out I did have mild to moderate PPD. My counselor, who herself experienced infertility, second trimester miscarriage and PPD, said that between my history of depression, the trauma and anger from the loss, and the grief process, there’s no way I couldn’t have had PPD. Talking with her has been tremendously helpful. I do still regret that we didn’t take pictures of my big belly. Part of sharing pregnancy with people is the progression of that growing belly, the changes our bodies go through, and no one, aside from my co-workers, my brother-in-law and a few local friends, got to see how giant my belly had become, how I was waddling already. It almost made it all feel less real and disconnected the pregnancy from our loved ones. If it weren’t for the fact that they all saw the babies themselves, I don’t know how they would feel any connection to us through our loss. We won’t make that mistake again.

We’re still infertile and are now trying for our rainbow baby or babies. We started trying again earlier than we should have…my body was physically ready, but my heart wasn’t. Interestingly, I was plagued with ovarian cysts and then two failed cycles, and was finally diagnosed as a poor responder with low ovarian reserve in January and prescribed 10 weeks of DHEA to try and remedy that. I believe these failures and delays were my body’s way of trying to give me more time to grieve. At seven months post-loss, I turned a corner and have been doing much better since. I still miss my babies and grieve our loss, but I no longer cry every day. I feel much more like my old self now, and filled with hope and a stronger desire than ever to have babies with my husband. We’re currently in the middle of another cycle, this time trying on purpose to convert to IVF if I respond well enough to the drugs, hopeful that the very high doses I’m on will result in enough eggs to transfer three embryos back into my uterus (I’m 38 now, and that’s the number they aim for to achieve a singleton pregnancy). Dr. M. is both a fertility specialist and a high risk OB, so we’ve decided to stay with him for all future pregnancies (should we be so blessed). Even though he couldn’t have changed the outcome of our loss, he would have been straight with us, would have been seeing me every two weeks for ultrasounds and cervical checks, and would not have dismissed my concerns like the HMO did. His care and concern is so evident. Even though we have no true reason to think I have incompetent cervix, he suspects I might (although the weight of a twin pregnancy would have contributed to that), so he may place a cerclage early in my next pregnancy. I also take a daily probiotic that’s supposed to aid vaginal health to keep the balance of bacteria favoring the “good guys”…I don’t ever want an infection again. I will now forever be at risk for placenta previa, placental abruption and preterm labor for future pregnancies, but I know that Dr. M. will do all he can to give us our take-home baby. We can’t give up trying…not yet. As a fellow babyloss mama blogger put it, we can stay in fear or we can walk through fear and choose love instead…and we choose love.

Amy blogs at http://ourtinyangels.blogspot.com.

You can contact her at teninohighlands@hotmail.com.

Natalie

Mom to Noel Mary

Born still September 22, 2011

Fenton, Michigan

I am 36 years old, and my husband of 2 years is 34.  We have been together for a long time and he decided 3 years ago to make an honest woman out of me.  John is my best friend…he has been for almost 12 years now.  We share everything and can hide nothing from each other.  We are very much in love still and when we found out on January 14, 2011 that we were going to be parents after only trying for a couple of months to conceive. We were elated.  My pregnancy was okay as far as they go, until the last 4 weeks or so.  I had a very active baby girl in there and she was always on the move.  She loved to listen to me talk and when I did start talking she would move up in my belly just to be closer to my voice.  She would literally dance when a good song came on the radio, she had a knack for kicking or punching the beat out, my doctor thought this was me being CRAZY until she actually felt it for herself on a regular OB visit in the summer.

Basically I went through the hottest part of the year here in Michigan with a huge baby inside of me, was I miserable, yes, but only when I wasn’t in air conditioning, which thank God I have at home, at work and in the car.  Noel was a big baby; I’m not a small girl so it seemed to balance out that I would naturally have a larger baby, THEN we found out I had gestational diabetes, and as you can imagine I was petrified.  However, I was able to manage my blood sugar to near perfection about 3 weeks after I found out that I had a sugar problem, and this didn’t overly affect my daughter’s size or health.

About 4 weeks before my due date my doctor decided that I needed to be at home and on marginal bedrest due to a slight increase in my blood pressure.  My doctor decided on Sept 16, 2011 to induce me, and she set me up for the following Wednesday at the hospital for the induction to begin at 9pm. WE didn’t make it to that appointment.  I woke up that Wednesday morning and felt a gush of fluid; my mucus plug had disintegrated sometime during the night.  I THOUGHT it was my water breaking.  As you can imagine, my husband and I were in a serious state of excitement as we threw the bags and the new car seat into the car and drove up to the hospital.

