I found this article through a link here. I have been meaning to do a blogroll… … I did not find a lot of blogs in the early days after my loss but eventually, after finding one, it leads to many others. But I also did not have a lot of time to read online. And it’s not just the time, it’s the energy it takes to read those words, because it is not like reading an instruction manual to screw in the lightbulb. Sterile words that direct you to do something and after that you can forget about it and go to sleep straight. NO. When you go to these blogs every word can bring back floods of memories and rivers of tears and at ten in the morning you want to just crawl back into bed and call it a day already. So, I needed to know those blogs are out there and yet no strength to read a lot. Still, I will do a blogroll. Yes, one day.
So, anyway, this article. Wow, a lot of information, and of course I start to imagine what I am going to write if we succeed in trying and have a live baby again. It is a good article I do not want to lose, so I paste it below. The original link is here.
Hope with a Heartbeat
With worry a constant companion, the author embarks on another pregnancy, post-stillbirth
Sunday, March 25, 2007
It can’t happen again.
That’s what my doctor told me. She said stillbirth is such a rare occurrence that it never happens twice.
I knew she was wrong. I’d seen the stories of women with multiple losses on online message boards. I’d read studies showing women who have had one stillbirth are at an increased risk for another.
Besides, if subsequent losses weren’t possible, why designate women with a prior stillbirth as high risk or recommend increased fetal monitoring? Is it because no doctor wants to be blamed for overlooking something a second time around? Or is it because women with a loss begin to question the gap in knowledge in a system they trusted with the lives of their babies?
I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t know how.
I knew my doctor said it to reassure me that this time my baby would live. She didn’t want me to worry.
What she didn’t realize, and what every parent who has lost a child knows to be the only hard-and-fast rule of a subsequent pregnancy, is that worry and doubt are as constant a companion as prenatal vitamins. Nothing a doctor says or does causes the worry.
It has been there since the first time I thought about getting pregnant again.
It will be there until I hold a living, breathing baby in my arms.
Nine months is a long time to wait to find out if this time it’ll be different. It’s hell. But hell with hope and a heartbeat.
There was no doubt I wanted to get pregnant again after my son Avery was stillborn in March 2005. Losing him was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but the six months he was in my womb were also the most precious. His brief and unexpected visit changed the haphazard course of my life and gave it a resolute focus.I needed to have a baby. It didn’t matter that I was 36, single and without a clue as to how I was going to make it happen.
My friend Stas encouraged me to wait a year and a day after Avery’s death. Studies showed her advice had merit: Women who wait a year or longer to get pregnant after a loss experience less anxiety and depression. But as many as 60 percent of women become pregnant within a year of their loss. Most of the couples I met waited only a few months before trying again.
I wish I could say I decided to wait a year because I wanted to give myself a chance to heal.
[ Back Story PODCAST: Suzanne shares the stories of other parents who are dealing with their own loss: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=5&entry_id=14609 ]
I spent the months after Avery’s death honoring his life. I attended support group meetings, went to candlelight vigils and talked about him to anyone who would listen. I tried to find out as much as I could about stillbirth — despite a distinct lack of research and awareness — and wrote a story about my experience in this magazine.
But the mother in me was just biding time until I could get pregnant again. I tracked my menstrual cycle like a mad scientist, asked my friend, Steve, to be a donor, read up on home-insemination methods and researched prenatal testing.
While doctors never figured out why Avery died, there were a few conditions that could have been contributing factors: circumvallate placenta and a peripheral cord insertion. Neither of them, the doctors said, usually resulted in a negative outcome and there was no reason to believe they would recur. The blood clot they found on my placenta might have been the result of a fall or from another condition.
Without knowing the cause of death, I found little comfort in my doctor’s reassurance that I wouldn’t have another stillbirth. Research on pregnancies after a loss wasn’t comforting, either. One study found that only 25 percent of the subsequent pregnancies of women who had a loss after 10 weeks gestation resulted in a surviving infant. Another showed that women who had a stillbirth were five times more likely to have a subsequent stillbirth — the recurrence of stillbirth almost tripled in black women compared to white women. But a small Australian study from 2001 found there was no increased risk of subsequent stillbirths. And while I had met many women with multiple miscarriages, none of the bereaved couples I met had more than one stillbirth.
Before I tried to get pregnant again, I asked for every blood test available to check certain protein and hormone levels — including the one for thrombophilia, a blood-clotting disorder that has been linked to stillbirth. I requested a prescription of progesterone to take for two months once I got pregnant, because low levels of the hormone may lead to miscarriage. My doctor prescribed all of them without blinking. One test came back with a slightly elevated anti-phospholipid antibody, which if high enough could cause thrombophilia. My levels were low enough that the high-risk perinatologist I consulted thought treating it with aspirin was sufficient.
He was confident I had no reason to worry and I should go out and “make a baby.”
Most bereaved parents have spent considerable time trying to find out what might have caused their loss. They take nothing for granted and don’t assume everything will be different the second time.
“I was hell bent on having things go right,” said Sherry Page, whose daughter, dubbed MP (Mysterious Person), was stillborn with a true knot in her umbilical cord. “I was the most conscientious pregnant woman ever. … I felt responsible for making sure nothing went wrong, which was a burden to some extent.”
At 23 weeks pregnant, Tarra Lyons was on a trip with her husband, Dave Miles, when she noticed she had been leaking fluid for a few days. Lyons visited a local hospital and was examined and monitored for four hours. She was told it wasn’t amniotic fluid and was sent home. By the time they got back to Berkeley, Lyons had a fever. Doctors discovered she had no amniotic fluid left. There was no way they could save her son Morgan. He was born alive at 1 pound and died less than two hours later.
“I was a high-risk pregnancy and I wasn’t treated as such,” Lyons said of the doctors at the first hospital she visited. She was later diagnosed with an incompetent cervix. After spending months researching her options and talking with other parents through online support groups, the 41-year-old believed getting a stitch called a cerclage to keep her cervix closed was her best course of action.
When she learned she was having twins, she was even more convinced it was the right thing to do. But her OB told her the procedure was unnecessary. She sought a second opinion and got a similar response.
“He had a preconceived idea that incompetent cervix was extremely rare and could not be the cause of the loss,” Lyons said.
She started to doubt the doctors and the treatment she was getting. “I felt like they didn’t care, like I was the only one who cared,” Lyons said. “When I would point out the research, the doctors would say, ‘Oh someone has been doing their homework.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, but you’re not.'”
Seeking a third opinion, she went to a well-known high-risk perinatologist in San Francisco who finally advocated the cerclage. He told her that common practice is to perform it only after at least two losses. He said while 25 percent of the cerclages performed might turn out to be unnecessary, he would rather do one that is unnecessary than not do one that is.
After doing the cerclage, the doctor told Lyons he was 100 percent convinced she had needed the procedure: Her cervix had already dilated, and “looked like I had had several kids.”
“I had to trust my judgment, I had to listen to my intuition,” Lyons said. “I am so glad I changed doctors and asked for another opinion.” Her twins, Fiona and Pearson, were born healthy at 37 weeks in January.
Dr. Sarah Kye Price, a professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work, said mothers tend to become experts in whatever may have caused their loss.
Price found that 25 percent of women in the United States had one or more fetal deaths before having a live birth. “It is important for women to be self advocating. Ask a lot of questions and take charge of their experience and not see it as a weakness.”
According to Richard K. Olsen, founder of the National Stillbirth Society, many potential pregnancy-saving procedures are not discussed with patients. Sometimes because doctors may not believe they will work; other times it’s because insurance companies refuse to cover them. Olsen, whose daughter Camille was stillborn full-term with no known cause of death in 2000, claims that many stillbirths could be avoided if women were taught how to monitor their baby’s activity and if ultrasound and non-stress testing were more widely made available to all women — not just those deemed to have high-risk pregnancies.
“In the end it is the mothers of America coming together, not the medical community or the government, that is going to help us conquer stillbirth and start to reverse the appalling loss of life that devastates so many families,” he said.
In April 2006, after taking every precaution I can imagine — and waiting a year after Avery’s death — I made my third home-insemination attempt.
And it worked. As soon as the two blue lines showed up on the test strip, I called the dozen or so friends and family that make up my tribe, gushing excitedly at my luck.
But within days a nagging fear bubbled up. I worried that everything I did would end the pregnancy. Did the trash weigh less than 10 pounds or did I need a forklift to carry it? Could I re-paint the spare room or would I give the fetus a birth defect? Could I fly?
I worried that my worry would somehow hurt the pregnancy. I couldn’t bring myself to call the cells multiplying inside me a baby, because I didn’t want to jinx it. So I called it the Bean.
I had read multiple studies that show a correlation between pregnancy loss and higher levels of anxiety and depression during subsequent pregnancies. So I knew I was normal. There was even research, including a study by Price, which said it wouldn’t affect my ability to bond with the baby once it was born.
“We know that there is increased anxiety, but it speaks to the resilience that makes parents able to attach and parent once the baby is born,” said Price. “Older studies decades ago were critical of parents feeling depressed or anxious after a loss and that it would be harmful but they were based only on theory and isolated case studies.”
I felt guilty that I wasn’t enjoying the pregnancy. I felt bad that I was cheating the Bean of the love and excitement I felt when I was carrying Avery. The main thing I felt was desperation. I was convinced I was going to miscarry. I found myself begging the Bean to hold on. I finally reached week eight and Stas came with me to the OB’s office for my first prenatal visit. The last time I was in that room was to see why Avery wasn’t moving. I told Stas I was fine, but a part of me wasn’t.
When my doctor, Dr. Jane Fang, walked in, the first thing she said was, “I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable for you. I know that the last time you were in here was when Avery died.” She seemed to understand this was a dual pregnancy for me: One filled with fervent hope and the other with persistent regret.
She prepped me for the ultrasound and I turned away from the screen.
“I need you to look first to make sure everything is OK,” I said, through the lump in my throat.
She turned on the monitor and within seconds said, “Yup, there’s a baby in there. Everything looks great.” Tears of relief dripped on the table as I turned back to see the proof for myself.
A fuzzy little bean with a heartbeat.
Getting through the uncertainty of the first trimester was a brutal test of endurance. I started going to a monthly support group for subsequent pregnancies. It felt like there were unexpected landmines and bittersweet reminders of what I lost and what I could still lose every day.
“It’s about the intersection of grieving one baby while growing another baby and how confusing that can be,” said Cherie Golant, a licensed clinical social worker who facilitates the Pregnancy After a Loss support group at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Golant, whose first child, Julia, was stillborn at 35 weeks, started the group after her subsequent child, Rose, was born. “Parents are afraid of losing another baby from the same thing happening and they may have learned about other ways for babies to die that they become afraid of. Many parents are afraid to have hope that their new baby will come home.”
After Angelica Zab’s first child, Daniel, was born alive, she lost three subsequent pregnancies in the first trimester. When her fourth pregnancy with her daughter Isabel, now 4 months old, made it into the second trimester, Zab was a wreck.
“I remember throwing the first ultrasound picture in the trash,” the 41-year-old Berkeley mom said. “I didn’t want to love her because of my fear of losing her, or anything going wrong. Being pregnant with Isabel felt to me like ‘March of the Penguins.’ I identified with what they go through to have their babies, so precarious, so hard and so many times, so tragic.”
One doctor told Zab, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Lightening doesn’t strike twice in the same place.”
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, I think lightning has stricken many times already in the same place,’ ” Zab said. “She didn’t understand what I was going through and that was painful and frustrating.”
Price said that most women have mixed feelings about being pregnant again.
“They want to say ‘I’m pregnant,’ but they know it doesn’t mean that they are going to have a live baby,” Price said. “And that produces a lot of anxiety. Most women feel like they will overburden their doctors and their worry will cause problems for the baby. Once bitten twice shy. They want to protect themselves and not get too attached or too hopeful, but they want to enjoy it, too. To get past that milestone of loss in the last pregnancy.”
Amy Abbey found solace in support groups and needed to talk about the ups and downs of being pregnant again. After losing her first baby, Solomon, at 19.5 weeks, as well as losing her second pregnancy, Abbey said she “was in the loss world and trying to climb back to normality, not realizing the normality I knew would never be mine again.”
When she got pregnant for the third time, she didn’t want to trust it.
“Emotionally I was a wreck, very low functioning yet still getting through my days,” Abbey said. “I did not believe — until I heard Alison cry — that I would give birth to a living child.”
Abbey had another son, Adam, and decided to compile a book of subsequent pregnancy stories called, “Journeys: Pregnancy After Loss,” to give others hope that “there is a light at the end of this tunnel, even if you can’t see it.”
“I will never be the same,” said Abbey. “Alison and Adam, and life in general, have restored happiness and wonder for me. But deep in my core, there is a level of joy I am still too cautious to experience.” Page said that people like to believe that because you’ve had another child, “you’ve gotten over it.”
“It takes a long time to heal,” Page said. “Other children do not replace the missing one. MP is still very present, albeit in a softer, more distant way than she was in the early years. She is still a part of the family and will always be.”
Somehow I made it past the miscarriage “danger zone” and into week 14. It became a little easier to breathe. I marked a month off the calendar until the 19-week ultrasound. My friend Anna called dibs on the appointment before I was even pregnant. She had come with me to Avery’s midterm sonogram, and wanted to be there for the Bean’s.
“That’s the sex one, right?” she asked. She wanted to be the first one of the tribe to know the Bean’s gender.
I saw Dr. Peter Callen, the same radiologist that examined Avery. He had discovered the circumvallate placenta and peripheral cord insertion but as per hospital policy, he could only tell my doctor. Because they weren’t usually associated with a negative outcome, my doctor didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to worry me unnecessarily.
This time I made sure he was allowed to tell me everything on the spot — good, bad and ugly.
It was a brief conversation.
“Everything looks good,” he said.
And the Bean was a boy.
I was showing halfway through the second trimester and started getting “The Question” from strangers.
“Is this your first?”
“No,” I told them. “My first was stillborn.”
Some said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” Others just said, “Oh.”
Many more than I expected said nothing at all.
I was stuck. The baby that was nothing but ashes in a small cobalt bottle on my mantel was more real and alive for me than the baby in my belly.
“Just because you love this baby doesn’t mean you don’t love Avery,” Dr. Donna Wiggins said to me during a monthly check up. She was the doctor on call who delivered Avery and called him an angel. “When my second child was born, it didn’t mean I loved my first one any less.”
A few weeks before the point in my pregnancy when I lost Avery, Stas took me into a Pottery Barn Kids and said we should register. I thought it was too early to buy anything. She didn’t want me to cheat myself out of the experience and joy of being pregnant.
I never shopped for Avery. He died before anyone could plan a shower for him. I wasn’t ready to make a list of baby things. I wasn’t convinced the Bean was ever going to need them.
But some part of me wanted to believe, wanted to be normal. A week later at a Giants game, I made my first purchase: Black and orange booties.
When the week finally arrived when I lost Avery, I found myself at a Support After Neonatal Death (SAND) group meeting. I had agreed to go with a co-worker who had just hit her two-year anniversary of the stillbirth of her son, Matthew — something she hadn’t told any of her new friends or peers about.
Even after two years, her tears flowed fast and frequently as we listened to stories of other parents whose losses were more recent, yet seemingly no less raw, than hers.
When it was my turn, I felt guilty talking about being pregnant — especially as several couples in the room faced fertility challenges getting pregnant with the children they lost. So I avoided talking about it, instead focusing on Avery. I talked about the year after his death and the gift bags that a few other SAND couples and I made for newly bereaved parents. We filled them with disposable cameras, small hand knit hats and suggestions for how to say goodbye to their babies before leaving the hospital.
The couple across from me said they got one of the bags when their son was stillborn just a few weeks earlier. Without it, they said, they would never have thought to hold him or take pictures. They were grateful.
But I was grateful that Avery’s death helped another couple get through the hardest day of their lives.
Before I knew it, I was in the third trimester and uncharted territory. The Bean’s movements were more pronounced. The four dimensional images of his face made him look like a real baby, not just a bony alien. I suddenly found myself wanting desperately to hold him and beginning to believe it was possible.
At 29 weeks, I traveled to New Orleans to see Dr. Jason Collins with the Pregnancy Institute. He has been conducting a study on the presence of cord-related anomalies in subsequent pregnancies of women who had some kind of cord-related complication in their previous losses. In his first test group, 21 of the 25 women presented with some kind of cord issue at 28 weeks. All delivered by 37 weeks, 14 of them with the presence of a cord anomaly and two that resulted in emergency C-sections. While stillbirth advocates laud his work, members of the medical community are more critical of his findings because he hasn’t used a control group — something he said he is in the process of doing now.
At first I thought flying to New Orleans a year after Katrina and drinking the water presented more of a risk to the pregnancy than the condition of the cord. Everything had been perfect so far. This time I knew my doctors hadn’t knowingly kept anything from me.
Halfway through the exam after a half an hour of fetal monitoring, Collins looked at the strip and said, “I think you will be surprised at what I have found.” Using an ultrasound, he showed me where the umbilical cord was wrapped around the Bean’s neck. A pattern that looked like a “w” on the strip indicated to him that the cord was being compressed. The ultrasound showed him why.
Collins wasn’t worried because everything else looked fine. He showed me how to use the home-monitoring equipment so I could view the Bean’s heart rate and my contractions and how to send the readouts to his BlackBerry.
At first I didn’t know what to do with this information. I had thought everything was perfect. My friend Kala, who was the labor and delivery nurse for Avery’s birth, reassured me that nuchal cords are common in healthy births and she didn’t want me to worry. I knew she was right, but I had also met countless parents who had been told that their babies died because of a cord accident.
“Without Dr. Collins and the home fetal monitor, I don’t know if I would have made it through the pregnancy,” said Dana Fang, whose first child, Olivia, was stillborn with a longer than normal cord wrapped four times around the baby’s leg with a true knot. Although the OB nurse from San Diego knew she wanted to try again, she didn’t realize how emotionally challenging it would be to be pregnant just three months after her loss. “Not only did I fear she would die, I was still grieving the stillbirth of my first child,” Fang said. When she was 28 weeks pregnant, Fang traveled to New Orleans to be evaluated by Collins. He found the cord was wrapped around her subsequent baby’s neck and the cord had a marginal insertion, near the edge of the placenta instead of in the middle where it normally would be. “I couldn’t believe it, considering my first baby died from a cord accident,” she said. “But I felt at ease knowing that Dr. Collins was evaluating (the strip) every night.”
When she was 34 weeks, Collins told her she would need to be delivered soon. She was having frequent contractions and cord-compression variables. “I was in pain and I just didn’t like what was going on. As an OB nurse, I new what I was seeing,” said Fang. While her treating physician listened to her concerns, doctors wouldn’t deliver her without a reason to believe it was necessary.
“Within a week, my fluid level dropped from 19 to 0 and I needed an urgent Cesarean section,” Fang said. Her daughter Camille was born healthy in October.
I found myself asking anyone who would listen: If we can see cord complications like Fang’s and mine at 28 weeks when a baby is considered viable — if we can monitor pregnancies with these potential danger signs — why aren’t later-term ultrasounds standard medical procedure? Couldn’t the majority of deaths related to cord accidents be avoided if there was more monitoring?
