3. WHAT IT FELT LIKE | In honour of this month of awareness today we give the outside world some insight into what it is like to be a bereaved parent by sharing what a certain experience that you had during your grief journey. This can be a positive or negative (or both) experience. Some experiences that you could share about are what it felt like to hear the words “There is no heartbeat” or maybe you had an experience where some did something very special in memory of your children. Pick a moment and share how it made you feel.
I remember the moment so clearly. I was laying in a bed in OB Triage. We had been there for about 20 minutes, and a very nice nurse had just finished using the doppler, where we heard the beautiful, strong heartbeat of our little girl. We had come to the hospital because I was having cramps. They felt like period cramps, and had been around for about 3 days, but this day they were stronger and more intense. I knew something wasn't right, so I called my doctor and she told me to come in.
The nurse assured me that the cramps were probably just all the stretching and growing that was going on. She was very warm and nurturing. I was scared on the way in, but not that scared. I was certain that if I was in labor, they could give me something to stop it, keep me for observation, and I would have a story to tell at work on Monday.
Since I was just two weeks shy of viability, they wouldn't hook me up to the fetal monitor, so she did the doppler to make sure there was a heartbeat. When we heard it, and how strong it was, a huge sense of relief came over me. Everything was going to be ok, we'd be going home soon, and my girl was ok.
The nurse walked out, and then popped back in to say that my urine sample had some blood in it, so I probably had a bladder infection or something. I had had a symptom less one back when I first got pregnant, so I assumed it was the same issue. A few minutes later that doctor came in, and she was everything the other nurse wasn't. She was very business like, and to the point. Before she even finished the (very painful) exam, she said I was dilated four centimeters and she could feel the bag right at my cervix. Testing also confirmed that the discharge I thought I was having, was actually amniotic fluid, so my water had not broken, but it was leaking.
I can still remember the exact way I felt in those moments. It was like anything outside of that curtained bay was standing still, I had tunnel vision. My heart began pounding through my chest as I was trying to understand what she had just told me. As matter of factly and as monotone as if she were telling me the drive thru was out of fries, she said I would likely deliver soon, and that my baby would not survive. She said they would keep me at least overnight, and if I was still pregnant by Monday (this was Saturday night) then they would do some further testing.
If? If I was still pregnant on Monday? I couldn't make sense of what she was saying. How could I not still be pregnant on Monday? I thought I was going home, I thought I would be at work on Monday. I had just heard my beautiful baby's heartbeat, she was still alive, she was still perfectly healthy, but this woman just told me she would be born soon, and she wouldn't survive. It was like I was screaming no no no no no inside my head, but no one could hear me. I was desperate, I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I was desperately trying to wake myself up, to realize that this was not happening, and that my baby would be fine. I was trying to think of some way, trying to plead with someone, anyone, who could change the outcome. Trying to think of some way to get anyone to help me, and make my baby be ok.
That moment could only be compared to the exact minute the machines beeped above my mom's hospital bed, when the nurse came in and said she was shutting things down, because she had just passed. My chest felt tight, and I desperately needed this to not be true. As I laid in my hospital bed that night, in the dark, alone except for my sleeping husband on the "dad bed" across the room, I felt my little girl kicking me. Telling me she was still there, and that broke my heart even more. There was nothing wrong with her. She wasn't sick, or suffering, she wasn't missing any limbs or vital organs. She was perfect and just needed a safe place to grow for 4 more months. It made me sick with sadness that I couldn't give that to her. That I was laying there, feeling my sweet baby move around inside me, knowing that in a few more hours, she would be dead, because I couldn't protect her.
Losing my mom was so hard, but not being able to protect my baby, not being able to do the one thing a mother is supposed to do for their child, was the single most awful moment in my entire life.
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