When Pregnancy Doesn’t Go as Planned: My Story – part 3

This is the third chapter in a four part series.  If you would like to start at the beginning, you will find that over here.

The speed of life temporarily changed the moment the doctor arrived in the room.  The tears were beginning to form and my lip was quivering.  That is my tell tale sign that I’m about to crack – the involuntary lip quiver.

 

 

 

Information was thrown out so fast and my brain was moving so slow – conversations I was unprepared for and didn’t know how to process.  It felt like the doctor was speaking another language.  All except when she paused for a moment and simply said, “I’m really sorry.”  Three words that said everything.  That look, those words, that’s what doctors say when it’s over.

My torn baby nest resulted in a security breach that allowed amniotic fluid to leak out.  Amniotic fluid is the super food that the baby ingests in order for its lungs to develop.  No amniotic fluid, no lung development.  It was as simple as that.

A consistently steady and strong heartbeat told the doctor that this baby wasn’t giving up.  I had two options: carry this baby to term or terminate the pregnancy.

Check that.  I had one option.  There was only ever one option.

Even in that mind spinning moment, there was only one option.

I wish I could say I was brave in the days that followed, but honestly, I felt dead.  I felt numb.  I had never done depression before.  I’m a glass half full, Pollyanna type girl.  But depression quickly started to do me.

Tell me, how exactly does one do life with an ever swelling belly, growing a baby she will only ever say goodbye to?  How does one endure months of prenatal appointments and sit in a waiting room full of expecting mothers all anxious and complaining about trivial things like indigestion?  How does one answer when every stranger who notices her morphing shape asks her when she is due?  Due to what?  Lay my baby in the ground?

This was too much.  I just got handed a 20 week sentence.  As if the first 20 weeks weren’t hard enough, I had won the grand prize of 20 more and a funeral at the end.  It was just too much.

 

I didn’t want to get out of bed.  I didn’t want to hope or pray or do.  I couldn’t figure out how I was going to carry this burden through the next day let alone the next few months.

And, of course, none of that really even matters when you are still mommy to a one year old.  A one year old who still needs love and attention and a mama who smiles more than she cries.

These days, they were hard.

My healthy and thriving one year old was busy taking new steps and babbling new words and all of this made my heart swell and yet dealt me another blow in the same moment.  I had a front row seat to the very epitome of what I was losing.

A few days after receiving the news, though, something changed.  For one fleeting moment, I thought of the baby still moving inside me.  Not about how hard this was for me or how this was all too much for me, but about my little fighter of a baby.  Week after week after week of never-giving-up baby.  Always a heartbeat baby.

And me, the mama, I was going to give up?

Sorry kid, it’s just too much.  

Really?

So, I made up my mind.  I had one shot at this.  One shot to mother this baby.  One chance to pray my heart out for this baby.  I would not give up.  I would not concede.  I would hope and pray and believe with every ounce of strength I had left.  And if, in the end, it still meant saying goodbye, I would say goodbye knowing I was the very best mother I could be for whatever amount of time I had.

 

 

 

Looking back, I know exactly where the fight that arose in me came from.  I had seen it modeled for me, first hand. We’ve talked about how important that is.  I had seen it done.  I had watched how to do this messy gut wrenching parenting thing.

You see a few months earlier, when this all started and I passed out behind the locked bathroom door, my husband frantically made two phone calls, 911 and my parents.  I will never forget the moment my parents arrived at my home that night.  I was curled up on my bedroom floor surrounded by a few paramedics as they checked my vitals.  And then entered my dad.

Without even the slightest hesitation, my dad nudged paramedics aside and went straight to his little girl.  He knelt down and before paramedics, fire fighters and any other emergency personnel who showed up that night he stormed the gates of heaven, on behalf of me.  I’ve heard my dad pray more times than I could count, but I have never heard him pray with such fervor as he did that night.

You see, he had no idea what was really going on- if it was fatal or just girl problems.  But really, he had the same choice, concede or fight. And without a moment of hesitation, he chose to fight.  He showed his daughter and every other person in that room what it looks like to be the very best parent you can with whatever fleeting moments you have left.

One week after that ultrasound, after learning of what lay ahead for us, I unexpectedly went into labor and gave birth to a stillborn baby girl, Alison Joline.  It all happened so fast and, again, I was unprepared.  In the gravity of discussing what the next 20 weeks and delivering a baby with no capacity to breath would look like, the doctor never discussed the possibility of it all happening in the next week.

There are some parts of this story that are hard to put words to.  What it feels like to be in a family birthing center with no baby. What it feels like for your family to sit in a waiting room and grieve right beside families who are electric with excitement for their new life.  What it feels like to have a funeral director visit you in the hospital, ask what you would like them to do with your baby.

There were moments that felt like each day was a whole new level of hard.

I had no plan for how to handle this life.  These moments. These decisions.  But I learned, you can.   Even without a plan, you can.

God gives grace in times like these.  Grace you would otherwise never see.  Grace to stand when your knees want to buckle.  Grace to do hard things, answer hard questions and someday smile again.

Part 4, the final chapter, can be found here.

 

https://youtu.be/Mkg4IH1Zp64