When we arrived at the hospital and went through the registration process we still had no idea that anything could possibly be wrong, we were just too happy and full of hope to even THINK something was wrong.  As I stated before I had an active big baby in there just waiting to be born.  The nurse showed me to the triage room and advised me to get undressed and put on the hospital gown.  I did, and then she came back and started to hook me up to the monitors.  Now we were really getting somewhere.  If you do not want to read what happened next please stop reading now, this is where the story gets very sad.

The nurse attempted to hook the monitor up to find the fetal heartbeat.  She couldn’t seem to locate it.  She went for another nurse and then finally a resident.  NO one could find my sweet babies heartbeat.  They brought in an ultrasound and the picture and the information turned out to be the worst news my husband and I will ever receive.  Noel had died.  John realized the awful truth about a minute before it registered in my brain.  HOW could a baby that the previous night had been kicking and ALIVE all of a sudden be dead?  HOW could this happen?  The one and ONLY outcome we were not prepared for, had NEVER even discussed had happened.  Our daughter died only about 24 hours before she was to be born.  John and I never thought for a second that the active, moving, thumping, baby in my belly could die before she even had a chance to live.  This is now our living nightmare, our reality, and our heart break and pain.

The hand we were dealt by the powers that be was not one we would have gambled on.  While some say God has a plan, that she is with God, that she is happy and not in pain, that she doesn’t have to deal with the bullshit life throws at you daily.  You know what I say to that?  She was MINE, I don’t care what plan there is or that she is with the Almighty, or that she will never experience pain and heart ache.  I want her here with me, she was my life, we gave her life because we wanted her, we wanted to share all we have with her and raise her to be a wonderful, vibrant child.  I don’t care that some PLAN took her from me…Then I sit back and realize that maybe I’m a selfish person, that she is better off, but then I get mad and angry again and I want to scream.

Our daughter was taken from us by a cord accident; her umbilical cord was tied into a knot, a TRUE KNOT is a rare occurrence in a normal and healthy pregnancy.  The doctors and nurses told us that once a knot is tightened and blood and oxygen are cut off from the baby, they have 6 minutes that they live.  Even if we had been at the hospital the result would have been the same, they wouldn’t have been able to save our daughter.

Well, we now knew what we were up against. I wanted to do a vaginal delivery, because I wouldn’t have to wait forever to get pregnant again, that after a couple of months we could do it all over again.  Of course that is NOT how it went, after almost 24 hours of waiting for my cervix to fully dilate, nearly 2 hours of hard labor and pushing, I ended up having to have a c-section.  What is worse is even after I was opened up, Noel’s head was so wedged in my pelvis that she would NEVER have been able to be born vaginally.  My doctor had to her head back through the birth canal to get her out of the incision.  NO one would ever guess (because of my size) that I would of had this kind of experience giving birth but I did, and worst of all I don’t have my baby to show for all the pain I had to go through to have her.

My husband and I are very optimistic people by nature, neither of us dwell in the past much, we don’t necessarily over plan our future, we live in the here and now.  I am never going to tell you that John and I are healed.  I don’t think we will ever truly heal from this.  However, I can tell you that we have moved into a better place with each other, we talk about our feelings we talk about the emptiness we both feel.  But we also talk about the future…that we are going to try again for a baby in a couple short months…that we have every intention of trying it again and hoping for a different outcome.  No other baby will take Noel’s place.  She is/was our first child.  Our other children will know about her.  I will make sure of it.  I have to try again; I have a deep need to be a Mom, to have a child of my own.  I know that life doesn’t always turn out how you envision it, believe me I do know.  But when I do find myself going to a place that is dark inside my head I can somehow someway pull myself back and re-evaluate the thoughts and NOT go there, never, you can’t you have to pick up your head, you have to go on.

Natalie blogs at http://noelwsmommy.blogspot.com.

Monica

Mom to Ryan Alan – December 7, 2011
and
Andrew Jonathan – December 8, 2011

Oak Island, North Carolina

After trying to conceive for 4 years my husband and I discovered we were pregnant with triplets in September.  We were happy but overwhelmed; at 7 weeks we met with the maternal fetal specialist who explained the risks and options.  She sent us to Duke to meet with another specialist who did genetic testing and advised us to reduce to twins.  It was a very hard decision but we felt that it would give the other two the best chance.  It was a horrible procedure to go through, and in hindsight I don’t know that I would do it again, but at the time I thought I was increasing my babies’ odds…It was so strange to grieve one and yet be excited for two.