Collins thinks so. “We have to change the way we treat the third trimester,” he said. “We look for club foot and cleft palate, which each affect 1 in 1,000 babies and aren’t fatal. But we don’t look for cord problems, which account for as many as 20 percent of fetal deaths.”
But Dr. Julian Parer of the University of California San Francisco said that because there has been so little research on the role of umbilical cords in fetal deaths, there is no evidence that umbilical anomalies are the cause of death. Thirty percent of all babies are born healthy, despite having the cord wrapped around the neck or some other squeezable place.
“There is a prevalence of doctors using the cord around the neck as a reason for the death, which is erroneous at best since we can’t actually tell if that was the cause unless the babies are being monitored at the time of death,” said Parer, an OB-GYN who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine and high-risk pregnancies.
So if the Page and Fang babies didn’t die from a cord accident, what did they die from?
Parer grants that there have been no studies to prove that cord anomalies are not the cause of death, either.
A five-year, $15 million research project co-led by Dr. Uma Reddy with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health is attempting to address the lack of research into the causes of stillbirth. The presence of cord entanglements or anomalies will be documented, but Reddy said the deaths won’t be attributed to a cord accident, “unless there is evidence of cessation of blood flow or lack of oxygen in the brain.”
At a conference of the Society of Fetal Maternal Medicine in San Francisco last month, Reddy reported that a recent study showed that women with a prior stillbirth were five times more likely to have a subsequent stillbirth. Unfortunately, she said, current research and testing are still far from making conclusive recommendations for prevention.
“The hope is that in the future we can combine various (risk) markers together to be able to better understand, to help evaluate all pregnancies and tell which babies are at risk,” she said.
How can some doctors tell their patients that recurrent stillbirths don’t happen when there isn’t research that says they don’t and more than a few studies indicating that there is an increased possibility that some women will have a subsequent loss?
Dr. Robert Silver of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, said the recurrence risk for fetal deaths has not been well studied, and reliable numbers are often unavailable. But a study he co-authored in September 2004 showed that out of 230 women who had at least two pregnancies — one resulting in a loss at 10 weeks gestation or longer — fewer than 25 percent of their next pregnancies resulted in a live birth. Both Sliver and Collins believe their studies point out glaring gaps in knowledge in obstetric medicine. And they concur that the way the third trimester is monitored — in all women — should be re-evaluated.
Parer said an increased scrutiny in otherwise normal pregnancies could have a negative effect. Once a nuchal cord or similar condition is spotted in a baby with no other negative symptoms, then doctors are obligated to act on the information by more closely monitoring the pregnancy.
“That can lead to an increase in interventions like early inductions or C-sections in otherwise healthy pregnancies,” Parer said. “Anytime we intervene there is an increased risk of something going wrong. And we don’t know in how many of them the intervention is worthwhile and how many were unnecessary. We have a responsibility to the patient with a loss, but we have a responsibility to normal women as well.”
A postal survey of Australian obstetricians in August 2006 showed that 87 percent prescribed additional third trimester ultrasounds for patients with a loss. Even without complications in subsequent pregnancies, the babies were more like to be delivered early. Elective induction was recommended by 93 percent of the respondents, and elective Cesarean deliveries by 35 percent.
If recurrent stillbirth rates are so low as to be too insignificant to raise alarm, could it be because the subsequent pregnancies are so closely monitored that increased interventions prevent fetal demise?
All three doctors agree that is one possible explanation.
Parer grants that some, like Collins, believe that if even one baby is saved by the increased monitoring that the risk is worth it. But Parer believes more research needs to be done.
“I think the research Dr. Collins is doing is fantastic,” Parer said, “but he’s putting advocacy before the data.”
Golant said that most parents with a loss will choose, if they are able, to have more monitoring in the subsequent pregnancies. “They have an increased need for information and a perception of having control even if it is possible it will increase their anxiety levels,” she said. “But ultimately parents are relieved to know as much as they can about their baby in utero.”
The reporter in me understands the importance of critically evaluating research that suggests making major changes in medical protocol. And yet the informed mother in me feels as if much of what is standard practice hasn’t always been based on research. Collins is asking the very questions those of us who have lost children have asked. Why not use the technology available to find out all we can about our pregnancies and allow us to decide what to do with it before we lose our babies?
To me, being able to see the Bean’s heart beating every night was worth the risk of causing an unnecessary intervention. Especially as it could alert me when an intervention might be necessary.
With each strip, I became more confident that he would make it — despite his nuchal cord.
Maybe it was his constant tossing around in my womb. I’d been counting his kicks since I hit 27 weeks, and they were regular and strong.
According to the Maternal Observations and Memories of Stillbirth study in 2005 of approximately 5,000 women, 50 percent felt a gradual decrease in fetal movement several days before their babies died, and 56 percent reported that it was their first reason to think something was wrong. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Frederick Froen, said that reduced movement is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes in both high- and low-risk pregnancies. I felt a dramatic decrease in Avery’s movements for several days before he died. I just thought he was going through a resting phase and no one had mentioned kick counting because it was too early. At 24 weeks there wasn’t anything they could do to save him. (To read more about kick counting, visit www.sfgate.com.)
Luckily, the Bean continued to do gymnastics in my belly.
Slowly, my worry shifted to the more mundane things that other pregnant women obsess about: How do I get ready for a baby?
He was going to need clothes and diapers and a crib and breast milk.
I didn’t have any idea how to go from being pregnant to giving birth and having a baby. After taking everything one day at a time and taking nothing for granted, now I had to believe that my son would be born. Weeks that dragged at a snail’s pace in the beginning were now speeding by too fast.
In November, my friends hosted a shower, and parents of eight stillborn babies shared their best wishes for his safe arrival. In December, 12 of my close female friends gathered for a blessing ritual to help prepare me to go through labor. I told them his name.
Quinn.
I visualized Quinn’s birth. I saw his head come out — without the cord around his neck. The doctor put him on my chest. I saw his hand around my fingers. I felt his head under my chin. He was perfect.
Collins wanted me to induce at 36 weeks. There were days when I felt as if my womb was not the safest place for him to be and that bringing him out sooner would be better.
But the weekly non-stress tests — where a nurse monitors his movements and heart rate for a half an hour — and the home monitor I strapped on more than once to calm a midday panic attack, made the last month a more calm experience than the entire pregnancy.
The closer I got to 36 weeks, the more I didn’t want to be induced. He was doing fine and there were no indications of distress. I told Collins I wanted to wait.
After finding out Quinn was 6 pounds at 34 weeks, Fang worried his large size might cause his shoulder to get caught on my pubic bone during delivery. With a nuchal cord, the potential complication could be even more serious. She suggested inducing at 37 weeks. Despite all the technical reassurances that he was fine, I couldn’t help asking, “What if deciding to wait kills him?”
We set the induction for Dec. 12, a few days before Quinn reached 38 weeks. “This is going to be a very different birth than Avery’s, Suzanne,” said Sam, my friend and labor coach. “This time you will have a living baby working with you to be born. You need to talk to him and tell him what you are afraid of and tell him what’s happening so he can help you.”
We were supposed to arrive at the hospital at 6 p.m. on Mon., Dec. 11, for a course of cervidel to soften my cervix before the next day’s induction. But OB triage was packed, and they told me there were no beds for me.
It was two weeks before Christmas, the baby was an immaculate conception and there was no room at the inn. The universe has a sense of humor.
A large room finally opened up and a caravan of six shepherds settled in for the night.
At 1 a.m., a nurse administered the cervidel and the small pre-labor contractions I’d been having for a week picked up speed and intensity. Stas and Sam, both of whom had coached me through Avery’s delivery, were with me through every one.
I walked through most of the early labor. I passed the nursery, a place I avoided at all costs when I walked through my labor with Avery. Right near the window was a small newborn under a heat lamp. I watched his chest rise and fall.
Despite the months of telling myself not to get my hopes up, to not get duped again, I realized that my desire to have a baby had been strong enough to get me through the worst nightmares of what could happen. My dream was so close to finally coming true.
After 20 or so hours of labor, my doctor said, “OK, you are ready to push.”
All of a sudden the room erupted. My mom and her partner Jen bolted out of bed, Quinn’s dads, Steve and his partner Pablo, came back in a rush with coffee, Sam moved furniture out of the way, Anna, Rosa and my roommate Kai, all flipped open their cell phones to update the rest of the tribe. Within half an hour, there were 13 people around the bed.
I could start pushing. That meant he was coming.
Everything happened so fast as the contractions picked up intensity. “Sing something, something everybody knows,” I shouted between contractions.
Steve started singing “Row Row Row Your Boat” and the whole room joined in for several rounds. Then he pulled out his laptop and played “The Mighty Quinn.”
“Everybody’s in despair, every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Everybody’s gonna jump for joy
Come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn”
I pushed as hard as I could past illogical pain and I saw and felt his head slip free. I heard the “oohhhhs” from the tribe and with one more push his body slid out — with no cord around his neck.
Immediately, Fang handed me my beautiful baby and I put him on my chest. I felt his hand on my fingers, his wet head under my chin. Seconds of silence pass before his cries filled the room. He was alive and breathing and perfect. Just like I imagined — and so much more amazing than I ever let myself believe.
The room let out a sigh of relief as someone led the crowd in a round of “Happy Birthday.”
Quinn Adam Pullen was born at 9:20 a.m., Wed., Dec. 13, at 8 pounds, 20 1/2 inches. In the few quiet moments I found myself alone, I thanked his older brother Avery for making him possible and for making me a better mother.
The past nine months, and the year before it, were part of an agonizing and hopeful journey I’m not sure I was ready to take; but am not sorry I did. This time I got the prize at the end and didn’t have to give him back.
The FactsTwenty-five percent of mothers in 2001 in the United States had one or more fetal deaths before having a live birth. (Price, Maternal and Child Health Journal, Nov. 2006)
In the United States, 15 to 20 percent of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage and one in every 150 births results in a stillbirth. Most researchers believe these numbers would be higher if not for inconsistencies in data reporting and collection. (Centers for Disease Control)
Women who have had a stillbirth have a five times greater risk of a subsequent stillbirth; recurrence of stillbirth is almost tripled in blacks as compared to whites. (Sharma, et al, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Feb. 2006 )
Of women who had a fetal death of 10 weeks gestation or longer, fewer than 25 percent of their next pregnancies ended in a live birth; 44 percent miscarried. (Frias, et al, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Sept. 2004)
In more than half of recurrent stillbirths, the cause of death was the same. (Maternal Observations and Memories of Stillbirth study, Robson et al; 2005)
Women who have had a stillbirth experience higher levels of depression and anxiety during pregnancy. (Hughes, et al, British Medical Journal, June 1999)
RESOURCES
Support groups
SPALS – Subsequent Pregnancy After a Loss Support – An online member support and resource group, www.spals.com
PAM – Pregnancy After Miscarriage – Chat rooms, forums and mailing lists for those who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant or have had a baby after a loss; www.pamsupport.org.
Pregnancy After Loss – San Francisco support group. Call Cherie Golant; (415) 600-2229, e-mail cpmcnewborn@sutterhealth.org.
SHARE – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support Group – Online and local support after a loss, including monthly meetings for subsequent pregnancies; www.nationalshareoffice.com. In Sacramento; www.sharingparents.org.
HAND — Helping After Neonatal Death – Newsletter, bulletin boards and links for local and statewide support groups and resources; www.handonline.org.
Compassionate Friends – www.compassionatefriends.com.
A Heartbreaking Choice – Resources, stories and support for those who have terminated pregnancies due to genetic abnormalities; www.heartbreakingchoice.com.
PLIDA (Pregnancy loss and infant death alliance) – A nationwide, collective community of parents and health care professionals. www.plida.org
Organizations
National Stillbirth Society – Nonprofit parent-based group focused on raising awareness and preventing stillbirths through advocacy, education and activism; www.stillnomore.org.
International Stillbirth Alliance – Nonprofit coalition of stillbirth groups focused on research and awareness; www.stillbirthalliance.org.
First Candle/SIDS Alliance – National network of healthcare providers, parents, caregivers and researchers working on infant mortality. Online resources, links to research and bereavement guidelines; (800) 221-7437, www.firstcandle.org.
M.I.S.S. Foundation/Missing Angels Bill – International nonprofit organization offering support, educational programs and legislative action; (888)455-6477, www.missfoundation.org. Nationwide campaign to pass the Missing Angels Bill, a state-by-state push to issue modified birth certificates for stillbirths; www.missingangelsbill.org.
Missing Grace Foundation – Resources and support for pregnancy loss, infant loss, infertility or adoption; (763) 497-0709, www.missinggrace.org.
BabyKick Alliance – Kick counting information, resources and newsletter; www.babykickalliance.org.
The Centering Corporation – Grief resources, books and materials; (402) 553-1200, www.centering.org.
E-mail Suzanne Pullen at spullen@sfchronicle.com.
My daughter lost her first to miscariage last year and her second to full term stillborn April 16, 2008. Olivia was bouncing around and busy the night before.. Dr was going to induce the evening of the 16th and she went into labor that morning. Mentioned to me on the way to the hospital that Liv hadn’t been moving since early morning and I said not to worry neither did your brothers or you once I went into labor. One hour later with her vitals wonderful the nurse couldn’t find Liv’s heartbeat. She delivered 12 hours later and Liv had the cord so horriably tight twice around her neck that Dr had to cut it snip by tiny snip. We celebrate my Livvy every day with tears of pain from the grief always right there. How can a healthy little baby be lost so quickly? Meghan had u/s two times per week for the last two months with no noted concerns. In fact she had one two days prior to Liv’s birth. The hospital staff were absoutely wonderful and my daughter and our family had 24 hours with Liv and bonded so closely with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.org photog coming in and taking candid pictures of us with Liv at no cost. Please check out their website.
Grammy misses you baby girl
Dear Cindy,
I am so terribly sorry for your monumental loss. It is devastating to lose a baby when all signs point to a well, living baby. There has been discussion of this being a SIDS in utero. Unfortunately, not all of us gets an answer and it is always horrible. My deepest condolences to you and Meghan.
Love, Janis
I am just so sorry…
I was reading your story and I could not stop crying.
See, I just lost my baby, Alicia at 29 weeks. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck 3 times. It’s just heartbreaking, on May2nd 2008 I had ultrasound& everything seemed to be going well. Just two day later on my regular appointment the doctor could not find Alicia’s heartbeat. It is hard to go on but we must believe that one day we will meet our Angels in Heaven.
Love,Ania
thank you for sharing all of this valuable information. you are a brave woman & i admire your dedication to having a family. it is helpful to know that people do go on to have healthy babies after such a loss.
11 weeks ago i lost my first child at 36 weeks due to a nuchal cord accident. On Monday, i had an ultrasound & he was awarded an “8 out of 8!” score. the next day, decreased fetal movement. the next day, i delivered him stillborn. 7.9lbs, 21.5 inches with his daddy’s eyes. we miss him so much.
Ania,
that is just devastating! It breaks my heart to read of that. It IS hard to go on, somehow or other we do, even if in the most clumsy heart-wrenching way. My thoughts are with you and Alicia.
xo,
Janis
maetera (Erica?),
I am so sorry. That sudden turn of event is always so cruel, and so impossible to comprehend.
Wishing you strength and healing,
Janis
I, too, lost my baby boy at 32 weeks. Nuchal cord (2) and true knot. I hate that this has happened to other women and now read all I can about stillbirths. Life is not fair, after infertility issues and finally pregnancy after IUI we got pregnant. But, I would not trade the experience for anything in the world. We created life and I felt life growing in my womb. I will forever be grateful for that. Also, I was able to hold my baby and kiss him. I miss him so much. I send positive thoughts and strength to all the men and women who have experience such monumental losses.
I am so sorry for your loss, Blanca. ((hugs))
I am so very sorry to hear about all your losses. It just breaks my heart over and over again. I too had a stillbirth at 30 weeks, cause unknown.
It has been really hard to go on with life, and you just get the feeling that it was something you did or didn’t do.
I pray daily for strength for myself and for others who are going through the same experience.
My first baby is now 5 years old and every day i look at her it gives me hope that one day again i will conceive and be able to give her a brother or sister.
Keep the faith my sisters as we go through this together.
Wishing you all strength and healing.
dianne
I thought I was really doing better, but recently I have regressed. I feel all of your pain – every day since my 3rd daughter, Shelbey Cara was stillborn on her due date, July 7, 2008. The doctors believe I am correct when I say she died July 4 late in the evening. I had no symptoms of the acute placental abruption (over 50%) they believe robbed us of her. I have 2 beautiful girls, ages 4 and 5 years, therefore, I feel almost guilty for feeling so lost without Shelbey. But she is my third daughter – Riley and Cassidy’s little sister, the sister they were so in love with and sang to evey night and helped me ready the nursery for and watch somersault around in my belly. Instead of seeing her and holding her the morning after I went into labor, the girls had to figure out how to handle the news that she had died. They had to hold their little sister at the funeral home instead of in the warmth of our home. They had to watch Mommy cry and sob every night and morning for weeks after Shelbey’s birth. This is the hardest part for me.
My husband and I will try to conceive another baby, we knew that right away. But now that the doctors have run all their tests, and have given us the ok to start next month, it is real. “IT” is the possibility that this happens again. We (my husband, the girls, and I) fall so deeply in love with someone so wonderful, so much a part of our family, only to loose that little friend for some unexplained reason. And I also fear the guilt of having a healthy baby, and loving that baby, and that baby isn’t Shelbey. I do have hope, and I do believe that Shelbey is with me always, and that whatever is meant to be will be.
I do keep the faith – and remind my girls to do the same.
Wishing you all peace in your hearts.
Cath
Cath,
thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. The journey to healing.finding peace is long, and such a roller-coaster ride, and so meandering too. But you are not alone.
My heart is with you and your family. *hugs*
I’ve shed a tear for each of your sad stories. I feel all of your pain. I just lost my daughter, Samantha, two weeks ago at 41 weeks. She was my third child who would have had a 10 yr old sister (a real little mother hen!) and a 7 yr old brother. We were all so very excited for her arrival. My other births were very normal and without risk… the second was a wonderful, planned home birth. All the right steps and tests were carried out for this one too, including a biophysical (BPP) since I went over my ‘due-date’. She scored a perfect 8/8… as I watched her heart beating and her practice breathing. That was Monday. On Tuesday evening, I noticed her out of character for her movements (there were none) and called my care provider within two hours. They came to my house and her heart beat was normal and strong, including an increase in HR when her scalp was stimulated with an internal exam. The next morning I went for a follow-up appt and reported no movement still, but her heart rate was still going strong, but a little lower (not by much… 127 instead of 130ish), so I asked for a NST. I was also going into labour naturally. By the time I got hooked up an 1.5 hours later, Samantha’s heart had stopped and she was born still hours later. The cord was not wrapped around her neck, nor were any physical abnormalities visible. She was beautiful. I have all the tests back from blood and the placenta. There was nothing that offered any explanation as to why this pretty little girl that had all signs of being healthy only the day before was taken from us. While I am so fortunate to have an enormous support group, they, like myself, are all searching for answers to this unimaginable and useless death. In their questions, they unintentionally start to point the finger at me… like why didn’t I insist on being induced, but they don’t understand that is not normal unless something indicates there is a problem b/c you’re not technically/professionally past due until after 42 weeks and I had booked already booked an induction for the day I hit 42 weeks. With all the precautions I took, there was supposedly no risk. It kills though when you think there could be a possibility that if something was done differently, even though I know I couldn’t have done anything about it without hindsight vision, that I could and should be sitting here holding my 3 week old beautiful little girl.
