Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Backstory

Hi-
So I’m writing this as an Angel Mom, a woman who lost her baby after week 25 in her pregnancy, who is now pregnant again. My hope is just to be open about what’s going on, how I feel, and shed light on a situation that is far more common than anyone realizes.

Back story:
I was pregnant with an amazing little baby who was due in January 2010. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, I went to all my doctor’s appointments, read many books about pregnancy and childbirth, took my prenatals, ate healthy, and all those other things expectant moms are supposed to do. I mean, I was even made fun of about how strict I was by other moms.

Anyway, during week 34, I started having what I thought were Braxton-Hicks contractions until we realized that they were every 20 minutes. We called the hospital and followed their instructions “drink water, eat something, lay down, if they don’t go away, come in.” They went away and we just laughed about the “oh my gosh, the baby is coming,” scare.

The next day it happened again. Contractions 20 minutes apart. I took a shower (because who wants to be stinky when they go into labor? No me.) and my mucus plug came out. Got out of the shower, called the hospital, went in, was admitted, and the nurse used the Doppler to find the heartbeat. She couldn’t. She grabbed her supervisor. She couldn’t find it. They called the doctor on a Saturday night. She couldn’t find it. And that’s what she did an ultrasound. All she said was

“I’m sorry.”

From there, if you’re an Angel Mom, you know. I need not say more.

For those of you who aren’t, Shakespeare couldn’t even explain with his silver pen that feeling, that moment, how it changed me forever, and how much I honestly hope you never understand.

I delivered our baby after more than 12 hours of labor with the coaching of my beyond amazing husband. We never held our baby, never saw our baby, and never found out the gender. What we do know is our baby’s nickname is Moose, Moose played air guitar to Rush, and loved to poke me in the ribs so Daddy would poke back. Obviously, Moose equaled Awesome Baby because Rush equals Awesome.

After many weeks of waiting, there was never a cause found for our loss. It means that we could try again or not. Clearly, I’m writing this blog about our next pregnancy, so we’ve decided to try again.

Wombat (yeah, we like weird nicknames for our babies in utero) is currently right over 11 weeks and due in late July. We don’t know what will happen, but I’ll do my best to document whatever events occur.

4 comments:

  1. :-( I'm so sorry about Moose.

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  2. I can't even begin to imagine what you went through, although my sister had a similar experience. Here's hoping for an easier pregnancy this time around!!!

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  3. Sending you positive thoughts as you begin your new pregnancy =) I'm currently ectopic and waiting to reclaim my body and start over. Thank you for sharing your story!
    B

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  4. I m sorry to hear about your loss, but I am sure your blog will help many people. Thank you for sharing your story.

    I love your baby nicknames :)

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