From that day on I was considered high risk and saw the MF doc weekly, which meant I got to have scans weekly.  It was so different from my first pregnancy (I have a six year old); I was able to watch them grow.  At 12 weeks, I had some spotting and called the doctor. The doc on call (not my doc) explained that it was probably old blood from the procedure or maybe it was a threatened miscarriage and there was nothing he could do or would do.  I went to bed that night very scared and worried.  That weekend I had more bleeding and went to the ER…we were there forever; they wanted to run tests that I felt were ridiculous, when all I wanted was to see their little heartbeats.  Finally, after they assured me that my cervix was closed and long, they did an ultrasound, which revealed two healthy babies. I was overjoyed and went home.  That Monday my doctor pulled me out of work and told me just stay home and rest since we had no idea where the bleeding was coming from…she was just being cautious.  The bleeding stopped and started the next weekend, we would repeat the same ER trip two more times….each time becoming more and more stressful. Finally I was told at 15 weeks to be on complete bed rest. I was bleeding off and on regardless of what I did but the twins were thriving and no one but me was alarmed.  If one more doc told me that they had no idea or that there was nothing they could do I was going to scream.

On December 3rd, my husband and son went to the local Christmas parade while I stayed in bed. I couldn’t wait for them to come home because I was so excited to tell my husband that the bleeding had finally stopped.  That night we celebrated by having a yummy dinner in bed.  Around 8pm, I started cramping very hard, it was coming faster and faster, I called the on call doc who told me to drink water and wait it out, because again there was nothing he could do…I waited about 15 minutes before I was in so much pain I could barely see straight to decide to go to the ER.  We were headed to the city hospital, which is about 45 minutes away, but we never made it. I was in so much pain that I screamed for my husband to go to the local community hospital.  The doctor there was very nice and he did an exam and said that I was not dilating so he would give me some Terbutaline. Right before the injection I started passing clots that were huge…my husband was horrified but again the babies were fine.  They gave me the shot which did calm the contractions and spread them apart but it did not stop them.

I was transported by EMS to the city and given another med to in the ambulance to try to stop the contractions as they were slamming me right on top of each other…seconds apart.  I was admitted to L&D and told that I was in labor and that the babies would not survive. I was given morphine and told to try to rest.  Around 5am my Maternal Fetal doc came in and insisted on doing an ultrasound. I remember seeing the babies, they were 100% fine and were waving to me. The specialist confirmed that I had a previa and that I was in labor and dilating.  Within the hour the contractions stopped, everyone was shocked.  The doc told me that he has only ever seen this happen once before and it was a positive outcome.  I was kept in L& D for 3 more days were they monitored my spotting.  Finally, I was told that I had graduated to antepartum and would be moved to a new room, this would be the room I would stay in for the rest of my pregnancy.  Everything was going great, everyone was shocked at the progress we were making, the babies had started kicking and I was getting used to the hospital food.  Then, on December 7th, I sat up to put my socks on and I heard a pop…it was a clot about 4 inches big, I was horrified I actually thought it was my baby.  The nurse came in and pushed my bed down the hall so fast it made me dizzy, she was screaming ,“Prep the OR, we got a bleeder!” I just remember thinking that this could not be happening and why was she screaming, I was not bleeding it was just a clot…Thankfully the charge nurse stopped my bed dead in its tracks and instructed the nurse to calm down and I was taken back to L&D.  The contractions started coming hard and fast and the docs at this hospital refused to give me anything to even try to stop them, they said that their policy is to only try at 24 weeks.

That night I had Ryan. He slipped out so easily and all the pain stopped.  I wanted to see him but I was exhausted, and they told me that if I laid still that the other twin would stay in.  I fell asleep for 4 hours, and woke because I needed to use the bed pan. I moved an inch and everything started again…Andrew was born several minutes later.   I was so sad I couldn’t stop crying, I was scared to see them but I knew I needed to.  The nurse brought them to me all dressed in little clothes and hats, I held them for a few minutes and then felt as though I had to give them back as everyone was staring at me.  I regret that now, I should have kicked everyone out and just held them.  They were perfect replicas of my first son, just very tiny.

I left the hospital immediately. I couldn’t bear to stay one more minute. I actually forced the doc to let me leave. I remember leaving the hospital vividly, I had a box in my hands containing a few mementos and I was being taken down on the service elevator, I guess to protect me. Regardless, just as the doors of my elevator opened so did the regular elevator with a glowing mother and her baby; I just had a box. 

I remember hating the idea of leaving them there, knowing they were going to the morgue, that they were cold.  The hospital told us they could take care of everything for free but we would not receive the remains.  We had 72 hours to decide.  I knew in my heart that I could not leave them there and needed them to be with me in some way shape or form, but I also knew cremation was expensive.  My husband called every place on the list and it was going to be over a thousand dollars to have these little tiny babies cremated, but thankfully he finally found a local place that offered their services for free. If there was ever one single moment of happiness in this whole ordeal that was it, knowing that they would be coming home to me.