Like Cath explained earlier… I wasn’t the only one with plans, dreams, and hopes for Samantha. My kids were really excited with the plans and preparations for her arrival. My daughter always read her a bed time story and never gave me a hug/kiss good night without also giving my stomach… Samantha… the same attention. We buried her two weeks ago today and while I continue with the day-to-day functioning for the sake of my other children, I don’t know if the pain will ever go.
God bless you all and I hope you can all find comfort in your lives and in your families (current and those to come:)
Tara
((Tara)) Thank you for posting and sharing your story. It is devastating and it is by no fault of yours that Samantha is lost to you and your family. I wish people could learn to give unconditional support, and not point fingers. I am sorry you have to deal with this, on top of your monumental and painful loss.
Many hugs, and wishes of peace and strength to you… xoxo
I am so sorry to hear about all of your losses. Thank you for posting your stories.
I too feel your loss. I had a stillbirth at 38 weeks on Feb 24th at 12:49am my son Connor. He weighed 7lbs 9 oz, 21 inches long with a dark curly hair. Cause so far unknown. The doctors tell me that a lot of times cause is unknown.
I can’t help feeling I could of prevented in someway. About 1 1/2 weeks before I was at work and did not feel him moving as much. I am a nurse and went to the ER a friend of mine worked there and she stated come on back to check. At that time everything was fine. The fetal monitoring showed heart beat acceleration that were normal. I let my doctor know about my concerns, but he said not to worry the heartbeat sounded strong on fetal monitoring. The nurse stated ” he is just getting bigger no room to move”.
I felt pain the day before I delivered on my right side when I was at work. I called the ob/gyn on call and told her my symptoms. Her response was the pelvic muscles are moving and that is why you can have pain. Never once told me maybe for reassurance come and be evaluated. As a nurse I beat myself up everyday. Why I did not count those kicks more, I sure of insisted to come in. I passed the hospital on the way home from work, why didn’t I just go!!!!
I too believe even though you are having low risk pregnancy there should be increased monitoring in your 3rd trimester. So much can happen.
God bless all of our angels,
Heather
I am so sorry to hear about all of your losses. Stillbirth is one of the most devastating things to go through. I too, had a stillborn. I was 22 weeks along when Madison was born. It was so early in the pregnancy, it was often hard to figure out if I was feeling her move or if it was just the effects of being pregnant. On Friday night, June 20st, I laid down to see if I could sit still enough to feel her move. I didn’t feel anything, but just figured she was asleep. I ignored my nagging feeling. Saturday came and I still couldn’t feel anything. My husband and I had heard that you could hear the heartbeat with a stethoscope so we went out and bought one. We tried to find the heartbeat, but when we didn’t, we just assumed that it was ridiculous to even try. By Sunday, I was so worried, I told my husband that I wanted to go to the hospital. When we got there, we really just thought we were going to be there for a few hours and then leave. But the nurse couldn’t find the heartbeat so she sent me for an ultrasound. That is where it was confirmed. Madison’s heart had stopped beating. She was born on June 23, 2008
After all testing had been done, there was no definitive answer to what had happened, but my doctor thinks that she may have had a cord accident. Her umbilical cord was coiled tightly and her placenta was a little small. But SHE was perfect.
I am so sorry that we all have to go through such a terrible loss. My husband and I are going to try to conceive again this month. We are truly praying for a healthy baby this time around. God Bless you all.
I too have had the misfortune of experiencing a stillbirth. I lost my son, my firstborn, on Aug 28, 2008; I was six months pregnant. I went in for a regular doctor’s appointment only to find out they couldn’t find his heartbeat. After two ultrasounds, it was confirmed that he had passed in my womb. It was the worst day of my life. It has been six months and I still can’t get past it. I try to be happy for the sake of everyone else but it is taking a major toll on me. I have slumped back into my depression. Every time I see a baby, my heart breaks a little more. I figured that by now I would be okay but now I see I’m not. I feel all alone. I am a Christian but my baby’s death has made me lose my faith. Everybody always says: “it was God’s will.” But that doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m his mother and his place is with me. So many days I wish He had taken me with him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to try again. I want another baby but the thought that it would happen again makes me deathly afraid. I don’t know if I could go through this again.
I am so sorry for all of your losses. My daughter Natalie was stillborn on December 30 at 39weeks. Sunday night I realized I hadnt felt her move for a few hours so I ate dinner and had some juice, but still no movement. I had just been to my doctor 2 days ago and everything was great- just like my entire pregnancy. I called my doctor and my husband and I went into the hospital, sure that everything was going to be OK and that we would go home soon. I hoped that the nurse was just having an off night when she spent 30 minutes looking but couldnt find Natalie’s heartbeat. My doctor came in and did an US and thats when she told us that Natalie’s heart wasn’t beating anymore and that she had died- these were the most painful words anyone has ever said to me. We decided to stay in the hospital and be induced that night. After two days of pitocin I finally delivered my beautiful baby she was 7lbs,10 and 22 inches and she had bright red hair. Her umbilical cord had a furcate and velamentous insertion and the placenta was bilobed. The pathology report theorized that a blood clot blocked a vessel in the umbilical cord stopping perfusion. All of the other blood tests/ genetic tests were normal.
I am so sorry that we have all had to experience such great losses. My husband and I have hope that we will go on to have a healthy baby, who I will tell all about his/her older sister Natalie.
Heather, Crystal, Kim and Erika,
thank you for taking time to share your stories and your precious babies with us.
Many ((hugs)) to your for your heartbreaking losses.
Remembering with you all and holding your babies in my heart.
xo
Janis
I know how you all feel. My husband and I tried for two years to get pregnant. Finally in 2007 we conceived Ayden. He was due on New Year’s Day of 2008.
On Christmas eve I went to my doctors appt. and discovered that I had lost 6 pounds in one week!!
My doc thought nothing of it and sent me home like usual.
On the 28th of December 2007, I had not felt him move at all. Scared we went to the hospital where the doctor told us that Ayden had died. We were devastated.
We delivered on December 30th 2007 at 11:53 am.
Ayden weighed 8 lb. 13oz. and looked just like his daddy.
We found that his cord was 4 feet long, wrapped around his neck 4 times, and had a true knot.
Ayden sits in a blue ceramic jar on my mantle, and forever lives in my heart.
We plan to try again this year, and are hoping for a healthy baby.
I give hugs to you all, and I pray that God will heal your pain, even though you will never forget, the pain gets a little better with time.
Please know that there is nothing any of you could have done to prevent this…God Bless and may you get your wishes for happy healthy babies..
((((((hugs))))))
Reading all of these stories has broken my heart all over again. My son, Jayden, was born still just over 7 weeks ago. He was 34 weeks gestation when we discovered his heart had stopped beating. I had just been to the doctor’s office several days before and heard his heart beat. I’d noticed a decrease in movement but was told that this was normal as the baby gets bigger – they have less room to move. I have tremendous guilt that I didn’t know something was wrong. We have a daughter, and would like to try again but I am so afraid this will happen again. Reading all of your entries, I know I am not alone in my fear. I can’t seem to find any conclusive studies reassuring me that it will not happen again. Jayden was 5 lbs, 2 ozs and was 19 inches long when he was stillborn. He was beautiful. The pathology exam noted that there was placental insufficiency. How do I know that this won’t happen again? My heart can’t take another loss. We too, held our son and had pictures taken with him. (Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep foundation is wonderful). They are my treasured possession now. That, and the box the hospital gave me with his hand and footprints, baby cap, and clip of his hair are all the tangilble items I have left of him… I pray that God would comfort each one of you and give us all hope for a successful future pregnancy.
Cindy,
thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your story and letting us know about Jayden, that is such a beautiful name.
We all are afraid to try again… I gave birth to a daughter three months ago. The pregnancy after a loss is very, very tough, I will be honest… but the only way to find out is to try. I can tell you I was as prepared for her birth as I was for her death, because now I know birth and death bear equal chances in a pregnancy. What a horrible truth to know, but all I could do was try my best and surrender.
Do you know what caused the placental insufficiency? That may lead you to more clues. We never found out why our son Ferdinand died. The placenta was calcified, looked like a viral infection, but exactly what, or how, we did not know, and will never know.
Love, strength and peace to you, mama.
Hi Janis,
No, unfortunately, we do not know what caused the placental insufficiency. My doctor and a perinatal doctor did a bunch of bloodtests on me, and they all came back normal. I did have gestational diabetes and a tremendous amount of stress during this pregnancy (we almost lost my dad due to a medical error – he was in ICU for a week and we didn’t know if he would make it). That happened one month before my son’s heart stopped. They did note several placenta infarcts, but do not know what caused them. Perhaps stress? The problem is, with nothing to point the finger to, I don’t know what to do to reduce the risk of it happening again. So scary.
i am so sorry for your loss, my daughter was stillborn at 30wks on 27/11/08 aswell she past away due to a blood clot in the placenta wich cut off her oxygen we named her summer. i was so devastated i already have a 18month old daughter and i think if we didn’t have her i would have never got threw what we did it was so hard,my family was great but now i suffer from a bit of depression but i felt as though i’d greeved enough for her but now i think it hasn’t sunk in realy yet. iam a young mum of 20 and had my girls quite close together and worry people judge me.
after fertility treatment and one early miscarriage, we were delighted and sure we were going to become a family when our 20 week scan revealed a baby boy inside me.
i awoke on his due date and after 3 hours felt no movements, he had been kicking away the night before. my fears were confirmed that afternoon, there was no heartbeat. i know you are all familiar with the rest of the story…. the labour, holding your beloved baby, going home without him, cremating him, dealing with the physical effects, telling friends and family, the psychological damage of a happy situation turning into a sad one….
that was 7 weeks ago. now i’m realising that i have to go on, my baby would want me to be happy. i’ll always miss him, he was my beloved firstborn. but i will try again when ready, have hope, deal with my fears and hear my baby cry and move infront of me.
i wish you and your families the best. i pray that my future children will lead long healthy and happy lives and pray the same for all who have children. being positive and having hope is what gets us through the downs in life….there will be ups.
All these stories are heartbreaking. When you go through this yourself, you think somehow you are alone. And even though you would not wish this tragedy on anyone, there is some comfort knowing other moms know how you feel.
On August 4, 2008, we lost our firstborn, Hannah. She was 35 weeks, 5lb 8 oz. She was so active. On August 3rd, she had kept me up past midnight with her acrobats. Then I went in for my regular appointment on the 4th with my husband and mother, and the doctor could not find the heartbeat. I can say with certainty it was the worst day of my life. And we continue to recover.
I am now 14 weeks pregnant with our second child, and we have only told immediate family. This pregnancy is so different. It’s bittersweet, and sadly, more often bitter than sweet. I find myself expecting the doctor not to find a heartbeat each visit. I don’t imagine the holidays with this baby because it hurt so bad this past Christmas without Hannah. It’s hard to be hopeful.
I take all my sorrows and questions to the Lord. Many times, I feel distant from Him. But I know, even through this horror, He can use it for good. And that’s what I’m praying for — even though I cannot see it right now. But, faith is the substance of things unseen.
Love and prayers for you all. One thought that has helped me is realizing Hannah got the “golden ticket.” She will never know pain or heartbreak like we do. All she knows is the beauty and goodness of God. To me, that is comforting. Even though I miss her dearly.
-Suzanne
((Christine)) I hope you will be able to find understanding support around you; it is hard enough to have a child die without having to be judged.
I am so sorry to hear about your loss, Roberta. Your grief is still so fresh, it aches my heart. Wishing you the very best on your healing journey.
Suzanne, how heartbreaking! I am so sorry about Hannah. ((hugs))
It is true, the pregnancy after is so hard, and very bittersweet. It is difficult and heart-wrenching. I wish you the very best for this pregnancy, and peace, and strength to you. Hannah will of course always be remembered. xo
Christine and Roberta ((hugs)) to you both as you journey through your healing process. Praying you find the answers you seek, and that your prayers for another child are answered when you are ready to try.
Suzanne, your story struck a chord with me because your tragedy was so similar to mine. Did you find any answers as to why Hannah’s heart stopped? With my Jayden, they said that my placenta was small for gestational age, but for what caused that, they don’t know. In any case, I pray that your faith in the Lord continues to be strong, and that He grants you the desires of your heart. Your Hannah went from the safest place on earth, the safety of the mother’s womb, to the safety of the Lords hand in Heaven. My pastor said the same thing at Jayden’s funeral and those words have comforted my heart. (although, they don’t remove the emptiness you are left with when you loose your child). A piece of me will always be with Jayden. Praying you have a safe and healthy pregnancy resulting in a safe, healthy, and happy baby. (((HUGS))) to you.
i completely understand the grief you all feel! i just lost my daughter a week and 3 days ago… i had a perfect textbook pregnancy and we had a strong heartbeat during labor. My daughters head began to crown and i remember looking at the fetal moniter next to me and her heartbeat was 135. One more push and i she was out… i remember reaching forward to hold her and i was quickly denied as the doctor handed her lifeless body off to the nurse.. they worked on her for what seemed like forever, and being in the medical field myself…they didnt need to tell me the news i already knew… my 6lb 13oz full term baby died at the very last minute… she never had a heartbeat or took a breathe outside of the womb… i dont understand how other women who dont even want children get pregnant and have healthy babies everyday… part of me wants to get pregnant again right away.. part of me is terrified to allow myself to be excited about another baby only to be let down… its so confusing to me… was she stillborn? she did techniqly die in the birth canal.. but not exacty in utero… because her head was out and she still had a heartbeat… i dont even know if there is a word for my situation or even anybody who has had the same experience at all!
After reading all the postings on this site it made realize that I wasn’t the only one suffering after giving birth to a stillborn. I loss my baby Jaiden on Feb 2,2009 and it was very hard for my husband and I. I just found out that I’m pregnant again but i’m so scare to get my hopes up. I don’t want the same thing to happen again, I still cry myself to sleep sometimes knowing that I will never hold my baby Jaiden in my arms. I’m sooo confuse and the hormones are not helping either. I thank God every morning for giving me a second chance, but I just can’t seem to be 100% happy. Is there something wrong with me feeling that way?
Sarah,
that is such a traumatic experience, so totally mind-boggling! I am so sorry for what happened, and wishing you healing and strength.
Lady Rimes,
I am sorry about baby Jaiden. I can imagine that it can only be very hard for you and your husband, and your not feeling 100% happy is very normal. I think even as we eventually heal, there will always be an ache in our hearts. You have afterall lost a very precious child, your feelings are normal. The pregnancy after is indeed very hard, I wish you the very best, and peace in your heart.
Dear all,
This article has helped me so much!! And I feel so bad that all of us have had to go through something so devastating.
12 years ago I had my first stillborn baby, I was 19 years old, I would feel my belly tighten so I thought that everything was fine but when I went for an u/s the doctor found no heartbeat. I had a c-section the day I found out, I didn’t want to go through labor knowing the baby was gone….
Years later in 2007 I found out I was having twins…..a very hard pregancy that lasted for 31 weeks, Andy (2 lb 6 oz) and Bryan (2 lb 10 oz) were born after I had preeclamsia….they were in the hospital for about 1 1/2 months, Andy was sent home with an apnea monitor and was on it for 3 months but was going well after that. Last year my husband and I decided to have a baby and we were so happy to find out on January 7th that I was like 6 weeks pregnant. I took so much care of myself all of these months and then when I was 28 weeks 4 days I went in for an u/s and the doctor found no heartbeat, they story repeated again!! It was like a nightmare and those words that I heard from the doctor were the worst!!! The doctors wanted me to have a vaginal delivery but after 3 days they decided to do a c-section since the babys head would not come out first….
Now I am so hurt…I can’t believe this happened to me twice and I am so scared that it will happen again….
Hopefully with the help of God and with my two little angels Jonathan and Nicholas this won’t happen and I will be able to give Andy and Bryan a little brother or sister, I feel so empty even though I have my husband and my kids. I will leave everything in Gods hands and will pray that everything turns out well for us….
Good luck to you all,
God bless you
oh Wendy, what a heartbreaking story you have told! I am so terribly sorry this has to happen to you twice. Once is already more than enough!!
This emptiness, I guess we will feel forever in our hearts, no matter how many loved ones surround us… even when we hold our beloved babies in our heart there still is a void that cannot be filled up. ((hugs)) to you and best wishes.
I’ve been looking for some information on pregnancy after a loss, and I have to say, my heart is breaking reading these stories…. I lost my baby girl Cadence Bree at 31 1/2 weeks on June 30th of this year. Everything was textbook, until early morning pains and a heavy feeling in my uterus woke me at 8am… the pain subsided, but returned a few hours later with a vengeance at 1pm. 1 hour and 50 minutes later, in a very quick delivery in emerg, my daughter was born at 14 inches, and 1.92lbs. My whole world seemed to crash apart when the doctor told me she had died. My boyfriend was away visiting in another province, I had so many emotions running through me at once, I felt like my life was over… to date I still don’t know what happened, I may never know… we do know however, that during the last 6weeks, the placenta had detatched (+50%), and had atrophied, it was also full of holes which may have been due to my antigens. Hopefully I’ll get some answers when I have my 6wk checkup, but I do know that I do want to try again to conceive. Every moment of the day, my heart still weeps for the lost of my first child, my beautiful baby girl, but I know that someday, should I have a live baby in my arms, when they are older, I can tell them all about their big sister Cade, and how much she was loved. I also have to mention, this story really got to me, as my daughter’s nickname until we picked out a name for her, was Bean.
All my sympathy, Love and Hope for any and all of you dealing with the loss of a child.
Best wishes to you all
just over 2 weeks ago I gave birth to my beautiful daughter – Sophia Grace – born sleeping on 3 September, 3.1kg. I was 38 weeks pregnant.
My heart is broken. On 2 Sept I woke up bleeding. We rushed to the hospital and they searched and searched for a heartbeat. Nothing. I knew. Hope was gone. What a sickening feeling. That experience. The dawning realisation that something is terribly wrong and life is about to change forever was the worst moment of my life and no doubt an experience that we on this forum share. The worst feeling in the world.
The reason for my baby’s death was a placental abruption – something i’d never even heard of before.
I birthed her the next day after many hours of labour and held my little angel. I do believe she waits for me in heaven and can’t wait to hold her again one day.
I am desperate to be pregnant as soon as I am healthy, but I also know that it will be some of the hardest months of my life. How can one possibly enjoy pregnancy and open your heart to the new baby having known such loss?
I miss my little girl every day.
I lost my little girl on August 11th. I was 35+ weeks. I hadn’t felt her move for a few hours, but was busy doing things around the house. When I laid down that night, I felt nothing. I got up for a cold drink, nothing. I drank a coke, nothing. I decided not to be neurotic just try to sleep, and when you wake up to pee in a few hours you’ll feel her. At 3 am, I woke up to pee, and felt nothing. That was when I knew something was wrong. After eating, walking and talking to the doctor, I ended up at the hospital with a resident and nurse telling me that my baby had died. It is still so unbelievable.
