This is a hard memory to revisit, even though I miss my baby that I didn’t get to bring home every day. When you get used to the new normal, if you can even really call it “used to” something like this, it doesn’t make it any easier to dive deep into it. But I don’t want to forget either. As I read through my journal to prepare to write this, I came across something that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I want to live to honor my child that didn’t get to, not just survive. And I think this is part of that.
After my second daughter was born, I had a bout with postpartum depression that has since morphed into an ongoing struggle with it, though if we were to put it on a scale, I’m definitely on the “lighter” end of things. As such, it took me a long while to decide I was ready to get pregnant again, but once I did I wanted to get a move on.
I got pregnant really easily with my first two, so the fact that it took a few months once I was ready was something I wasn’t prepared for. When I went in for an annual check-up, my OB suggested getting some ovulation tests to help. It turns out I was ovulating about two weeks later than expected, which is relevant later in our story.
From then on things progressed normally. Being tired and nauseated, chasing around a 5 and 3 year old, hearing that sweet heartbeat at appointments. We never felt the need to do any genetic testing for anything; the very first time we were pregnant my doctor in Virginia (where we were living at the time) said that if we weren’t going to terminate the pregnancy for any reason, there was no reason to stress ourselves out with a genetic test. She’d said there was a high risk of false positives for disorders, and so it wasn’t necessary. We’d kept that outlook subsequently, even after moving back to Utah.
Then it was time for our 20 week ultrasound. There was the usual excitement, and we brought our big girls with us to find out if they were going to have a brother or a sister. Everyone was so excited to find out another little girl would be coming to our home. What can I say, we’re good at girls, and we make darn cute ones in my opinion. The technician (or nurse? I can’t remember what qualifications you need to do this) said she was a little bit concerned because the baby was measuring two weeks smaller than she was supposed to, and she couldn’t get a good read on her heart because of that. We were going to be sent to Maternal Fetal Medicine as a precaution.
Neither my husband Chris nor I was worried about this at all. Because, naturally, they had based my due date on the date of my last cycle, not my ovulation date. And those were about two weeks off from each other, so the fact that she was smaller than expected was 100% explained by that. At least, that’s what I thought.
When we got to that appointment, the tech there said she was still measuring two weeks small, but she had grown the appropriate amount between these visits, so I still chalked it up to my late ovulation.
After all the imaging was done, a doctor came in to talk with us about what she saw. It turns out our little girl’s heart wasn’t quite right. But we were reassured that this kind of heart defect was super common. Some kids even grew out of it without having to have surgery, and even if surgery was required, it was so common that it was relatively low risk. While that’s not great news, we felt that we could take that in stride. For a worst-case scenario, that wasn’t too bad.
I still to this day am frustrated that other possible causes weren’t brought up. I understand that medical professionals don’t want to freak out expecting parents, and that things need to be handled carefully. But I had no warning for what was coming next, and that was not fair.
They wanted to see us back in a few weeks to check on her heart again, so we made a second appointment with that office, called our parents with the update, and then went on with life as if nothing drastic had happened. In our mind, it hadn’t. But then the unthinkable did.
We had been planning to go boating with Chris’s family that Saturday, but Friday night I woke up to use the bathroom, as you do when pregnant, at about 3 a.m. But I couldn’t really fall back to sleep, because I started having contractions. Knowing I was only about 26 weeks along, I figured it was Braxton-Hicks and tried to ignore them, but by about 7 that Saturday morning, I knew something was wrong. Even still, the worst case in my head was that I’d need to be admitted to the hospital to stop labor, maybe have to go on bedrest or something. My brother and sister-in-law had actually just had a baby earlier that year, and she’d had to do 10 weeks of in-hospital strict bedrest to get their little one safely there. That still seemed out of the realm of possibilities for me, because I didn’t have a hard pregnancy like she’d had.
Anyway, I woke Chris up, told him I was getting to be in pretty bad pain, and that I was going to call the nurse. I was starting to have some bloody show at this point as well, and that’s what really tipped me over the edge to get help. The nurse told me I should probably go to the hospital to get checked out, because this wasn’t normal. My heart hurts thinking about how far from normal we actually were.
We decided to send the big girls boating still. One of the nice things about being on the early end of getting married and having kids is that the adult to kid ratio for family outings is still in our favor. So we dropped them off with my in-laws and proceeded to the hospital.
We get checked in, and they start hooking me up to the monitors, and the nurse can’t find the baby’s heartbeat. I was confused, because I’d heard her heart earlier that week, and my doctor said everything was looking great. My next appointment with MFM was on Monday. Everything was supposed to be fine. The nurse reassured me that she just wasn’t very good at this part, but they were going to get an ultrasound machine just in case. This is where we started to get a little bit nervous. The doctor came in with the ultrasound, and when he found the baby, my heart dropped. There was no flutter of movement anywhere. No reassuring swish of a heartbeat. She was perfectly still.
“I’m so sorry, but this baby has passed.”
No warning that this could happen. Reassurances every step along the way that she was normal, she was fine, things were going to be ok. And suddenly, she was gone.