I don’t remember much of the next few weeks, and Christmas was horrible.  Not one day goes by that my heart does not ache for them. I feel horrible knowing that they were completely healthy and my body just forced them out.  The doctors tell me it was a placental abruption and that I am lucky I did not end up requiring a hysterectomy.  I don’t feel lucky.  I feel like the entire hospital was one big emotional roller coaster.  We prepared for the loss, we experienced a miracle and than settled in for the long haul, and then it was gone, with no answers.  I miss my boys so much.  We are planning a tree planting ceremony on what would have been the due date/Mother’s Day.  I know I need to do it but I feel like everyone else has already moved on, I feel like I will be the only one sitting there crying and that my family is being forced to do this “cheesy” thing for me…I hope one day all of these feelings can become more settled…I am so sad. 

You can contact Monica at mkelly951@gmail.com.

Lindsey

Mom to Gary

Stillborn December 14, 2011

Cumberland, Rhode Island

We had been married for two weeks when we found out that we were pregnant.  While we weren’t actively trying to get pregnant, we had made a conscious decision not to prevent pregnancy and we were thrilled to find out that we were expecting a baby!  Because it was so early in the pregnancy we decided not to tell friends or family that we were expecting until after we returned from our honeymoon.  We spent the whole trip telling strangers about our big news because we were so excited.  When we got back from the trip and told our parents that they were going to be grandparents, they could not have been happier.  If truly felt like everything was falling into place for us.  We had a perfect wedding day, a dream honeymoon, were in the process of buying a house, and now our dream of becoming parents was coming true.  

The pregnancy was completely normal for the first 29 weeks.  I had terrible morning sickness right up to week 20, which I kept justifying to myself as the sign of a healthy baby.  We found out at the anatomy scan that we were having a boy.  My husband was beyond happy and we decided to carry on the family name.  Our little boy would be named after his daddy and grandfather.  We registered for nursery items and bought cute little blue and green clothes.  While we were registering my husband found a little stuffed lion (affectionately named Leo) that he insisted we buy for our little boy.  Baby Gary was very active and bounced around my belly morning, noon and night.  But every time my husband put his hand on my belly he would lie completely still.  This was something that I felt was so special at the time, that my baby just moved for mommy, and that is now one of my biggest regrets… that my husband never got to feel him living.

At 30 weeks I went in for my regular OB appointment and my previously normal blood pressure was sky high.  My husband had been to every appointment with me, but of course he was out of town on business for this one.  I called my mother and she brought me to the ER.  I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life and by the time I got to the hospital my pressures were 170/110 and the doctors and nurses were worried that I may have a seizure.  It took hours and multiple blood pressure and anxiety medications to get my pressures back to a normal level.  In the meantime, by husband was racing home on the chance that our little boy would need to be delivered that night.  He arrived at the hospital shortly before midnight.  They had already given me one steroid shot to boost our baby’s lung function, but were sure that they had avoided having to deliver immediately.  They kept us in the hospital for two more nights before telling us that we could go home but that I was to remain on strict bedrest.  We were so relieved.  It felt like we had dodged a huge bullet.

I was home on bedrest for four days.  On the fifth day, we had an appointment with the OB to have my pressures checked.  The day before the appointment my previously active boy was unusually quiet.  Rather than the 8-10 kicks in an hour I was getting only one or two, then less and less as the day went on.  When we went to bed that night I was very anxious.  I told my husband about how I was feeling and he reminded me that we could talk to the doctor all about it the next morning.  When I woke up I felt sick I was so worried.  I just had a sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong with my little boy.  We went to the doctor’s office and were taken into an exam room.  The nurse started by putting me on the monitor.  I told her that I was nervous about it but I didn’t know why.  When she didn’t find a heartbeat immediately I burst into tears.  I knew right then that my worst fears were coming true.  Two other nurses tried to find a heartbeat before my doctor came in with the ultrasound machine and confirmed what I already knew.  My baby was gone.  There was no heartbeat.  We would have to go to the hospital.  They would induce labor.  I would have to deliver my lifeless baby.  We would have some time with him, but not much.  I listened to her say these things as if I were hearing them under water.  I was hysterical.  My husband, always calm and collected, cried into my chest as I lay on the exam table.  We left the office and drove home.  We packed our bags and made the phone calls that needed to be made.  Our parents were devastated.  For some reason, at the time, I couldn’t understand why they were so sad.  They had their children, I thought.  They were fine.  Why are they upset?  Of course now I understand where their shock and pain was coming from, but right then I was so caught up in my own grief that I couldn’t see past it.  It felt like the world had stopped spinning.  It felt like my world was over.  And still there were things that had to be done.