She was born after a long, terribly painful labor. She was 6lb 3.2oz and 22 inches long. As she was coming out, my doctor told me the cord was around her neck very tightly. I was sobbing. She was beautiful and perfect, just dead.
An autopsy was done, and she was perfect. It was a nuchal cord accident. I have so much pain, and so much trouble believing that this really happened. And of course I have so many why questions that will never be answered.
I do want to be pregnant again, but I am scared to death. How will I survive it? What will happen to me if I lose another baby?
I have an almost 2 year old son whom I adore, and I want so badly for him to be a big brother. Some days I feel I can and will make it happen, and others I am completely hopeless.
Thanks to you all for sharing your stories.
I lost my son Kaiden Malik on Thanksgiving Day 11-24-2005 and to say I was devasted is putting it lightly. I had just turned 35 on November 17 a week before I delivered him and up until that point I had a flawless pregnancy. He was my first and I was so excited to finally meet him. Well I did at 37 weeks and he was stillborn. I felt so alone and felt that I would never find the will to live again. I bonded so much with him and I really got to know my son. It took losing him to realize that mothering starts from the day you concieve, not when you bring your baby home from the hospital. His death was ruled a cord accident and he was born with a very long cord that was wrapped around his neck and looped under his shoulders. I had a normal day at work and went and did some shopping because I had to bring some dishes in to work for the Thanksgiving Holiday and went home and went to bed. I was awaken by very sharp stomach pains and the urge to go to the bathroom. I at first thought it was the loaded sub-sandwich I had for lunch was giving me bad heart burn so I tried drinking milk like I always did and laying back down, but the pains persisted. I called my mother laughing saying you know this little boy of mine is going to have me go to the hospital with false labor on Thanksgiving Day and I have so much stuff to cook. So I told my mom to come and take me to the hospital, but after waiting for her the pains got stronger and stronger and since I am a 9-1-1 dispatcher I called work and told one of my co-workers to send me an ambulance to take me to the hospital, and I could hear everyone in the background saying “alright Dawn is getting ready to have Kaiden on Thanksgiving Day”, and as the ambulance was driving to my home which wasn’t far from the station house or the hospital, my co-worker breathed with me because my contractions were by now taking my breath away. The ambulance got there very quick and I remember it being extremely cold that day, and they rushed me to the hospital where I was taken right upstairs to labor and delivery. My mom hadn’t gotten their yet, neither had Kaiden’s father, but the nurses in the room had very strange looks on their faces as they put the ultrasound gel on my stomach and moved the wand around trying to find his heartbeat. I don’t know if it was the pain of my contractions, or all the chaos in the room that I didn’t notice one either, but when the nurse said “someone needs to get the Dr. in here NOW” I felt someething was wrong, but yet I was hopeful. For you see I had done everything right, I ate right, I rested, I went to the breast feeding class, the parenting classes. didn’t use drugs. I had a stable home a great job, so I felt like all was in order in my life. Until the doctor came in with the large ultrasound imaging machine an moved it across my stomach and noticed no movement at all from Kaiden and he then “said Oh God no! Oh God please no! I don’t understand!” I said understand what? He said I am so sorry son, but your son is gone, there are no signs of life at all. I am so sorry Dawn.
At that moment, I willed myself to die with my son, because I felt he was the best I had to offer in this life, and without him I was nothing. For the first time in my life I had felt like me being who I was, was enough. It mattered not to Kaiden how I looked, how much money I had, where I lived, nothing mattered but that I loved him and he loved me. His loss affected so many people, my poor mother who was anticipating the birth of her first grandchild, being as though out of 12 siblings she was the only one who had none, to the police department I worked for. They rallied around me like never before and took such good care of me. I could never imagine working anywhere else in the world and have something this tragic happen to me. They became family I never knew I had and I will forever be grateful to them.
Life after Kaiden has been hard, but eventhough hard to believe it does get better with time. I am now the mother of a 2 1/2 year old daughter named Kennedy Makhaila who was born via emergency c-section at 32 weeks. She is by no means Kaiden’s replacement, but I often feel guilt because the fear of losing her and I did her big brother did not allow me to be as happy and excited about her arrival and I was with his. She is the apple of my eye and because of the loss of her big brother she is loved that much harder by all who know her.
I never thought in a million years I would be a mother, but I got pregnant with her just 8 months after his passing. The best advice I can give to anyone who is going through a stillbirth is to know that it does get better over time, and to let the tears fall when they need to. I do. I made a scrap book of my pregnancy from the begining all the way up to his death, and it really helped me in the healing process. The loss is forever, but I urged parents that suffer this loss to go to counseling, and visit different support groups, because 1 in 200 births are stillbirths, and in all the parenting classes no one ever told me that one of us would not be going home with our babies. I was that 200th person, but I have met other 200’s along my journey in life without Kaiden. Thanksgiving Day will never be the same in our family, but as I look arournd our table every year I still see a lot to be thankful for. He still and will always be my son, my first born, and I am forever his mother. Not even death can change that. I want to encourage all parents that have experienced this type of loss to have the courage to try again only when you feel comfortable and have consulted with your doctor’s and mother’s remember to do kick counts. I knew nothing about them while I was carrying Kaiden, but I did with Kennedy and she is here.
I ask for prayers for me and my family as Kaiden’s 4th birthday is this month, and it is a very hard time for me.
Thank you to everyone who has shared your stories and for letting me know that I am not alone in this journey.
Peace and God’s Blessings to all!
Thank you for sharing your stories, all so heartbreaking; all attesting to the unbounded love for children who are not earthside with us.
Many blessings to you all.
Thank you for sharing your story, Dawn. I’ll be thinking of you and Kaiden.
Warmly, Janis
I just want to express my heartfelt sympathies to all of you who found the courage to share your stories. My son was born stillborn on January 19, 2010. I feel an array of emotions regarding the death of my baby. I feel all of the emotions that that many of you have described. Sometimes I feel like I am dreaming, because I can’t believe that this has happened to us. We spent the past 9 moths changing our lives with such happiness and anticipation preparing for our son. I was 38 weeks along in my pregnancy when I received the devasting news. My heart aches for the pain that I know you all feel, I have found your testimonies to be therapeutic, as I was feeling like I was the only person that this had happened too. I felt even more guility that my baby died two weeks before his due date. I felt/feel that it was something I could have done or should have known what to do to somehow save his life. The nurses, family, and friends all reassured me not to feel guility. As a mother, I can’t help but feel it was/is my duty to protect my child. I will say that we believe in God, and we know that God will continue to bless us on our journey towards healing. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t miss my little angel. I well cherish and keep his memory alive. Remember to put God first, because through God all things are possible. Try not to go to that place of darkness and depression, as we are very vulnerable emotionally. I wish you all peace, hope, and happiness.
Peace & Blessings Linda
Linda,
I am so sorry for the loss of your son. I found this story and this website last April shortly after we lost Jayden. I agree, it helps to know we are not alone. I’d encourage you to visit
http://www.nowisleep.com/index.php?
It is a forum full of women (and some men!) who are walking the same difficult road as you and I without our babies. Finding others who truly understand my pain has tremendously helped in my healing process. I encourage you to hold onto God. He’s been faithful to us. This Wednesday has been a year. We are learning to live without a piece of our heart – but we have a hope that this is not the end, and we will see Jayden again in Heaven. Be gentle to yourself as you begin this process of healing and grief. You are not alone. And thank YOU Janis for sharing your story and allowing us to share in your pain and healing.
Hi I saw this article and just had to say that life can be so cruel. Im 19 years old and on the 12th June 2009 I gave birth to my beautiful baby Lexi, she was stillborn at 40 weeks.
To this day I still can’t get my head around the fact that I was pregnant and carried for 9 months, then the day after my due date, I was left heartbroken and confused.
The reasons for her death are unknown, which gives me some hope that it wasn’t my body giving up. I asked myself how am I going to get through this pain, my obssesion with wanting a baby had taken over my mind.
I couldn’t stop talking about babies, I thought I was crazy. My heart ached for my angel and seeing girls my age easily popping out babies with no problems made me hurt.
4 months down the line I finally allowed myself to try for another, I was shocked when I saw “pregnant” on the stick, its weird because I know you can get pregnant but after having a stillbirth I seemed to think that means you cant have babies.
So here I am 20 weeks pregnant and trying to relax, I can’t stop crying over Lexi, the emotions have kicked in real bad, but i don’t regret my decsion to have another. I would have melted if i didn’t have anything to look forward too. I check this babies heartbeat mostly every night with my fetal doppler, they are so worth having.
My message to all those unfortunate people who have had to go through this is don’t be scared to try again, remember that your angel is watching over you and will never allow you to hurt again.
Hi, I am trying to get pregnant now. If I ever get pregnant, it will be my fourth pregnancy. I have 1 daughter. She is almost 3. After her I had a miscarriage, and after that on August 3rd, 2009 I delivered my son, Wesley, stillborn. He died from heart failure caused by Hydrops. I haven’t seen on here that anyone has dealt with Hydrops, but it is when more then 2 parts of the body are filled with water. He had water around his epidurmas, his lungs, and his heart. I knew the death was coming. I was offered abortion but refused. I had to give him a chance. I decided as long as he wasn’t in pain, I could go on until he gave up. I was 25 weeks when I delivered him at 2lbs 15oz 13.5″ long. I miss him SO much. I think about him EVERY day. I think about what he would be doing if he was here with me now. How old he would be if he had made it to term. What his life would have been like with all the damage. I know things happen for a reason, but Im still trying to figure that one out right now…
So, like I said I have been trying to get pregnant again since November 09. Clearly no luck. My periods are EXTREMELY irregular and my doctor told me I have to try for a YEAR before he will put me back on clomid. (i was on clomid when i got prego with Wesley).
That’s my story. Thanks for reading!! All comments are welcome! I need help..
Dear Moms,
Thank you for sharing all of your stories. While reading your stories, I found myself nodding in agreement to what so many of you said. We lost our precious daughter 5 weeks ago. I am 27 years old. We were 25 weeks and our entire pregnancy was going along perfectly. We did not have any problems. We got pregnant quickly, without really even trying and the pregnancy was a breeze. Like many of you, the only sign that I had that something was wrong, was decreased movement. We went to the hospital and they could not find a heartbeat. They did a u/s and confirmed that our baby was gone…
Being pregnant with Anna was truly the best time of my life. For once, I felt fulfilled and like I finally had a purpose. My husband and I were so happy and now we are so sad. I am going through so many awful emotions-angry, confused, feeling like things are just not fair, numb, sad, empty and lonely. I miss my baby so much.
At this point, we are still waiting on results from our doctor as to why this may have happened. I don’t know if they will even find a medical reason. I know our little girl is in heaven and I am so happy that she is there and that she will never experience anything painful or harmful, but I miss her so much and I wish she was still here growing inside my belly.
Our doctor said we can start trying in 3-4 months. I am just so scared, like many of you, that this will happen again. I just keep praying that we will never lose another child. I recently found the St. Joseph prayer, and if you pray it for 9 mornings and ask for something you really want, St. Joseph will answer your prayers.
Some of you mentioned using a fetal doppler at home to help ease anxiety, does anyone have a good recommendation on one?
Thank you for sharing and listening. One day we will all be with our little angels again, our arms will no longer be empty.
Hi Cams,
I have bought a second hand fetal doppler off ebay, I went for the Hi-Bebe BT200 LCD Fetal Doppler. It is a really good one as it gives you a reading of what your babies heart rate is eg. Your fetals heartbeat should be anything between 120-180. This way you can tell if your baby is in anyway distressed or something is wrong.
I too had the most problem free pregnancy, I was even booked in for a water birth (which means you have to be very low risk to have). On the day of my due date I went to the hospital with mild contractions, they told me that I wasnt in enough pain and the contractions are not strong enough, so go home and get some rest.
They checked the heartbeat and everything was fine, so i went home. During that night I expercienced very bad contractions around my stomach, but they were very irregular so i didnt want to feel stupid and go to hospital, only to be sent home again.
They continued through the night and when morning came i felt nothing. All day i waited for contractions, so by mid afternoon they came and i couldnt take no more, so i went hospital. When i got there they asked me when i last felt the baby move, i didnt know, i was too caught up in pain to know.
So the midwife used a doppler and seemed very puzzled, she then called in another midwife and she tried. Nothing! they then ushered me quickly to a private room and did an ultra scan. At that moment I frooze and tried not to get upset, cause in my heart this was a mistake, my baby is alive!
Then the news broke and I was heartbroken all i could scream is Why? After an induced 18 hour labour my beautiful Lexi was born, she was my angel.
The Post Morterm to 2 months to come back and i was told the reason was Unkown, I wasnt expecting anything else.
I couldnt stop thinking about my baby and couldnt bare the pain, i wanted a baby so badly, so i let my body have 3 periods and tried again, and became pregnant.
I am now 23 weeks pregnant, scared everyday that i wont be allowed to take this baby home, i havent told anyone, people guess but i dont want to feel excited because i think its going to happen again.
Babies are stillborn alot (which i never knew) and there is no reason why they had to leave us, but i believe they wanted to give up their life to be our guardian angel, looking after as day after day.
This is what gives me hope, i will see her one day and give her all the love we missed out on.
Louise,
Thank you so much on the recommendation. I wish you all the best during this pregnancy. I really recommend looking up the St. Joseph prayer-if you read it aloud or hear it daily, it says you will never die a sudden death. This is giving me so much hope, b/c if I read it aloud, the baby cannot die a sudden death.
Congrats again and I appreciate the advice.
Hi Cams,
Thanks for the advice, I have read about the Prayer to St. Joseph and I am going to give it a go.
I have never really thought much about God and his ways, but since my little Girls death, I feel that God works in mysterious ways and we will never know why he chooses our babies, but I like to think they are precious and are wanted badly in heaven.
As to regards to you wanting another baby, do what your heart says as you will probably never feel complete without the love of a child, after losing a very much wanted and loved baby.
I have spent more time thinking about Lexi and doing more to her grave while I have been pregnant. This is beacuse I feel guilty that I am moving on with my life without her and its not fair. But if i didnt get pregnant and have something to look forward to I would have crumbled.
I waited 4 months to try again, but straight after losing Lexi I wanted to try again, but felt i needed my body to heal after a difficult birth which left me in alot of pain.
I believe that if I could find faith to try again then you can, fear is the only thing that holds you back, wait for the Post Morterm results (if you had one) then consider what you want and what Anna would have wanted.
Im glad that Lexi doesnt look down everyday and see her Mum in pain because that would have been the last thing she would have wanted. Now she sees her Mum and Dad moving forward and looking alot happier since she left us.
Sorry for going on! Lol but when you have been through this it is nice to give someone else advice, I wish I had advice, but being only 19 you dont find alot of people who can relate or can find the courage to come forward and say this has happened to me.
But I wish you all the luck in the world, in what ever desicion you make. Remember you are not alone 😀
Louise-
Thank you so much for the advice-it really helps to talk with someone that has been through a similar, awful, loss. If you want, you can email me at cams0711@yahoo.com anytime, to chat 🙂 Knowing that you were able to get pregnant so quickly gives me a lot of hope, I hope we are just as blessed, to be given another try. Being pregnant is the absolute best feeling in the world, so enjoy every minute!!!
Hi Everyone,
It’s 1:30am and I find myself not being able to sleep again. It seems that the nights are the hardest part of the day for me. On January 23rd of this year, I gave birth to my first child, a boy, who was stillborn. I was 12 days away from my due date. And although I feel that I’ve really moved forward after 2 months, (I no longer feel that I have to force myself out of bed and live through another day), I still have days filled with sadness, anger, regret (should i have done something differently), envy (i have many girlfriends due around this time and that’s hard) and bitterness (why me).
Reading all of your stories is both helpful (knowing that there are others feeling my exact emotions), and scary to know that this is so common. I, like many of you, had a picture-perfect pregnancy. My husband and I got pregnant so easily. At the time I wasn’t even sure if I was ready to be a mom (how ironic that is now). I went to my doctors after not feeling any movement for a day and was put into a private room to await an ultrasound only to be told “i’m sorry, it’s not good news.” I think I was in shock more than anything else, which fortunately lasted through my induced delivery. It wasn’t until my family had left the hospital and my husband and I were left alone with our beautiful child, that we finally broke down.
If this experience has confirmed anything for me, it’s that I want more than anything to be a mom again. I want to try again, but like many of you I’m scared to death that I might actually have to go through a similar experience a second time. I know that another baby will not replace my son, but I worry that other people will think poorly of me if we do become pregnant again soon. I also fear that we might try, only to have trouble concieving. Or that I won’t be able to handle the grief I still feel, mixed with the worry and anxiety that’s surely to come along with another pregnancy. Ugh! So many things to worry about- no wonder it’s hard to sleep!
Thank you all for reading this, and for sharing your stories. It helps.
Nikkie,
I am so sorry for what you had to go through, it really is not easy- that pregnancy after. So much guilt, anxiety and worries!
You and your husband will know the best time to try again. Some people prefer to try soon after, some prefer to wait a bit to give the body a chance to heal,and for grief to settle a bit. Whatever you decide, the warmest wishes to you. You are not alone.
Take care,
Janis
Nikki,
Sorry to hear of your heartache, I don’t wish this upon my worst enemy. I too lost a precious baby I named Lexi.
She passed away the day after her due date June 2009.
I too felt confused as to why it happened in the first place. A problem free pregnancy, a planned water birth then total heartache. The reasons for her death were unknown.
I didnt have nothing to look forward to after her death. I wanted my baby so badly, I too wanted to try for another baby so quickly because my heart was broken. I was scared that it will happen again, but the only thing that holds you back from trying again is the fear!
I waited until I had 3 periods then used an Ovulation Kit and became pregnant. I was happy I was pregnant, but as soon as I say that positive stick I was scared. The truth is that now you have had a stillbirth you will never be able to relax in any future pregnancy’s no matter how long you wait. A year down the line won’t make a difference, the anxiety will still hit you.
I don’t care what people think now I am 25 weeks pregnant, how would they feel in my situation. I have only just told work that I am pregnant, I have not told many people, this is not because i care what they think, its because I felt that if I Lose this baby then no one would have known and it would be easier to face people, without them knowing.
Your next pregnancy will be so hard, you have already done 9 months and you will then have to do another 9 months when really you just want it know. Im so anxious, Im fed up of waiting to be happy, but know there is nothing i can do to speed up time.
You will be monitored much closely on your next pregnancy, its like having the red carpet treatment. I have a top consultant who I see every 4 weeks for a reassurnce scan, ive decided i want to have a c-section at 39 weeks or if i change my mind i can have natural labour at 37 weeks.
They will look after you and you can go there any time if you feel something aint right.
May i ask if you had a post morterm done? and if so what was the reason?
All the best in whatever you do, remember you are in control of your life , dont worry what everyone else thinks, they are not you!
Louise
Louise-
What kind of support/treatment should we expect now that we have had a stillbirth? Our dr. told us she is not going to do anything much different, but maybe one ultrasound early on with a maternal fetal medicine dr. I was quite disappointed by this. I know I will need extra attention to feel more secure with our next pregnancy. What types of support/extra treatment did you receive from the very beginning so far?