Nothing can prepare you for a loss like this, but to have had no clue that this was even a possibility, it felt like a ton of bricks. And then there are all of the heart-wrenching decisions you have to make afterward. The doctor started asking if I wanted to go home, which I didn’t understand at all. I was in labor. My body knew that my baby was gone. There was no reason to prolong this kind of physical pain, and the emotional pain was too raw to even really comprehend yet. So they took us to a room, giving me pain meds and pitocin to help things along. I don’t think I’ve ever had worse pain in my life. Morphine didn’t seem to touch it, but it was too late for an epidural. I remember lying in the bed, trying unsuccessfully not to moan with the pain, waiting for this horrible labor to pass. My father-in-law and brother-in-law came to the hospital to help give me a blessing, and I’m so grateful for them. I don’t remember much, but I was still so grateful they came.
What felt like ages later, they finally broke my water, and that sent a huge relief through my body. But unfortunately, labor basically stopped. So they had to start me on pitocin again to keep things moving. It hurt so much. In breaking my water, the baby had flipped breach, and then transverse. So even though she was so tiny, it was still a traumatic labor for her. A hand and foot came out first, and her arm was broken in the process. But the labor proceeded cleanly, and I didn’t have to have surgery to finish it. When it was finally over, even though I knew I wouldn’t hear it, I still waited for that newborn cry. The quiet was heartbreaking. We’d been warned that she might be puffy, swollen, or otherwise not look normal, but when they handed her to me, she looked perfect even though she was so small.
I remember my doctor telling me I’d done an excellent job for these circumstances. It doesn’t seem like much, but it was the right bedside manner for what I needed, and I’m grateful for that.
There aren’t words to describe how much it hurts to hold a little one, so perfect and tiny, who looks like she’s sleeping, and know that she doesn’t get to come home with you. There’s still a hole in my heart, and probably will always be.
After that, the floaty sensation that had started to come on from the pain killers grew, and all I wanted was to be left alone so I could sleep. But one of the things that you’d never know to prepare for, even if you knew to prepare for the awful situation this is, is how many people come and talk to you after it happens, because you need to start making decisions. Awful, crappy, hard decisions that no one ever wants to make.
We had to decide if we were going to stay overnight in the hospital or not, and whether or not to keep the body with us if we did. We had to start making decisions about autopsies and genetic testing. And worst of all, we had to make decisions about what to do with her body. So many things, and figuring it all out with our broken healthcare system, was too much for me to face. Chris was a rock during this, and I hid behind him as he made phone calls, asked questions, and took care of following up with it all. I don’t know if he knows just how much I’m grateful for the protection he gave me through the pain of all that.
A chaplain came, and went over a lot of that with us. He advised us to spend as much time with her as we wanted. A nurse at the hospital had gone through something similar previously, we were told, and she’d donated a cooling bassinet so that we could keep her in the room with us. I imagine there’s a lot that seems macabre about this to people who have never experienced it, but you take what comfort you can find in times like this. And being able to hold my baby’s body, even if she wasn’t really there, whenever I wanted to for the next 24 hours, was something that helped me begin to understand and move through the grief.
The chaplain, I wish I could remember his name, was very understanding, and also very thorough, it felt like. He asked about our faith. I’m sure it wasn’t a surprise that in Utah he also belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So he was able to help us with specific concerns. He told us it was appropriate to give her a name, even if it wasn’t giving her a name and blessing like we would do if she’d lived, and invoke the priesthood to do so. He also talked with us about burial and cremation, and what choices we had there. And that brought a lot of comfort to me, because on top of all of this, I couldn’t face a tiny casket, and not knowing if we’d always be able to be near her. I was not ready to face that either.
He also talked about how we’d likely wrestle with the theological question of if she’d be a part of our family or if her spirit hadn’t really entered the body yet. There’s no clear revelation on this that we know of, but after several days of discussing this, Chris and I had come to the conclusion that this is a tender mercy from a loving Heavenly Father. If the Church did have a “hard and fast” rule, how hard would it be to be just on the wrong side of it? Heavenly Father has given me space to hope, and to love, and for that I am so grateful. So, I do believe that I have a baby waiting for me, being cared for by mine and Chris’s family members. It helps to think about that when it’s hard.
After the Chaplain left, I was beyond exhausted, and the pain medication was making it even harder to stay awake. But first people from the Utah chapter of Share parents came. Someone took casts of her little hand and foot. I was so glad they took the foot that had twin toes, just like her dad. And then they took pictures of her. I didn’t want to be in them at first. I just wanted the world to go away. But Chris went with them to another room and I was finally able to get a little bit of sleep. When he came back, he told me I’d regret not being in some pictures. He was right, and I’m glad I let them take some of me with her.