We drove to the hospital, where we were admitted and labor was induced.  They gave me a number of blood pressure and anxiety medications and there is a lot of the night that I can’t remember.  What I do remember seem to be the worst parts.  I remember a lot of crying.  I remember our minister coming and praying over us and wishing that he would just leave.  I remember getting my epidural and then having it fall out.  I remember dilating from 2 cm to 10 cm in less than an hour and the pain of the contractions that came with that.  Then at 8:56 the next morning, on December 14, 2012 my son was born.  It took only three pushes for my tiny baby boy to come into the world.  He weighed only 2 lbs 12oz.  He had my nose and ears, but otherwise looked just like his daddy.  He was absolutely beautiful and I held him and whispered to him and kissed his little forehead for nearly two hours before he was baptized by the hospital chaplain and taken from us.  Everyone at the hospital was so kind to us and they tried to give us as much time as we needed, but there was no amount of time that would have seemed like enough.  When they brought me up to a recovery room I remember feeling completely numb.  There was no pain from my labor and delivery.  I wasn’t hungry or thirsty.  A stream of family came and went from our room.  I don’t remember who was there or when they came.  What I do remember is an overwhelming need to be alone with my husband.  We found out later that the cause of death was a cord injury.  His cord was wrapped around his neck very tightly four times and had cut off blood flow to his brain.  There was also a partial placenta abruption, however the doctor speculated that this was caused by the shortened cord and happened either during or shortly before delivery.  My doctor told me that it was a terrible coincidence, but was likely not connected to my pre-eclampsia.

We had a service for baby Gary two days before Christmas.  Planning his funeral was one of the hardest things that I ever had to do.  We have a family friend who is a funeral director and she very kindly offered her services to us for free.  All we had to provide was the cost of the tiny white casket we picked out and the stone that would be placed at his grave.  We picked out a beautiful marker for him with a little angel boy kneeling to pray.  The day before the funeral we brought a bag of things we wanted to go into the casket with him.  We picked out a premie outfit for him to wear.  We also brought a blanket that I had been knitting for him throughout my pregnancy, a small photo album we found at Babies R’ Us entitled “Who Loves Baby” with pictures of our family, and at the last minute my husband decided to add Leo the lion to the bag.  He struggled with this a lot in the previous days.  He wanted desperately to keep the little lion with us as a remembrance of our son, but ultimately decided that he had bought it for his boy and that’s where it belonged.  The service was beautifully done.  Our minister did a lovely job and my husband, who never fails to amaze me, got up in front of our friends and family and read a letter he had written to baby Gary telling him all of the things he wished he had had the chance to say.  It was terribly difficult to leave my baby at the cemetery and drive away, but going to bed that night, I felt the most peace that I had felt since we found out we had lost him.

The weeks that followed were incredibly difficult.  We both cried and screamed and shared our pain and anger with each other.  It was so difficult for me to see my husband go back to work and get back to a “normal” part of his life while I sat at home, in both physical and emotional pain, feeling as if nothing would ever be normal again.  But as the days and weeks have gone by, one day at a time, sometimes one second at a time, we have gotten back to normal.  It’s a new normal.  It’s not the same as it was before, it never will be the same as it was, and to be honest I wouldn’t want it to be the same.  I never want to have to go through this again, but in some strange way I feel like I have grown so much from our loss.  In his short little life, my tiny little baby taught me more about myself than I had ever known.  He showed me qualities that I never knew I had and proved to me that I could do more and handle more than I ever thought that I could.  I am so proud of my son and I hope every day that he sees his mommy and is just as proud of me.  When I visit him at the cemetery I often tell him about the things that I’ve been doing.  I ask him for his permission to continue to grow and move on and to give me the strength that I need to be a good mommy again someday.  I’m terrified to be pregnant again.  I’m terrified that this could happen to us again.  But now I’ve had a taste of the kind of love that only a parent has for her child and that makes the fear seem less important.  I want to have that love again.  I have to have that love again.  And now my husband and I are trying to give baby Gary a little brother or sister.  And when we do they will know all about the little baby that came before them.  They will see his pictures.  They will hear the stories.  I have to honor my son in this way.  He is the missing piece of our family.  We wouldn’t be complete without him.  He is always loved and never forgotten.  He is the piece of my heart that I have had to give up.  But for him I would have given up the whole of it.