Thanks!
The first time I met the consultant was when I went for my Post Morterm result. She said to me that when I was to concieve again I would be monitored very closely and be having regular scan every 4 weeks from (20 weeks). I just had to get through the early stages on my own and had the normal 12 week scan. But they allow you to go to the hospital if you feel uneasy at any stage.
I went to the hospital when I was 6 weeks pregnant because I was uneasy and had an early scan that shows if the baby is attached and is in good health.
If you are in the UK then the NHS should be given you all the support. Not sure if you are out of the UK. My pregnancy is registered at the same hospital I had Lexi, so all my notes are there and they are fully aware of my situation so I get good care. But I didnt do anything extra they provided it for me?
Hope this helps, if you feel the Dr is very helpful maybe consider changing Dr’s.
Hi Louise, Janistan
Thanks for the notes-
You’re absolutely right; we can’t worry about what other people think when it comes to trying again. But I do wish that once I did get pregnant I could just go away for nine months and hide until I can bring my healthy baby home. The thought of going through another pregnancy back at work (I’ve yet to go back), or facing well-meaning friends and family during another 9 months, gives me a lot of anxiety.
It makes me so sad to remember all the happy care-free months that I had with my first pregnancy. I know it’s silly, but my husband and I feel almost stupid now to think of how naive we were in our happiness. Along with our baby, we also lost our innocence that day. I’m jealous of those first time moms-to-be anticipating their babies, knowing that I will never have that again. I want to run up to them and tell them “you know, not everyone gets a happy ending!” Of course I would never do that, but I think it anyways.
It’s difficult too because we don’t have any answers as to why. My placenta and the umbilical cord were small and he was born very small. They think maybe over time, he wasn’t getting the nutrients he needed to sustain him. But they’re really not sure. I have an upcoming appointment with my OB so I hope that he will have some reassurances for me.
Cams, like you I, would feel very disappointed if I wasn’t offered more the second time around. The question I have for my doctor is “even if what happened the first time is not likely to every happen again, does my experience immediately make me a high risk?” If he wasn’t going to do much differently next time, I would be looking for a second opinion or other options.
Best.
Nikki,
I am so very sorry for your loss. I lost my son Jayden at 34 weeks due to a very small and insufficient placenta. (there were several large infarcts). My doctors initially told me that there was no way to measure the placenta in a future pregnancy. I decided to go for a second opinion to YALE. After meeting with an incredible doctor, he gave me a paper that he had written only the month after I lost Jayden. The papers subject is how to measure the placenta. The study results show that the measurements are not as accurate on larger placentas but on smaller ones, they have been very accurate. (if the placenta is large, then the concern of a small placenta isn’t there anyway). So, I just wanted to share with you that the technology is out there and it is measurements taken in a routine ultrasound. if you want the paper, just post your email, and I will email it to you.
I continue to be saddened that so many have to walk this journey of life without our precious babies. Wish more could be done to prevent stillbirths…
((hugs))
Nikki,
I like what my CNM said (I was under her care for my pregnancy after)– EVERY WOMAN DESERVES CLOSE ATTENTION. The point is, to be vigilant. You do deserve closer monitoring.
I was under the co-care of an OB/GYN and he reminded me, a few times, that despite the NST and ultrasounds, that something could still go wrong. Indeed, technology sometimes only gives a false sense of control. Still, after you’ve had a stillbirth, closer monitoring for the next time can make a difference.
Good luck finding a better provider.
Janis
Nikki,
Your last posting gave me chills because it is word for word how I feel. If we do get pregnant (I never thought I’d have to say “if” but I feel like I don’t know anything for sure anymore) I want to go away and hide or stay home! Like you said everyone is well meaning, but sometimes it feels like my whole life is now on display at work. It can be very overwhelming at times. I just wanted the cards, flowers and gifts to stop. I am a very private person to begin with. I thought about switching jobs just because I could not imagine everyone’s reactions if I get pregnant again. I feel like everyone will be walking on eggshells worrying about another loss. My family included. It’s so sad and unfair. But now I am starting to come around and realize that maybe it will be even happier and exciting for my family and coworkers when we get a happy ending this time. It just feels so unfair that our innocence and joy in pregnancy is now forever gone. I keep thinking I’m going to hide my belly for as long as I can. But logically I realize that if another loss were to happen, my coworkers would find out because I’d be out for so long. I feel guilty that the next baby will not get to have the same happiness I had with Anna. Ugh, it’s such a roller coaster of emotions.
I think you should take as much time as you can. I went back after 6 days. I was almost 26 weeks along. I am so mad at myself for going back so quickly. I was in such a fog and my doctor never told me that it was too soon. They gave me permission to return to work. A week later I started bleeding a lot and had to stay on bedrest for a week until the bleeding finally slowed down. It was extremely upsetting. I was not physically, mentally or emotionally ready to return, but like I said, I was in a fog and didn’t know what to do with myself. I regret that so much. But how was I supposed to know? You don’t read about these things in the million baby books I read.
Thanks for your posts, they are really comforting!
Hi Cams,
You made me laugh when you wrote that you just wanted the flowers and cards to stop! My husband and I were the same way- we felt like we were living in a funeral parlour with all the flowers we had.
I told my husband, it’s really nice that people still remember that we’re going through a hard time and that we have so much support, but everytime someone asks “how are you doing honey?” or “did you have a good day today?” I am reminded that- oh ya, I’m still mourning; or even if I was having a good day, it reminds me of why I shouldn’t have been having a good day!
I am sorry too that you returned to work before you were ready. I’m very thankful that I’ve taken the time off to take care for myself right now. I remember talking with someone and realizing a minute in that I didn’t take in one word they said. I can’t imagine handling the stress of a job in this haze. I’m even thinking of a career change- the less stress the better.
We’re thinking of trying again soon, but like you said, it’s always ‘if’. There seems to be no certainty to anything anymore. My trust in happy endings is a broken. I guess it’s a matter of faith that we’ll get our happy ending, and even if that’s not the case, we’ll somehow get through it- what other choice is there? It certainly won’t be the same as our first pregnancy, and while it will hopefully be joyful, I’m sure it’ll be even more stressful! It’ll be a new normal.
I just finished reading a book “Pregnancy after a Loss” by Carol Cirulli Lanham, that’s given me some good insight if you’re looking for any reading on the subject- I can’t even look at those other baby books- to think I was reading “The Happiest Baby on the Block,” and now it’s all about pregnancy after a loss, it seems so ironic now.
Anways, I appreciate your posts too- and for being able to ramble on about my feelings to people who truly get it. It really does help.
🙂
Hi Nikki,
I too have been thinking of a career change–in fact, it seems like many women who go through this (all 1% of us), have a career change..maybe it’s because we just want to be moms and our current jobs seem so unimportant now. I am really struggling on what to do with myself. I feel lost..Right before we lost our baby I was going through a lot of stress at work and even though my doctors and nurses insist stress could not do this, I often wonder if that was part of the reason. Since, all of the lab work and pathology showed there was no cause of death, I can’t help but come up with things that could have caused this. I am so scared to get pregnant again and have the stress of my job…but then I think that starting a new career would also be very stressful. Again I just feel so lost!! I was on one track–being a mom–and now I have to go on a different track and it’s really hard.
Anyways, thanks for listening!
hello everyone
very comforting indeed, thank you for sharing your stories, We lost our son David on good Friday(02/04/2010), a day before his due date. nothing prepares you for that horrible and sickening feeling when told by the doctor that I am really sorry, there is no heartbeat.
I had an almost perfect pregnancy and never in my wildest dream did I imagine something so terrible could happen.
I saw the doctor on Tuesday and everything was only to go into labor on Friday to find out this terrible news.
My consolation has really been in God and the fact that I will see David in Heaven one day, it’s not easy when you have other kids because you have to be strong for them each day.
may God continue to give each of us strength and hope .
love
les
les, I know it is hard to be strong for your other ones. My first pregnancy was great. The first 10 weeks of my second pregnancy was great and then took a sudden turn.
My asthma spiraled out of control and at 14 weeks, the day after Christmas I had a severe asthma attack that lead to intubation and was in ICU for 5 days. Everything seemed fine with Christopher. Then two days after Valentine’s Day 2010 I felt very ill, spiked a fever of 103 and had a seizure. I had a staph infection in my blood system. On Feb 20th I was actually feeling great in the hospital and they were considering letting me go home Sunday and do a month of IV therapy so i could be with my two year old. To my despair I started bleeding on the 20th, went into preterm labor and at 24 weeks Christopher was born on Feb 22 stillborn. The physical, emotional and spiritual pain was unbearable those 48 hours. I feel so robbed of having the opportunity to raise Christopher and so upset the infection got to him. I am still at home gaining my physical strength back.
I have several friends who have had children since Feb. and they will never have the opportunity to meet him. His Due date is June 20th and as the weeks get closer the emotional pain is getting worse. We did have him buried at a special site at the Cemetery called the Garden of Angels and had a special mass for him. The sheer raw reality and pain came last week when I saw his name on the stone at the cemetery, I was unconsolable for over an hour.
I know Christopher is our special angel and I pray to him everyday to look over us, his friends who have been born and for two children we know who are battling cancer right now. I love him and I know one day we will meet again.
As part of the healing process I have made two CD’s with songs specifically about the loss of a child and healing. If any of you feel these may help you, I am more than willing to share the playlist with you.
This is such a personal pain to work through. Yet I feel so alone but at the same time so many other families have gone through the same loss, that I hope in time, though we may never truly know why we were chosen to have a little angel(s), but we can be comforted that they are okay in heaven and will forever be with us until we are united again.
Cristina
One more thought ~ There is a beautiful book by Linda Deymaz called ” Mommy Please Don’t Cry…There Are No Tears in Heaven”, who lost her daughter in 1995. The words and illustrations are very comforting. In the back of the book are a few pages where you can write down your reflections, your dreams and what you have learned from your angel.
Cristina
Cristina,
I am so sorry for your loss. We lost our little girl right around the same time you lost Christopher. (February 16, 2010) I would love it if you shared the playlist, as long as it doesn’t make me more sad. Our due date is the end of May…I can relate to the pain getting worse as the date gets closer. May basically sucks for me, with mother’s day and all. My sister is having a baby on our due date and I can’t even go visit her or even think about meeting her baby. I do feel terrible for saying that but the pain of seeing her baby when I should have been having mine, is to0 awful to bear.
Everyone keeps telling me it gets better with time..I’m still waiting for that…
Take care and thanks for sharing
To everyone,
I cannot fight back the tears to know that I am not the only one who lost my baby. I lost my baby Samantha Michelle, I had preeclampica and the doctors didnt think I had it. My baby was prefect, in every way possible. Samantha died Feb 13th 2010. I cannot stop thinking of her. I pray that all the families out there who are in the same boat as I am, to please help each other.
Love,
Demetra
Dear Demetra,
I am so sorry about Samantha Michelle. My heart goes out to you and I wish you healing and much better days ahead.
Janis
Wow, reading “the facts” is so discouraging, I would have preferred to be left in the dark, where at least there is beginning to be a little hope. It’s sad and frightening already, but now, being an African American woman, I am even more afraid for the little one in my womb. But it’s just statistics, not a death sentence, right? I wish I had not read this. Ignorance is truly bliss.
Hi ladies, it’s been a long time since I have been on here.
On the 12th June we celebrated my daughters 1 year anniversary after losing her at 40 weeks the year before.
I have recently (Wednesday 7th July ) given birth via c-section to my beautiful son Tyler. A very hard pregnancy that was full of doubt, but I can say I happily left that hospital with a bouncing baby boy instead of total heartache and empty arms.
It was the hardest pregnancy as everyday I had concerns and I didnt want to attach myself or let myself feel excited about having another baby just incase it happened again. I also had complications in this pregnancy, I had gestational Diabetes and the baby was growing big rapidly, he was born 9 Pound 6 Onces so I decided on a c-section as my daughter was 8 pound 3 Onces and she has got stuck on my pelvis and I had a horrible Labour experience.
Im still coming round to the fact I have had a healthy baby and yes he is alive!
I wanted to let you all know that there is always hope and being pregnant again is the most hardest thing as it feels like you are holding your breath for 9 months and until you here them cry at the birth you finally exhale.
I wish all you ladies the very best for the future, we deserve our babies more than anyone else!
Louise
Thank you, Louise, for coming back to share your wonderful news!! Congratulations, and welcome to Tyler! It was no easy journey, thank you though for sharing the hope as well.
Wishing you and your family the very best indeed.
xo
Janis
Just stumbled across this…and it’s a good read for knowing more about these coming months I have. Nervous of course. But hoping.
It has been almost 6 months since Christopher became our little angel. I was extremely ill (intubated and on a respirator for 2 days at 14 weeks because of a severe asthma attack) and then a staph infection which lead to the loss of Christopher at 24 weeks. I am right now having a little of issues, especially as my son is turning 3 next week. I was so excited to for him to be a big brother by now. but instead feel guilty and break down alot. The issue is that i am seeing a psychitrist every 2 weeks for now and have been diagnosed with PTSD. My mother in law wants to come and visit this weekend and she has not been very supportive of us. I find her negative comments and my husbands change of attitude when she calls or comes to put alot of emotional stress on me. I honestly don’t know if I can handle the negitive energy right now and I don’t know when a good time for her to come. I am still upset with my husband for being on the phone with her right after I gave birth when i needed him most. Suggestions, thoughts would be appeciated!
I am struggling right now
Cristina
I am so sorry you have more than you can or need to deal with right now. Can you talk with your husband and have your MIL visit when you are in a better place? Otherwise, both parties will just get hurt and no one will be happy. You can tell her you would like to have her visit, just not right now.
I am so sorry about Christopher, the six month mark seems tough for many people.
I hope you feel better soon and things will improve for you and your family.
xo
Janis
Hi Cristina,
We are getting close to the 6 month mark and are still very sad as well. For some reason, when family and friends tell me they are amazed by my strength, it makes me feel worse. We have been TTC for 4 months and it’s not happening as easily as it did w/ our little angel. This is making me more depressed and frustrated. It feels like things can never be easy.
This is one of the few times in life we can be selfish, so if you are not ready to see family, then don’t. I have not seen most of my family or in-laws much after our loss. Just pretty much hanging tight to my husband and getting through day by day.
Hi Cams
Thank you for your support. We have been talking about TTC again, but I have such a fear right now, yet I don’t want a huge age gap between my son who will be 3 next week and a sibling. I know it is hard to be “smiling on the outside, and crying on the inside” in front of family and friends. I already have had to deal with people asking how old my son is and if we were going to have another…such a horrible experience since u feel awful. i simple say yes and hope not to burst in to tears on the spot. I will keep you in my prayers.
Cristina
Hi
Sorry You Laides Are Having A Hard Time At The Moment, My Thoughts Are With You.
I’ve Recently Recieved My Happiness Having My Son, But It Will Never Ease The Pain Of Losing My Daughter, I Will Never Forget Her, She Is Always In My Heart.
TTC Again Is Hard, Even Harder When You Are Trying And It Isnt Happening As Fast As You Want It To, But It Will Happen.
I Cant Say I Feel How You Are Feeling At The Moment, As I’m On The Next Chapter Of This Devastating Journey.
As Regards To Trying Again, Have You Tried Using Ovulation Kits? I Used Them When I Concieved Lexi And Also Tyler, They Are Useful You Just Need To Use Them Correctly.
I Pray Good News Comes Your Way Soon, You Deserve It More Than Ever!
Louise
I am so sorry for all of you who have had to experience this. I am hoping to get pregnant again in a couple of months. Victoria, my first child, was born on Friday July 16, 2010 – 5 days after my due date. Here is my story.
I had been having contractions for several days. On Wednesday the 14th when I went to the OB I was disappointed that I still wasn’t dilated at all. She told me that she would give me a non-stress test since I was past my due date but to return after I had lunch since the baby would be more active after a meal. When I returned, Victoria was clearly asleep and could have cared less about the food I’d just eaten. They buzzed her head to get her to move a little. While hooked up to the machines which were recording how her heartrate responded when I had a contraction, I noticed that it got all the way down to 110 but I didn’t say anything. At the end of the test, the doctor glanced at the paper and said that everything looked fine and told me they’d be calling me to confirm July 20th as the date I would be induced.
I must have had a miserable night because on Thursday when I woke, I asked my husband to fix me a cup of hot tea and show me how to use his stopwatch so I could begin timing my contractions. I called the doctor’s office to be sure I was timing them correctly. They were long, between 1 and 1 ½ minutes, but never that close together and not regular. I did have to breathe through them but I didn’t think they were that big of a deal.
I didn’t have much of an appetite and had only managed to get down some applesauce, half a chicken tender and half a biscuit all day. I had diarrhea all day which I welcomed because I knew that true labor was near. Around 10 something at night I vomited which I knew was a sign that labor was progressing. I vomited again, this time more forceful and mostly stomach acid since there was really nothing in my stomach. This time, I felt something “squirt” in my panties. I thought “Great, more disgusting mucus…” I laid there another minute or two and finally went to the restroom. When I pulled my panties down, the crotch was filled with blood and it continued to leak and fill the toilet.
I wasn’t scared at all (just relieved that I was finally going to have the baby) and called the doctor’s office. When the doctor called back I told her about the blood and that I was going to head to the hospital. We threw a couple of last minute items into our bag, gave the cat lots of food, and even put my bloody underwear in the washing machine. On the way to the hospital the contractions finally started coming regularly, every 3 to 4 minutes, and were in my back now instead of the front. There was traffic so it took us almost 45 minutes to get there. The whole time I kept feeling to see if she was moving but I never felt anything.
When we got to triage, they couldn’t find the heartbeat and I even tried to show them where the doctors usually found it. Then they said “Call So-an-so to confirm this.” The ultrasound technician came and I could see Victoria on the screen and her heart wasn’t moving. She said “I’m so sorry for your loss.” My husband’s response was “That’s it?” My response was “Can I have something for this pain?”
The doctor finally arrived and checked me. She said I was fully dilated and did I just want to push her out. I did 2 rounds of pushing, decided to get the epidural, and then pushed for another hour before she was born. It wasn’t until I heard my husband sniffling where they were tending to Victoria while I was being stitched up that it finally hit me and I began to get sad. Then they brought her to me and I broke down crying.
I still can’t believe it was a girl. She was beautiful! And she was perfect. She was born at 3:38 a.m. but I’m pretty sure she passed on the 15th.
I know none of you are blaming anyone but I do feel that this was completely avoidable. I had a minor placental abruption. I found out 2 weeks later that when the baby’s heartrate decreases during a contraction that could indicate problems with the placenta. I had asked the doctor on Wednesday why induce anyone as long as both mother and baby are doing fine; she said that the placenta could begin to age. So when there was this indication that there could be a problem with the placenta only the day before, how could she have overlooked it?
If anyone reading this is pregnant with their 1st child, here is my advice to you: Don’t believe everything you hear or read regarding labor. It was only at the very end that my contractions became really painful (I had back labor) and regular. Before that, they weren’t that painful, were not regular, were not coming that close together, and were not getting stronger and stronger. Go to the hospital whenever you feel you need to. I’d rather get sent home every day for a month next time. I think that if I had been at the hospital sooner, they would have detected that she was struggling and could have done something about it.