It was getting hard to hold her little body and not have a name for her. We’d decided we wanted to give her a name and had told our parents and whatever siblings were available that we’d be doing that around 7. I had her in my arms, and thought about Jenett, after my Grammy. I told Chris, and he suggested Cora for her middle name, and we knew that’s what we wanted. My Grammy passed away when I was about 14. Chris’s great-grandmother Cora had also lost an 8-month old daughter. According to the family history, she was really struggling with the loss and was having a hard time moving past her grief until she had a spiritual experience; she wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not, but her mother came to her and said that she was taking care of the little girl until Cora could do it herself. That gave her the strength to continue living her life; Chris’s grandfather was born about a year later. I find a lot of comfort in the story and love that it’s tied to her name. When we told my parents, my dad teared up that we’d decided to name her after his mom. They said that she’s probably so pleased to be looking after her namesake.
This next part is one of the hardest bits, because we had to tell the big girls. We’d been dreading that. They were tired from a day out in the sun when they came to the hospital, and there were a lot of people there too. We held them, and told them that the baby had died. Our three-year-old, Sammy, burst into tears, and was pretty inconsolable for the rest of the time she was there. Our older daughter Lindsay took it rather stoically. I don’t know how much they understood at three and five years old, and it still makes them sad sometimes. Lindsay did hold her for a little bit.
Once all the family that could make it was there, Chris held her and gave her a name. He then prayed, and I like the way my dad put it afterwards. It was a blessing for us. It was beautiful, and so hard. We each got father’s blessings afterwards as well.
All of that, and it had only been one day. I was exhausted, and went to sleep that evening. Chris stayed up and recorded a lot of what was said in the blessings, and what had happened that day. It’s still hard to fathom how much life can change in one day, and how strange time is when it does.
The next morning, my grandma and aunt came to see us in the hospital, and at that point I felt like everyone who had needed to see her had had the opportunity. It gave me an odd sense of closure, if that makes any sense at all.
I can’t remember if this was on Saturday or Sunday, but we’d had to go through the process of deciding whether or not to do genetic testing and an autopsy, contacting the funeral home, arranging transportation for her body from the hospital to the autopsy lab to the funeral home (that was a nightmare, and so painful), and deciding on a burial or cremation. Most, if not all, of the people Chris spoke to were compassionate, but the system is so frustratingly broken. We had the hardest time finding out if an autopsy or genetic testing would be covered by our insurance, and then figuring out transportation for her… it was gut-wrenching over the next few days.
After the beginnings of that arduous task on Sunday morning, a nurse poked her head in to ask if we wanted the sacrament brought to us. That was another tender mercy. It would have been so easy to be angry, or annoyed at an interruption, but we felt nothing but peace from it. Chris mentioned how having someone come and do that for us, just the two of us, really reinforces the individual nature of the blessings from the Atonement. I’m so grateful we had that opportunity.
I think that moment helped clarify for me some feelings about the whole awful experience. It would be so easy to say that this weekend had been hell. But there was so much grace there, that I can’t say that. It was a crucible, for sure. Still probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I hope I never have to do something this hard again. But I know that my Savior was right there with me and Chris, experiencing our heartache and grief with us, so we wouldn’t have to be alone. Even still, He’s there supporting me when it’s all so overwhelming I don’t know how to move forward.
Leaving the hospital was strange. It felt wrong for so many reasons. Walking out to a minivan, that we were supposed to need to fit a third child that wasn’t coming home was frustrating. The fact that it was summer and hot, instead of raining and miserable to match my mood, or snowy and cold like it was supposed to be for my December due date. I was irrationally angry at the weather for all of that, and it’s funny how that stays with me.
The amount of support I’ve gotten since then has been amazing. So many friends shared with me their similar experiences, and I had no idea they’d gone through something like this. “Welcome to the club you never wanted to be a part of.” But the comfort we find from each other is amazing.
Our dear bishop got released the Sunday we came home, so he and the new bishop both came by together. That’s a doozy of a way to be welcomed to that stewardship.
And our friend Rachel, who had also experienced a stillbirth, almost beat them over to our house. She told me that she was going to be nosy and insert herself to make sure I was ok, because that’s what she needed after her loss. I am so grateful for her, because I’m sure I would have retreated into myself and sunk into an awful depression, and it would have been even worse. She helped me realize it was ok to talk to people, and ok to ask for help, and ok to talk to my other friends about this.
It took what felt like ages to get results for the autopsy and testing. Jenett’s heart and lungs hadn’t formed properly. We finally found out that was because she had trisomy 18, which is always fatal due to causing those malformations. It’s been a relief to know what happened, that there was nothing we could have done differently for her, and that it’s highly unlikely to happen again. There’s a peace in knowing, even if it’s crappy knowledge, and I feel very lucky to have that. I know that many people who lose babies don’t always get to know why, and my heart hurts for them.
I could probably go on for days about everything that happened in the week after we lost Jenette, the sadness, the anger, the love and support. The frustration that my body still reacted as if I had brought home a baby. Feeling like I should have at least considered pumping and donating breastmilk, even though ultimately I feel like that would have been too hard on my mental health. The quiet because our parents decided that we needed time alone to grieve before we had to take care of Lindsay and Samantha again, and the confusion of why I was never consulted about that. Starting to figure out the new normal. I still feel like I’m figuring that out some days. But that’s almost another story.