It’s been 9 weeks and life is so hard. I see everything through the eyes of Victoria’s mother now, not Eboni. That makes it so much harder. It’s unfortunate that so many of us have experienced this, but it does help to know that I’m not alone. There have been different challenges everyday and clearly I’ve made it through each and every one of them.
We all need to remember the great times we had with our babies. Though the day we found out they had passed was tragic, we had so many other great days with them. Think about those times.
Dear Eboni,
thank you for sharing your story- which is that of yours AND Victoria. You are right about remembering the good, wonderful times… how else can we buoy ourselves?
Sending you strength and peace, and the very best wishes when you are ready to try again.
Warmly,
Janis
Janis,
You have shown such kindness and love to each of us. Thank you so much. When you get a chance I wouldn’t mind hearing about how things went for you when you were pregnant with your daughter. Maybe there’s some advice you can offer for us who haven’t made it that far in the process yet.
Once I am pregnant and have my next child, I plan to return here and offer hope to others as well.
Eboni
Thank you for your kind words, Eboni.
It was hard when I was pregnant again, as I am sure is the same for all bereaved. Flashbacks, fears, grief… so many things to deal with. I just determined to treasure every moment I had, since I did not know when the pregnancy might end or how it will play out, and just hold a heart full of gratitude (not always easy). I also finally realized I just had to let go, surrender, and trust, and lean into the fear and pain, knowing that joy and love do not stand alone. If we had not loved, we would not have grieved. If we did not love the baby we were bearing, we would not have felt fear. But I tried to turn all that fear into action- eat well, exercise, stay vigilant…. lots of deep breaths.
I am not sure that qualifies as advice, but that was what had helped me.
It would be lovely to hear your wonderful news on here in the future, Eboni. Take care.
Janis
Hello,
I stumbled on this site as I was searching for some comfort and help. My heart goes out to all who’s nightmare my wife and I now share. I can barely keep a clear train of thought as I am consumed by sorrow, sadness and confusion. My wife and I just lost our most precious Katie Lynn just days ago, 9/22/10. Just days prior at our last prenatal appt. everything was good, strong heartbeat but still in breech position. We had a scheduled c-section set for the 22nd, week 39. We had noticed a decrease in movements but everything and everybody said this was normal at this stage, even our doctor said all was well and normal. We show up at are scheduled time, bags packed, video camera charged up, and Katie’s first homecoming outfit all ready. Less than an hour later as they were prepping my wife for the c-section, the dreaded words “no heartbeat”. That moment our world came crashing down, my heart exploded in agony. It’s only been 8 days and I’m still not quite sure this is even really happening, I’m still hanging on to a sliver of hope that I’ll wake up from this sick terrible nightmare. Did I really call the mortuary and not the lactation consultant? Did I really talk to the chaplain and not the pediatrician? Just over a week ago I could not have been more happy, joyous, excited and in love with life, my wife and my soon to be here lil precious, my cupcake. Now I’m in a horrible pain, lost and confused, scared and defeated. I dread the future as there is no way I can ever be happy again, not in this lifetime. I am completely devestated. I am so so brokenhearted for my dear wife, she was so proud to be pregnant, and did everything right. It’s so unfair. So wrong.
Mike
Dear Mike,
my heart totally breaks to read your words, so saturated with grief, shock and pain. I am so sorry that you and your dear wife do not have your precious daughter with you. It is a most horrible thing, and it has happened to so many of us, as you can see.
I am not sure if it comforts you to know you are not alone, that your pain and grief is known and held. The path after is not easy and I hope you gather all the support you have and be gentle with yourself.
Warmest thoughts and healing vibes being sent to you.
Janis
Mike,
My sincere condolences to you and your wife. Your story is so heartbreaking and I wasn’t going to say anything because I don’t have a way with words and no words could help anyway.
But I thought I would at least tell you that I have prayed for you and your wife and have been thinking about you all day since I saw your reply before I came to work.
From my heart,
Eboni
Mike, I am also so very sorry for your loss. I wanted to share with you a family forum that I am a part of that has helped me tremendously with my grief. It is an organization called Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. I hope you are able to find support and comfort. I know right now everything is just so raw. I honestly didn’t think I would be able to make it through the pain because it hurt so much. But there is hope. Please know that. You will smile again. The piece of your heart that is with Katie Lynn will always be missing. But in time you will find a way to honor her life, remember her, and share her story with others. I was so grateful to find others who understood my pain in places like this website and NILMDTS. I hope you are able to find the same. http://www.nowisleep.com/index.php
Thank you Janis, Ebony and Cindy for you support and kindness. This is new unexplored territory for me, I still don’t think my mind is letting me believe, understand, comprehend or even acknowledge what has happened. My thinking is going haywire now. You all give me hope, thank you.
Mike
Dear Mike,
three years out after my son’s death, I still do not believe. And I am still trying to understand. Sometimes I think I do, but sometimes I just cannot understand why so many babies are stillborn on a daily basis. Often for NO reason. It’s just killing.
I am glad you found some hope and comfort here. Do not hesitate to post or email if you need anything.
Best regards,
Janis
Hey to all,
I am pregnant again, finally! (I posted back in March about my son with hydrops) I am 17 weeks now, but this has been the hardest/scariest/most stressful things I have EVER done.. I think about if this baby is going to be ok daily. I bought a fetal heart monitor at 10 weeks to keep up with it.. so far so good, but still worrying daily. I have a mental block towards this baby.. I don’t have dreams about babies. I can’t buy anything for it. I can’t even pick out names.. I am so ready for it to be here so I can see that it’s ok. I will find out sex in 2 weeks. Im hoping then I will be able to relax some BUT the ultrasound im getting in 2 weeks is about the same time i had the ultrasound with Wesley and found out he wasn’t ok. So, im also freaking out slightly that everything is not going to be ok… If you have conceived and had a succesful pregnancy and delivery please tell me about it so I can have so hope!! Thanks!
Sarah,
congratulations! I can imagine how scary it can feel, with the memories still so fresh ((hugs)) It is hard to have faith when you’ve been on the wrong side of the statistics before. Hang in there, deep breaths, one day at a time!
I gave birth to a healthy baby girl 18 months after my stillbirth. It was my fastest delivery. Intense labor, but no difficulties and complications and I was grateful for the speed so I did not have much time to worry, and it was a vast difference from my previous labors, that were always so long drawn. Lyra is coming to 21 months now and an absolute joy. I still miss Ferdinand sorely, and still have tears, but I am so grateful too.
sending you lots of peaceful and positive vibes!!
Janis
Sarah,
Congratulations Darling On Your News, You Are Probably Not Feeling As Excited As You Wished You Could Be. That Is The Fear Holding You Back, Its The Scariest Fear Of All.
I Had My Son Tyler 3 Months Ago (07/07/10) 13 Months After Losing My Daughter Lexi (12/06/09) After A Full Term Stillbirth. I Knew That Getting Pregnant Again And Going Through The Pregnancy Was Going To Be Hard But I Have To Admit I Never Knew It Was That Hard.
Everyday I Feared The Worse Wondering If My Baby Inside Me Had Life. Hospital Appointments Every 2 Weeks, Scans Every 4 Weeks I Felt That The Hospital Was My Second Home. I Didnt Tell Any Of My Family I Was Pregnant, I Kept It A Total Secret, I Wanted To Hide From The World. I Just Wanted To Be Seen When I Had My Baby In My Arms!
Even To The Day When I Went In For My C-sections Not One Bit Of Excitement Hit Me, Just All Nerves. Holding My Son After He Was Delivered Was Like A Dream, It Took Me A While To Accept He Was Here, Live And Well.
All The Advise I Can Give To You Sarah Is To Keep Busy, I Worked Up To The End Of The Pregnancy So My Mind Was Else Where, And I Personally Know Its Hard Not To Keep Thinking Dreadful Thoughts But You Have To Keep Strong. I Still Miss And Crave The Little Girl I Lost, But If I Didnt Have Tyler I Would Have Had Nothing, And Life Would Of Seemed Not Worth Living.
All My Love Louise
Thank you so much Louise and Janis! I really appreciate your kind words. I stay home so it’s hard to not worry daily. But I try. Looking forward to the day I am in the hospital holding this new baby. Thanks again!
-Sarah
Thank you to all the mummys and daddys who have shared their experiences here. My little girl was stillborn on 26th September. While it breaks my heart to hear of so many people going through the same devastating experience, it’s comforting to know that I’m not alone in my sadness. There are people out there that really do know how I’m feeling and understand my grief.
This was my first pregnancy. It was unplanned but as soon as I discovered I was expecting I was so happy. My boyfriend and I had only been together 4 months but we’d known eachother for years. We were both excited to become parents. Sadly, one of my close friends had lost a baby at 8wks a few months previously so I was all too aware that pregnancies didn’t always end in happiness. I worried constantly until our 1st scan at 12wks. Seeing my baby for the 1st time was the most amazing experience, watching her tiny arms and legs moving about was so reassuring. We were told everything was looking good, our baby had a good strong heartbeat, and I relaxed a bit.
I still worried, as every mother does, but my baby reassured me every time she kicked or wriggled. We nicknamed her ‘Boo’ as she seemed to like playing hide and seek when other people wanted to share the experience of her moving. At the 20wk scan, they had a good look at all her organs. Everything was fine, our baby was doing well. We chose not to find out the sex, wanting a surprise at the birth. I felt so lucky. My pregnancy had been an easy one with no morning sickness and good reports from the midwife at every antenatal appointment.
Sadly, my relationship with my baby’s dad fell apart. He decided he needed a break when I was 21wks and we were never able to make things work after that. I still encouraged him to be a part of the pregnancy and filled him in after every antenatal check-up. At my 30wk check I was told my urine sample was showing protein and would be sent off for testing. I had no symptoms of a water infection and Boo was very active so there were no worries. A few days later I started having bad back pain and pain in my ribs which gradually got worse. My belly started to expand really quickly and I thought it was a normal part of pregnancy. Around 32wks I was diagnosed with a kidney infection but told not to worry as it wouldn’t affect my baby. I was put on antibiotics but they didn’t make any difference to the pain. By this point I was in so much pain that I couldn’t sleep and hadn’t slept well for 2wks. I was growing increasingly worried about my baby’s health throughout the weeks but had seen a doctor twice and thought she would’ve picked up any problems. At 33wks I saw my midwife again. As soon as she saw me she was concerned about the size of my bump. I looked like I was full-term, she measured my uterus and told me that I’d gone from 29cm to 41cm in the last 3wks. They tested my urine which was fine, this ruled out a kidney infection as the cause of the pain. I also expressed concern as in the last few days Boo hadn’t been as active as normal. My midwife arranged for me to go to the local hospital where they monitored my baby’s heartbeat for 5hrs. I was told the heart trace was fine but was seen by a doctor and a scan was booked for the Friday (2 days later) I was told they thought the cause of my huge painful bump was polyhydramnios where there’s too much fluid around the baby. I was told not to worry but did my research and began to prepare myself for any complications. As it turned out I was completely unprepared for what the scan showed…
After waiting an hour after the scan, someone called me and my mum into a private room. She told me that she couldn’t tell me in too much detail what was going on as the results were complicated and a more specialist consultant had been called to speak to me when he was available. She told us that the scan had shown severe polyhydramnios, there was 2x the normal amount of fluid, but my baby also had fetal hydrops. She said there was fluid in my baby’s lungs, under the skin and around the abdomen. I was devasted, I didn’t need a specialist to tell me things weren’t looking good. They monitored my baby’s heartbeat while I waited for the consultant. There were concerns over the lack of fetal movement in the first hour of monitoring but when the consultant arrived and checked the trace he was happy that it had improved. He told me about fetal hydrops and explained that there are lots of things that could cause this though it was very rare for it to happen in 3rd trimester. I had some blood taken for testing and was referred to a specialist hospital in London and got an appointment for the following Monday. Noone could tell me what to expect as they didn’t know what could be done until they could figure out a cause, but I was told there was a chance my baby would have to be delivered early. I returned to my local hospital that evening and the following morning for steroid injections to help strengthen Boo’s lungs. Both times her heartbeat was monitored and I also requested to be monitored on the Sunday to reassure me. It was a long weekend but it was reassuring to be able to hear my baby’s heartbeat every day. I was still in a lot of pain and hadn’t felt a strong movement for around a week. I still clung on to hope that somehow my baby would be ok.
Monday finally arrived. Me, my mum and my baby’s dad all went to London. He hadn’t been involved in any of the hospital appointments up to this point but I insisted that he came to this one. We had a detailed scan where they couldn’t find any abnormalities that would’ve caused the hydrops. We were asked if we’d like to know the sex of our baby and found out we were expecting a girl. They told me they were especially concerned about her lungs as they were being compressed by fluid in her chest cavity. They were able to drain the fluid from her left side, after this her left lung inflated immediately. They also drained 2 litres of fluid from my womb to make me more comfortable and minimise the risk of pre-term labour. More blood was taken for testing and some of the the amniotic fluid was sent off as well. A follow up appointment with the fetal medicine unit was made for Wednesday. Until then I was to stay in the maternity ward for regular monitoring.
The last time I felt my baby move at all was Tuesday morning when she had hiccups. By Tuesday evening there were concerns about the heart trace and it was sent down to labour ward. I’d also expressed concern that I felt the amniotic fluid was building up again. Around 9pm a doctor came and spoke to me, explaining that things weren’t looking good. I was told that if my baby didn’t have severe hydrops and they’d received the same heart trace they would advise an emergancy C-section but as my baby was so poorly they didn’t think she’d survive if she was delivered, especially as there was still no cause determined for the hydrops. I was put back on the monitor and at 1am I was moved down to the labour ward to be monitored more closely. It was the longest night of my life. I didn’t sleep, just lay there listening to my little girl’s heart beating. I knew in my heart that I’d need a miracle if things were to be ok. There were times that her heart rate dipped to as low as 70bpm then it would start racing at 200bpm. I knew she was struggling but there was nothing I could do. I felt like I was failing as a mother. My baby was meant to be safe in my womb yet here she was suffering and I was useless to her.
My mum arrived as early as she could on Wednesday morning. Around 9.30am the doctor from the fetal medicine unit arrived with an ultrasound machine. The scan confirmed my fears that the fluid had built up again. Her left lung was compressed again. At this point I was given 3 options. 1) Have a C-section and try and drain the fluid but I was advised that she probably wouldn’t make it. 2) Have a permanant chest drain put in to try and allow her lungs to inflate before delivery. Or 3) Do nothing and let nature take it’s course. I was told that whatever I chose to do my little girl would probably die. I wasn’t ready to give up on my baby and resented being given this 3rd ‘option’. I felt that the chest drain would give her more of a chance of survival. I was taken off the monitor and spent the day walking around the hospital, waiting for my appointment with fetal medicinefor another scan and to discuss the chest drain. My baby’s dad arrived some time in the afternoon. At 8.30pm we finally got into the ultrasound room. It was 22nd September and I was 34wks pregnant.
As they were preparing me for the scan, we discussed the chest drain. I was told that as it was a complicated procedure so it couldn’t be done until the next day. As soon as we saw my baby’s heart on the screen the talking stopped. Her heart was beating, barely, and within a minute it stopped. I remember laying there just staring at the screen, willing it to start again. Stupidly hoping everything could still be ok. The next few days are a blur… I was sent home from London the same night she died, opting to give birth at my local hospital where I was closer to friends and family. I was given an oral tablet to induce labour and spent 2 days at home just waiting for things to happen. I found it very hard to accept that she was gone especially I still looked heavily pregnant. A friend of mine had given birth to a little girl on 18th september. I decided to go and see her before I gave birth. I remember being scared that I’d feel some sort of resentment towards my friend for having a healthy baby but as soon as I saw her I just felt love. It broke my heart that our daughters wouldn’t be growing up together but holding her little girl was a big comfort at that time.
My beautiful baby girl was born on Sunday 26th September at 07.51am. She weighed 5lb 11.5oz and had brown curly hair like her mummy. I named her Amia, which means love. Her dad wasn’t there when she was born and never held her. He came into the room a little while after her birth and looked at her briefly before saying he felt sick. He went home soon after that but upset me first by saying he was ‘glad he looked at it’. I wanted to scream at him that SHE was called Amia and she was our daughter we’d waited so long to meet. Because she’d passed away 4 days before she was born, some of her skin had peeled off and she didn’t look how she should’ve looked but she was still perfect to me. I held her for hours taking in every little detail. Counted all her tiny fingers and toes like any mother would. My mum had a cuddle with her grand- daughter and we had her blessed by the hospital chaplain. When I finally let the midwife take her away I sobbed uncontrollably. Leaving the hospital without Amia was the hardest part. It felt physically wrong to be walking away from my little girl.
It’s been nearly 5 weeks since she was born. I’ve been lucky to have the support of so many of my friends and family but nothing eases the pain. I’m still waiting for the results from the post mortem. I was advised to have one to try and determine the cause of the hydrops. Previous test results have ruled out so many things that I’m worried we’ll never know what happened. I don’t feel like I’ll ever have the strength to go through another pregnancy even if one day I meet someone and fall in love again. It feels so cruel to have gotten so far into my pregnancy with no problems just for things to go so badly wrong at the end.
There’s all the ‘what ifs’ that haunt me when I’m alone. What if I’d insisted on a scan earlier on when I was in so much pain. What if I’d had C-section. What if I been monitored more closely on the Wednesday she died. Would anything have saved her? People tell me not to blame myself but I can’t help feeling like I failed her in some way. This year has been a real rollercoaster of emotions. Such happiness to find out I was going to be a mummy just to have it all devastatingly taken away again. Every day is a struggle at the moment but I’m determined to get through.
Best wishes to all those expecting another baby after going through a stillbirth. You are so strong xxxxxx
Cat,
I know all to well about the Hydrops experience! I do however know what caused my son, Wesley’s. It was Parvovirus B-19 or Fifths disease. I found out what had caused his the same morning he died. I have posted my story on here back in March, 2010. I know how hard this particular problem is because you knew she wasn’t ok like I knew Wesley wasn’t ok. And I completly agree that the hardest part was leaving the hospital without that baby. Again, Im very sorry you had to go through this and especially without your baby’s father! It will get better. I am now pregnant again! It’s my 4th pregnancy, and I only have 1 daughter. This one is a girl as well! And I am scared, Everyday! Good luck!!!
-Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Thank you for taking the time to read about my daughter, it means so much to me. Congratulations on your pregnancy. I really hope it ends in happiness for you. It seems so cruel that you’ve had to go through the loss of 2 little ones. I can imagine how scared you must be about your baby girl and admire your strength.
When reading about your son Wesley I felt so sad to hear that you were offered a termination. Having someone ask you to give up hope for your unborn child is unbearable and goes against every mothers instinct. I felt so angry with the doctors when they gave me the option to ‘let nature take it’s course’ without trying something, anything to try and give my little girl a chance. I can imagine you felt the same.
I know it doesn’t ease the pain but I’m glad they were able to find the cause of Wesley’s hydrops. I’m so scared that I may never know what happened to my daughter. The longer I wait for results the more convinced I am that I’m not going to get any answers. I hate to think that my baby had to go through a post mortem for nothing. I’ve read that once you’ve had Parvovirus you can’t catch it again. I hope you find some comfort in this. Naturally you will worry until you have your daughter in your arms. I hope you don’t have too much longer to wait. Wishing you all the best.
Cat x
Dear Cat,
I’m Sorry 2 Hear You Sad News, But I’m Glad You Have Found This Website As It Offers Support.
Please Read My Story Above, I Too Went Through A Full Term Stillbirth, But There Was So Reason 4 My Daughters Death After The Post Morterm She Was Perfect In Every Way.
I Too Understand The Bit When You Said About Her Skin Peeling, This I Found The Hardest Thing To Look At.
I Didnt Want To Hold Her After She Was Born, I Guess I Was Scared. I Was Glad That 2 Days After She Passed Away I Returned To The Hospital And Held Her And Spent Time With Her In The Chaplin. It Was The Saddest Moment Ever But I Still Can Picture Her Face A Year On.
People Still Dont Understand My Pain And Because I Have Recently Given Birth To My Son The Pain Does Not Ease. I Have To Accept The Fact That My Lil Girl Has Gone And Not Forgotten And That I Now Have A Beautiful SonTo Enjoy Life With.
Its Still Very Raw For You, And It Feels Like Life Picked On You For No Reason! But Remember You Are Not Alone In Your Grief And Support From People Who Have Experienced This Will Be The Biggest Help. I Hope You Find Happiness Very Soon x
I Love This Website And Janistan Who Made This Had The Right Idea As It Has Reached Out To All Us Mums.
Cat, how devastating! You’ve been through so much. I’m really saddened by your story. So many of us know what you’re feeling and are really hurting for you.
Sarah, I’m glad to hear you are doing well. Keep hanging in there.
I have said a prayer for you both.
Eboni
Dear Cat,
it breaks my heart to read your story and that of Amia. Truly it had been a host of trials and tribulations! I am so terribly sorry for all that you have had to go through, and still not to have Amia with you. Amia is such a beautiful name, and I am sure she was perfectly beautiful as well.
Please do not blame yourself… sometimes bad things happen for no good reasons. It is a hard thing to accept… but I think it is true.
I am glad to hear you are having good support. Take good care, and many warm wishes to you.
xo
Janis
Thank you ladies for all your kind words xxx
Hi every one
I can not believe how many people go through
this every day yet its not in any books
my little angel was born at 33 weeks on the
7/7/10 at 2.10 and weighted 3.10
His name was kaiden pawsey he was perfect
In every way. Like so many of you on here
I had a perfect pregnancy no morning sickness
nothing when I was 21 weeks I went to my hospital
as I hadn’t felt him move but I was placed on
a monitor and he started moving like mad. A few
Weeks later I was admitted with d+v put was distcharged
the next and kaiden was fine I had no more proplems
for the rest of my pregnancy.
I had a appointment with my midwife at 32 weeks
I told her I was worried that my bump seemed small but
She said everything was perfect so I left felling better
On the 1 st I has my friends and we all watched my belly
Move like jelly and then I went to bed when I woke I went
To meet my sister who had just two weeks before has a litlle
girl and was staying at mine so I was not thinking about kaiden
later that night as I lay in bed I spoke to my partner about how he
Hadn’t moved a lot that evening . My partner reassured my mind and
I went to sleep through out the night when I woke I still failed
To notice movement in the morning I told my sister who done what
she use to get my neice to move she said kaiden moved so once again
I relaxed but later that evening I told my mum who said if I was worried
I should go to the hospital . So me my mum and my partner went along
making jokes as this had happend before and saying how as soon as I was
put on a monitor he would move. A midwife used a doopler to find his heartbeat
but couldn’t I rembered how at my last check up they had so I showed her
where they got it last time but there was nothing I broke down straight a way
The midwife tried to dooplers then got a scan done before it was confirmed even though
I already knew I was giving a tablet and told to ccome back 48 hours later
My son was born 16 hours after I was first induesd it was a hard day one I will
Never ever forget.
The post mortem results came back inconclusive but said he was small
and stressed.
Not a day goes by where I don’t think of my precious angel
And don’t think there ever will be.
I have recently found out I am 5 weeks pregnant and am very scared I turned down a
Job offer when I found this out as I wernt shore if I would cope but now
All I do is worry and evey time I fill a slight pain I think I am losing another one
of my precious babys and its driving mr insane I have a scan on monday but do not
Know how I’m gonna make it through I’m getting induced at 37 weeks so I only have
31 weeks and 6 days to go but I don’t know how I will cope .
Please give me advice on to how to help me calm down as I was
so stressed with kaiden I’m scared I’m going to make it happen again
Thank you
Good luck to all who want to try again
Ifound that when I waas thinking and trying
To concieve I didn’t I went on hoiliday and relaxed and I fell pg in tunisia
Hi Junaid. I’m so sorry to hear about Kaiden. My daughter was also stillborn in July so I hope to join you in becoming pregnant soon.
I recently joined at http://www.dailystrength.org and it has been making a HUGE difference for me. I am able to connect with others who know exactly how I feel. There I joined the Stillbirth group and within that group I joined the “TTC After Stillbirth” group. There is a “Pregnancy After Stillbirth” group that I plan to join once I become pregnant.
Even if you don’t actually join, take a look at the site:
http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/pregnancy-after-stillbirth
You will probably find some advice and comfort there.
Congratulations on your new baby and take care.
Eboni
Dear Junaid
Sorry To Hear Of Your Heart Breaking News, Like You Said It Is Suprising To Think So Many Women Go Through This, But Not Much Is Said On The Matter.
I Too Went Through A Stillbirth On The 12/06/09 At 40 Weeks, And Also My Post Morterm Came Back Unknown,
She Was Perfect In Every Way, I Named Her Lexi.
I Got Pregnant 4 Months After Losing Her, It Was What Felt Right For Me As I Didn’t Know How I Was Going To Cope Being A Childless Mother, The Emotional Pain Was Unbearable As You Are Probably Fully Aware Of.
I Can’t Say That There Ever Is A Way You Can Cope With Being Pregnant Again, The Fear Takes Over All The Happiness. I Spent Most Of My Pregnancy In And Out Of Hospital, After I Was 20 Weeks Into My Pregnancy I Had Scans Every 4 Weeks, Midwife Apps Every 2 Weeks. If I Didnt Feel Something Was Right I Was Down That Hospital In An Instant And Everyone There Understood My Fears!
The Whole Pregnancy Felt Like A Secret To All, I Didnt Like People Knowing I Was Pregnant Again As I Was Scared It Would Happen Again, I Had To Go Back To Work And I Told People When I Was 25 Weeks, That Felt The Right Time As They Would Have Guessed Anyway.
The Pregnancy Felt The Longest Time Of My Life, I Didnt Attach My Self To The Baby To Much As I Felt That If I Was To Get Excited Lightning Would Strike Again And Leave Me Heart Broken Again!
Finally I Made It To 38 Weeks And Had A C-Section, When He Was Born I Still Couldnt Accept He Was Alive, It Was Like A Dream.
All The Advice I Can Give You Is To Stay Strong And Dont Be Ashamed To Be In And Out Of That Hospital, If You Feel Something Aint Right You Go And Get Checked!
I Also Bought My Self A Fetal Doppler To Use At Home, I Worked From 16 Weeks Onwards, It Helped Me Feel Relived To Hear His Little Heart Beat.
Sending You All My Love And Prayers
Louise
Kaiden
Dear Junaid,
thank you for sharing your story here. There are just no words for a tragedy like this. It must be hard to be missing Kaiden while welcoming a new life at the same time.
It is indeed hard to stay calm, and I guess all I can tell you is to take it one day at a time, one moment at a time. Meditation and visualization could help. Talk to a friend, a family member who would listen to your fears, write about it, find some creative expressions… time will pass by a bit faster when you are doing things.
Wishing you the very best,
Janis
And Eboni, thank you for posting the link.
Hi Everyone,
I went through a stillbirth at 36 weeks last Oct. 23, 2010 to a beautiful, cute baby girl. We named her Yuna Louisse. She was our first born. My husband and I just got married last year. We really want to have a baby so after I found out that I was pregnant last February 2010 we were very happy. We told my parents and they are also are very excited for the baby as she will be their first grandchild. My pregnancy went smoothly. I do not experience any morning sickness at all. I quit my job so that I can rest well. I went to my doctor every time I have an appointment. It was on the evening of Oct. 22 I went to my doctor because I have some spotting. When the doctor check the heartbeat of my baby, she cannot find it. That’s the time she suggested me to undergo an ultrasound. After the ultrasound, she said that my baby died. That was worst day in my life. That time I just want to cry and die together with my daughter. I call my husband and told him the sad news. I was then induced and after 12 1/2 hours of labor my precious baby girl went out sleeping. When I was first her she was so perfect. I can’t imagine that I lost her. According to the doctor the caused of death is due to placenta insufficiency. Her ambilical cord is too short and the placenta is much smaller. I try to go on with my life despite that tragic loss and I will always remember my little girl. My husband and I want to try again maybe after we are both emotionally ready. I thank God for giving us baby Yuna in which I know is more happy now as she is one of the angels in heaven. I will never forget the happiness she bring me when she was still inside me. I would not trade that wonderful experience to anything else in the world. I’m still praying and hoping that someday God will grant us another baby that will bring us so much happiness in the future.
Baby Yuna we love you and miss you.
Kath
Hey i just found ths site and i bookmarked it and constantly check it. Soo sad that ths happens so often. My son Trinity Karter Smith was stillborn 10/09/10. Nothng will ever compare to the pain that drowned me that day. My pregnancy was unexpected but not unwanted. My partner and I were the happiest when we found out. I had no problems except i happened to get gallstones when i was 6weeks pregnant then had surgery to have my gallbladder out when i was 19wks. I was in extreme pain for the first 5months because of ths bt i was comforted by the fact my baby didnt feel any of it. It was so uncommon for someone like myself to get ths disease as its one you get frm your weight and diet and im completely healthy. It was the high estrogen levels that caused it. Afta my surgery i was fine, my baby was happy he constantly did cartwheels in my tummy thats how i knew he was Ok. I never knew you anythng about stillbirth during my pregnancy id never evan heard of it. It was the 9th of september and it was about 7pm i started havng a soar tummy i thought oh i must just have a bug. I couldnt sleep all night, bt then i thought well i must be going into labour. My midwives and evrybody drummed it into my head that i shouldnt go hospital until i felt regular strong contractions. So i handled the pain thnkng im in labour. I caled my midwife she said im sure your Ok just early labour. I was 38weeks. I couldnt take the pain anymore and went to the hospital an a onduty midwife checked me out she said im not in labour that i just have a tummy bug. She attached the heart rate monitor an for hourz she checked and said he was fine. All the while i cry in agony. Finaly a docter thnks mayb i have gastro then just in case she said she checks to see if im dialating. I was 4cm dialated and in labour. The onduty had made a mistake. I thought to myself yae finaly they wil gve me somethng for the pain. My partner had gone home to get some stuf durng ths time. I thought oh wow hes gona come back and our son will b born as i didnt have my mobile to tel him. I was so excitad id waited soo long to meet him. They transfered me to the delivery suite an gave me ultrasound. As i lay there cryng in pain i looked over to the screen and didnt expect to see that. No heartbeat. Thats when the shock kicked in. It wasnt true i thought to myself. Indenial.hoping his heart was gona magicaly start beatng again. How is this possible i thought i was just connected to a fetal monitor, she said he was fine that whole entire time. How could she have mistaken his heartbeat for mine when a babys beats so much faster. I dnt knw when it happend but i know in my heart that it could of been preventad if only she’d done her job correctly. Im considering legal action. A few hours later he was born, sleeping. My birth was so easy because i was in shock. They placed him strait on my chest i gave him to my partner. I couldnt bare to hold his little limp body and wasnt ready to see his perfect wee face. My partner held him and wept i lookd the other way not ready accept it. Not able to comprehend it. It was PLACENTAL abruption. I lost so much blood, and it was clotting in my stomach. I had emergency surgery and when i woke i finally accepted my fate. Pain sorrow and unimaginable need for him to wakeup took over. I held and wept over him for 3days befor buryng him wth his uncle. Its comforting knowing im nnly one consumed in grief. I wish i died in theatre alot. I wish you all the best and hope you find happiness in life. Im trying for another baby now i hope it happens soon. All the sympythy in the world to u all xx
*comforting that im not the only one going through it*
There is hope, but still fear and reservation…trusting my faith and doctors again…
I posted several months ago that I lost my son, Christopher on 2/22/10 at 24 weeks after some terrible health issues. Being exposed to extreme cold air in the classroom for over a week that triggered an asthma attack, lead to intubation and on a ventilator for 2 1/2 days. Then to contract a severe staph infection that nearly took my life as well, and ultimately my little angel. Through the guidance of family, friends, and a great psychiatrist since, I am glad to share with the community that after TTC for only a month, I am now 10 weeks pregnant and due July 2011.
However, the pain of knowing that in a “perfect world” I should have Christopher at about 6th months for the holidays with his older brother, has left me in tears daily, especially at night. It was very hard to go to the garden of angels where he is buried and leave a wreath adorned with little toys.
Though through the daily tears, I also pray to Christopher to guide and protect his unborn sibling and be a guardian angel to his 3 year old brother Steven. I believe this pregnancy is meant to be, and just have to hold my head and be grateful to be alive today and that I and my husband were ready again to build our loving family.
I know for some of you who have had recent losses and not so recent who have been TTC, just remember this holiday season our angels are with us to guide us, love us and I will pray for you who still are struggling and not have reached a place of comfort yet and acceptance…it is okay and you are not alone.
To find a little bit of love for yourself, has made it just a bit easier to breathe each day and move forward without forgetting.
God Bless, Peace Be With you!
Cristina
I am so sorry to hear of your story and of Trinity Karter, Gypsye. It is so terrible to have gone through so much, thinking you would have a happy ending for all you have endured, only to be slammed with the worst news ever. Big ((hugs)) to you and indeed you are not alone. Sending you much strength, peace and love from across the world. xo
Thank you for sharing your good news with us Cristina!
Wishing you much peace this season. xo
Hi everyone. It’s been 5 months and life is so terribly wrong without my daughter. I don’t cry as much but I’m down a lot. Had panic attacks for a while but now I just have a lot of stomach aches. My sleep is also messed up again too. Got some blood work done and they found nothing wrong as to why my body failed me and killed Victoria at the last minute.
I’ll take a HPT on Friday to see if things are moving along in that department. But honestly, I’ve already done that. As much as I loved it, I don’t want to be pregnant again. I just want the baby.
Anyway, just a vent. Glad things are well for you Cristina. And I’m so sorry to hear about Yuna and Trinity.
I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I’m sending this with love. Eboni
((hugs)) Eboni. I also had panic attacks after my son died. It felt like every single thing in the world could go wrong, and will go wrong. It sounds like you are still experiencing a lot of stress, take it easy and be gentle with yourself!
I hear you about wanting the baby, but not the pregnancy, it is so stressful!
Hang in there, love to you.
Janis
Hi thanks for that Janis and Ebony. Oh Ebony i know exactly how you feel. Its been more than 3 and a half mnths since Trinity was taken from me. I totally undastand how you say your body failed and killed your baby, i blame my body all the time and get angry at myself. I feel i should of been able to protect him as his mother. I hope you have all the support you need with you. My partner and family are there but its like i suffer alone. I constantly pine for him while evrybody else moves on like he wasnt evan there. I want my baby back more than anything id give anything. I picture him being with my brother and that comforts me that they have eachother. I need another baby, im in limbo until i give birth to a baby that actually looks up at me. I know pregnancy will be so very hard but i can not deal with my grief if i have nothing to look forward to. All my love and sympythy to all of you. We will hold our babies again one day. Xoxo
Hello,
On November 14th 2010 our world turned into a horrific nightmare when we lost our daughter, Mia Bella. She was born silently with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around her little neck–twice. I can still hear the doctors words in my ears. Mia was doing flips in my womb only 24 hours before. How could she be gone?!? The last ultrasound and stress test was 2 days before and everything was fine. She was to be born in just 2 weeks.
Mia is the first baby born into the family in 11 years. She is also the first girl in the entire family. My mother has waited for a granddaughter for 21 years. Don’t get me wrong she does love all of her grandsons very much. She just figured that a little girl would be great amongst all the testosterone! We all were anxiously waiting for this little angels arrival. Now what am I to say? My poor husband. He was ready to have a “daddy’s little girl” right by our side. He wanted to spoil her rotten too. I would have my work cut out for me by these two! I was so ready to conquer that challenge. Now it is was all gone.
We were robbed of her in such a cruel manner. We all had fallen deeply in love with this little person inside my womb without seeing her. I knew the hours in which she was very active(I truly believed that she was actively practicing kickboxing inside). My oldest son had download over 100 classical songs onto my Ipod and purchased earphones to put around my belly so Mia could hear. I even know which song drove her crazy! Why?
How can it all be so final? Gone… just in a blink of an eye? Did I miss something? Did I not take care of myself? Did I do something to cause her to flip and move around so much as to have her entangle herself around the umbilical cord the way she did? Why didn’t I pay more attention to her “active” time. It doesn’t matter that she was most active in the wee hours of the morning. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, I AM HER MOTHER AFTER ALL!!! THAT IS WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO AND I FAILED. Maybe I could have saved her….just maybe. I torture myself with that thought often. My brain knows that I did do everything that I was supposed to do. However my heart doesn’t seem to agree.
There was three of us on the way to the hospital. Now only two of us were going home. It is not natural to leave the maternity ward without your baby in your arms. It is just plain cruel.
Even though the hospital is 15 min from home, it was the longest drive my husband and I ever had. We were numb. To make things worse we had to take care of our little girl’s funeral arrangements. We never had to do those kinds of things before. What you say? A plot?!? Where? I don’t know of any cemeteries! What? What kind of flowers should be ordered? Are you f%&#! kidding me? Who gives a damn!! What is my Mia going to wear? Well I do not have anything but pajamas for her. Now you are you telling me that I must to go to the mall, with so many babies around, and look for an outfit for an infant that won’t get the chance to spit up on it?!?
Society teaches us that we are to bury our elderly and we may even pray for death if we have any loved ones who are suffering from a horrible sickness. BUT NO ONE TELLS US ABOUT OUR BABIES! We are NOT supposed to make any FINAL arrangement for our babies. Our children are supposed to bury us–the parents! It is all unreal. I cannot wait till pain is gone. I don’t want to forget my daughter just the intense sorrow and heartache. Of course having a room with an empty crib and a closet full of pajamas for a little one does not help the healing process.
I must pass Mia’s room everyday several times a day. I constantly think about the time the family spent on picking out the “right” furniture, the “right” bedding, the “right” paint color….. what now? My heart aches for her so much that I put the little pajamas that she had in the hospital on a pillow next to me and I sleep with it. I sometimes hug the pillow and pajama and imagine that I am hugging my little girl. I can then fall asleep.
She would now be 8 weeks old. I try to picture what she would look like now, how big she would be and what color would her eyes be. I truly miss this child. I was so ready to be the mother of a little girl. I was ready to empty my husband’s wallet on all things “girly”! The funny thing is that before all this, I TRULY hated pink. By the time Mia was born I had learned the SOME pink is not that bad! Now I like lavender too.
I found this site just by accident—–or maybe it was fate, I don’ know. I need to communicate with someone that had gone through what we had gone through. I am tired of talking to people who don’t get “it”. We even had someone tell us that they will come over and clear out our baby’s room. We know that their heart was in the right place but to me I heard felt as if this person was trying to erase everything about my baby. She was born. So what that she did not cry. She didn’t have to. I want everyone to know that she was here and to my husband and I she still is. She is not to be erased! Of course those who have not been in the same situation cannot grab this concept. To be honest I don’t want them to. Too much pain.
The holidays made the pain worse. For the first time ever I am so glad that they are gone. I hate 2010. Maybe some day I won’t hate it after all my baby was born in 2010.
I take it day by day now. On some days minute by minute. I sometimes talk about her without crying. However sometimes all I do is cry. I remember when I first smiled after my daughter’s demise. I felt guilty. Now I can smile without it being so painful. I know that I am getting better. I have too my other children need me. My daughter would not like me to fall apart. I like to think that she would like the family to have some happiness, it brings me comfort to do so.
Like many of you, I know that I must go on and I can survive this tragedy. I know that I am not alone. I truly hate that all of us have this awful nightmare in common. This is NOT how I wanted to make friends. For that I am truly sorry. I feel all you pain. I hope that this blog can give all of you some comfort like it has me. Thank you all for letting me have some time to let this out. This is the first time that I feel like someone is finally hearing me despite the fact that it IS just me and the computer!
My heart goes out to all of you.
Dear Rose,
Your Story Brought Tears To My Eyes, And Made Me Think Of The Time When I Felt That Low.
Its Been 1 Year And 1/2 Since I Lost My Daughter At 40 Weeks, But I Still Visit This Website To Give My Support To Those Who Have Gone Through The Horror Of Losing A Baby.
You May Have Already Read My Story Above, Like You I Was Shocked And Deeply Hurt When The Doctor Told Me That My Little Girl Lexi Was Gone. I Too Blamed Myself Or Tried To Think Of Some Reason Why She Died, But I Finally Realised There Was No Reason. The Post Morterm Came Back Unknown? How Did She Die And Why, No One Can Tell Me! So I Have Had To Move Forward And Accept This.
I Can Relate To Everything You Are Saying, People Who Have Not Been Through This Have No Idea, Words Like
“Maybe It Wasn’t Meant To Be” Hit You Like Why Wasn’t It Meant To Be, Did You Write The Book Of Life?
The Drive Home From The Hospital Felt Like A Dream, Looking At People Just Getting On With Life, Where As My World Felt Like It Had Shattered.
I Had Good Support From My Mum, And I Know How Hard It Was For Her, She Couldnt Help The Pain, She Had No Idea How I Felt. She Encouraged Me To Pack Lexi’s Clothes And Stuff Away And Helped Me To Get Out The House As I Could Of Stayed In That Bed All Day.
My Boyfriend Didn’t Have A Clue How To Make It All Better, But I Sort Of Forgot, It Was His Little Girl To And He Was Hurting, But Im Her Mother I Failed To Protect Her.
I Now Have A 6 Month Old Son, I Had Him 14 Months After Losing Lexi, I Wanted A Baby So Much, I Was Obsessed. I Still Miss My Little Girl And Crave For Her To Be Here, But I Have To Feel Blessed The Spirit Of Her Remains In The Eyes Of My Boy.
Hope Is Out There And Your Day Will Come, Im Sorry For Your Loss And Hope You Will Find Happiness Soon.
All The Best
Louise
Thank you everybody for sharing your stories…I am so sorry for your losses and I feel joy and hope in those who share their stories of having healthy babies after a loss.
I recently had a still born on February 24, 2011 at 12:41pm (20.5 weeks gestational age). It has been 2 weeks and I am crying everyday..I have not been to the follow-up appointment yet so I have no cause as of yet. When talking to the doctor on that tragic day, she said that the baby appeared healthy. His heart had been beating for a long time after they had induced labor. She said the cause was “environmental” and mentioned possibly a cerclage when I am pregnant again.
I am so completely heartbroken and never imagined that this would happen. Everything had been absolutely perfect up until that night. I keep thinking if only I had gotten to the hospital sooner..maybe they could have stopped the labor and everything would have been fine. Now I fluctuate from profound sadness to just wanting to be pregnant as soon as I am able. I constantly read on this topic…it consumes my waking moments when I am not crying.
I was interested in the Dr. Collins who suggests fetal monitoring in third trimester. I totally agree…even though I never got to the third trimester…I think that they should be checking women more thoroughly throughout pregnancy. I had two ultrasounds but all of my other appointments were so short non-comprehensive. Stand on the scale, take my blood pressure and ask how I am doing. Never once did anyone measure my cervix to see if it was prematurely dilating (which is most likely what happened from talking to the doctor). This was my first child so how were they to know that this WAS NOT going to be an issue. Sorry for ranting…I guess I am feeling a bit of anger at the moment…
All of your stories of hope bring hope to me. Thank you:) I am inspired to read and learn everything I can so that I know as much or more than the doctors. I am going to advocate for myself when I am pregnant again which I think or hope will lessen my anxiety and increase the chances of delivering a full-term healthy baby.
Dear Nicole,
I am truly sorry to hear about you and your baby. I do know what you are feeling. You are going to cry and probably for long time. I still am crying for my daughter Mia Bella. The only difference now is that it is not always everyday or even every other day now. I can now for the most part talk about her without becoming completely unglued.
You and your partner’s heart is so broken that you may feel that you will not recover—but you can and you will. But give yourselves time to feel, to think and most importantly to heal both inside and out. Don’t feel rushed. You are going to have “bad” days and “good” days. Sometimes more bad that good. That is okay. It is also okay to be mad–real mad! Let it all out! You need too, it hurts to much to hold it all in. Use all the kleenex that you need to– it doesn’t matter. Just let it all out. It may not be much but it does help even if it is a little. I wish I could just reach out and give you and all the others a huge hug. Sometimes that made me feel better for a little while.
Last week my youngest son had his birthday, a birthday that my daughter would never have. It was a bitter sweet day for me. Yesterday my baby would have been 4 months old. I was in a bad mood most of the day. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone. I now hate the 14th of everymonth. I probably will for a long time. I do understand that my husband and I will have very hard first year. Honestly I can’t wait because the pain can be so unbearable. I don’t want to forget her I just want to leave the heart break behind. But I am better than I was a month ago. Why does time seem to go by so slow in situations like this?
I want to say more to comfort you. All I can say is that we all EXACTLY KNOW YOUR PAIN. Your are not alone not ever.
I too wish that you had your little one by yourside. That is the way it is supposed to be. And remember to always call your child by their name. After all, your child was born.
I wish you and yours some much needed peace.
Rose
Nicole,
Thank you for responding to my post. I have been wanting to respond to you sooner but just couldn’t.
I am sorry that you too belong in this horrible “club”. But I am also so happy that you and your partner now have much joy in your life! He must be so precious.
I cannot wait till I do not hurt so much anymore. I just want to remember Mia Bella without all the tears. (I do believe that I should have purchased stock in kleenex!) I still have her room as it was. It probably will be that way for awhile. I cannot stand the thought of clearing it out.
My husband and I finally got to talking about having our fourth chilld. I do feel REAL guilty even thinking about it. It is almost as if I am trying to replace her. I surely don’t want to do that. But I am so in love with having a little one in my arms and around the house but mostly in my arms! 🙂 I’ll see what the next few months bring.
Again, thank you for responding. It made me feel good to your post. Wishing you much peace and happiness
Louise,
I am sorry but the above post with the face is for you. I was in deep in my thoughts that I was not paying attention. So sorry to have put the incorrect name. Thank you for your response.
Rose
Rose
Thats Ok We All Have Those Deep Thoughts Sometimes Lol
It’s Is So Completely Normal For You And Nicole Too Still Be Crying Over Your Babies, It Wasn’t Long Ago, Its Still So Raw And For Someone Grieving, It Still Feels Only Yesterday.
As I Said In Previous Comments Its Been 21 months Since I Buried My Daughter, I Cry Very Rarely( Certain Thoughts Can Make Me Teary Eyed And Emotional)
This Might Sound Harsh, But Im Being Completely Honest, I Don’t Think Of Her As Much Now Since I Have Had My Son. Only Certain Things I Hear Like Songs I Played To Myself When I Was Grieving Or Reading Other Peoples Stories Make Me Very Upset.
I Don’t Have The Time To Sit And Think As My Son Has Me On The Move 24/7.
I Can Tell People All About My Experince And Only Have A Slight Tear In My Eye, Its Feels To Me Like Im Telling A Story, But A Story That Has Happened To Someone But Not Me? Its Like A Dream.
Im Planning To Put Down A Headstone This Year, She Has A Decorated Grave With A Cross. But I Want To Make It Extra Special.
I Had The Most Bizzare Experience A Few Weeks Back, I Felt That Lexi Was There. I Was In The Kitchen In My Night Dress And Felt A Slight Tug And A Light Breeze At The Bottom Of My Night Dress, I Looked Down Expecting To See The Dog At My Feet, But No One Was There And Lexi Came Straight Into My Thoughts.
I Pictured Her Walking Around As She Would Have Been 20 Months, And Pulling On My Night Dress Calling Mummy.
It Was The Sweetest Thought Ever, Oh How I Wished It Was Real, Well I Believe She Was There In The Kitchen With Me 🙂
Well Thats Enough About My Bizzare Encounter Lol.
Have You Ever Listened To Songs When You Are Crying?
I Will Give You A Few That Helped Me, They Hold Memories For Me.
kristin chenoweth – Borrowed Angels
Celine Dion- Fly (This Is My Fav Song And Reminds Me Of My Angel)
x
Our little baby boy, Mateo was born asleep on April 9th (27 weeks & 2.5 lbs). I have two beautiful girls that were anxiously waiting for their baby brother. My pregnancy went smoothly, but on our regular check up our OB/GYN did not find a heartbeat. That night I was induced and after 24 hours our beautiful baby boy came out sleeping. We don’t know the exact cause of death. When I saw him he was perfect. I just couldn’t believe that he was gone. I thank God my husband and I were able to hold him. I told him how happy he made me for 6 months while inside of me and that I loved him. I am filled with so many emotions. I am angry, sad, helplessness, and guilt. My heart can’t stop crying for my baby boy. It has only been 5 weeks since we lost Mateo and I pray to God everyday that he gives my husband and I strength to continue for our two little girls.
Maryvel
Hey,
Been Very Emtional This Month, Im Missing My Baby Girl Like Crazy. Im already craving another child, thinking that if I had another little girl things would be better, but if I completely honest, its not having another child, its trying to get the one I lost back.
My son is now 10 months and I look at him and think how lucky I am to have this beautiful child, but I can’t help feeling like something is missing in my life, my little Lexi.
Her 2nd birthday is slowly approaching (12th June) I thinks thats why I am thinking so much of her, I can’t help crying.
Thought I would share my feelings with someone and Hey this is the best place as we all have mutal feeling regarding losing a child.
Time is a healer, but you never forget x
Hello Louise,
I am so sorry to hear that you have been so sad lately. It is understandable. I believe that you are a mother first no matter what else happens in your life. I do believe your little Lexi’s spirit is in your son. I believe that she helped guide him home to you, her mother. I bet if you sat still just for a moment or so, you will be able to feel her there with you, her little brother and the rest of her family. I believe this. I must.
Wishing you and eveyone much peace,
Rose
I just recently discovered this website. Hi. My name is Stephanie Tracy and I am an Angel Mommy. My son Zachary was born December 2010 at 10:17 a.m. and passed away at 10:44 a.m., just shortly after he was born. He was born at 30 weeks, 2 days. Throughout my pregnancy everything seemed to be fine until the 21 wk scan, the day we were so excited to find out what we were having. Everything was going great until we got that phone call that said they need to do another ultrasound to get a better look at the baby. They sent us to a specialist. They noticed that my son had a thick nucle fold and wanted to make sure it didn’t lead to something else, such as do
down syndrome, or any other kind of syndrome, Idk (Sorry about the second comment I have no idea why it sent when i wasn’t ready to submit my comment!)
At our 26 wk scan we found out that our son had fluid around his heart, lungs, and stomach. this is what they called Hydrops Fetalis. I was heartbroken when they said our baby might not make it. We kept going back for scan after scan just to make sure the fluid didn’t get worse, and it didn’t. In December I moved to Washington State because thats where my husband was getting stationed. Late that night, December 27th, I started having really bad cramps. I didn’t know if they were contractions or what. I never went into labor with my daughter, I had an emergency csection because there were a few minor complications there too. Anyway, the cramps just kept getting worse and worse, finally I went to the ER. They sent me up to labor and delivery and they monitored me for a few hours. Around 2 in the morning I was checked for the 3rd time to see how far dilated I was. I was 4 cm. They then transferred me to another hospital, there I was given an epidural and some other drugs to help slow down labor. Before I was transferred though they gave me the steroid shot to help develop Zach’s lungs. Their plan was to keep me pregnant as long as possible but my labor took a turn for the worst. I developed the mirror syndrome. My body was mirroring my son’s illness, My heart & Kidneys were beginning to fail and I had fluid on the lungs, My high risk team of at least 30 Doctors all came in at once to tell me that my son had to be delivered now and they didn’t know if it was to late or not. They explained everything to us and all I could say was okay. The csection was a success with no complications on my part. I never did get to hear my son cry. After the csection my body began to correct itself. We don’t know why our son developed Hydrops and we probably wont ever know…..The autopsy report shows that there was nothing wrong with him, he was perfect, (other than the fluid/hydrops and undeveloped lungs). It’s been 5 months today. I sure miss my son..
I am so sorry for your loss. It is very difficult to grasp the idea that your baby is doing well one moment and gone another. I try hard to think about the moments baby Mateo was inside of me kicking. However, it is difficult and I still ask myself WHY ME? I miss him so much and wish he was with me. To all you have experience such a loss, I send positive thoughts.
This was a touching story that brought me to tears for many reasons. I lost my first child, a son, 7 months ago at 39 weeks due to unexplained stillbirth. We’re trying to have another baby to make him a “big brother” and I’ve experienced another disappointing month of not conceiving. During these sad times I find some comfort in reading others stories and comments to know I’m not alone.
During my otherwise healthy and uneventful pregnancy my worst fear was having an emergency c-section. If only the pregnancy books and doctors could have prepared me for something of this magnitute to happen I guarantee it never would have. I certaintly would have questioned their authority more and sought out multiple opinions to compare their answers. I questioned my doctors if stillbirth was a possibility and I received dismissive answers that its very rare to occur and especially in an easy and low-risk pregnancy like the one I was experiencing. When we found out our son had passed, my husband’s first comment was I feel sorry for our next set of doctors and the insurance company because they will pay for every test imaginable for the next baby. It’s very sad to share in others stories on how their lost babies didn’t get the attention or care that a subsequent pregnancy after a loss receives.
My husband and I visit our son at his grave daily and I look forward to decorating his area for every holiday. I also belong to a support group that makes crafts for donations to hospital memory boxes. I miss him dearly. No matter how much it hurts the happiest day was when he was born and we finally got to hold him and see who he looked like. No matter how hard the loss is I’m grateful we had him and my heart breaks for women who are unable to conceive because they can’t experience the joy that I had being pregnant and continue to have by being his mother every day.
Melissa,
I am so sorry for your loss and my heart goes out to you and all the other mothers on this site. I too, lost my little girl last February 2010. My story is on this site. We had a perfect pregnancy and then out of nowhere there was no heartbeat and no cause. It was and still is the hardest thing my husband and I will ever go through. We were ready to start trying again right away-I just had to have that feeling again of a little baby growing and kicking inside of me- and everyone told me how you are the most fertile after being pregnant and I heard so many stories how people got pregnant within a month or two after a loss. We were not as fortunate and every month the pregnancy test came back negative it was another huge loss. We got pregnant with Anna so easily that I didn’t understand why we couldn’t get pregnant again. We weren’t even trying with Anna and now it became a chore. I bought books on fertility, charted my temperature, had the dr do lab work, etc. Then, someone told me about St. Gerard-he helps women get pregnant and protects expectant mothers. My husband and I prayed daily, twice a day, and I truly believe that is how we got our 2nd angel, Josephine. 6 months later we were pregnant! Instead of being excited and the innocence we had with Anna, it was a roller coaster the entire pregnancy. I was scared to get too excited and took it day by day. Your husband is right, you should and deserve extra care during your next pregnancy, we did. Our ob saw us weekly for peace of mind (that still didn’t feel like enough to me) and we saw a high risk dr every 4 weeks for growth ultrasounds and every 1-2 weeks during the last few weeks of pregnancy. Any time we had a concern we called or went into labor and delivery. I didn’t care if they thought I was annoying. I had to do everything I could to protect this baby. But ultimately, we had to leave it in God’s hands and keep praying. We had our precious Josephine 4 weeks ago and it still doesn’t feel completely real that everything worked out this time and that she is actually here. I think because I was so scared during the pregnancy with her, I never let myself enjoy the pregnancy and it really hit me hard during the first weeks of she was here. I know this is easier said than done, but when you get pregnant again, try to enjoy it as much as you can, because you deserve it and so does your baby. I still feel like things seem to be good to be true and worry about Josephine constantly. The innocence will never return but we are so blessed and you will be too!
I just want to Thank You for sharing your story with everyone… All I could do is cry reading your story… I lost my baby girl Nevaeh on Sep.10,2010. She was a stillborn at 37 weeks… Its indeed the harest thing I have had to deal with… I think of my babygirl every single day… I’m now 23 weeks pregnant and I’m happy but scared out of my mind… I just want everything to go well… All I do is hope and pray and play is hard watting game… The hardest thing is the doctors never found a cause of death… She was perfect in every way… But Thank You again for sharing your story… Always, Alyssa
First I want to say that I am thinking of you Louise on Lexi’s 2nd birthday. She is certainly not forgotten. I’m sending you lots of hugs, love, and peace today and hope you will let us know how you are doing when you can.
I have been reading all of the new stories and they’re all so sad. We’ve been dealth such a devastating blow and none of our lives will be the same. My story is above and I can honestly say, as I approach the 1 year mark next month, that it does get less painful over time. I can also say that there’s not a day that has gone by that I haven’t thought about Victoria. Some days are much harder than others. The tears flow a lot less for me now, but oh do they still come out of nowhere sometimes.
I appreciate your encouraging story Melissa because I am now 25 weeks pregnant. We call this baby Pebble until we meet him/her in September. Victoria didn’t have a name until after she was stillborn so that’s why we have a nickname this time. No it hasn’t been easy, but I am staying hopeful that my husband and I will get a happy ending this time.
Just take it one day at a time everyone. And allow yourself to smile or laugh or enjoy good times. It really does help and you are in no way betraying your son or daughter by doing so. I wish you all strength and peace.
Happy second Birthday Lexi. And a Happy Birthday to all the angels we have in our lives too.
Thank you all for visiting here, sharing and offering love support and consolation to others. I apologize for being absent here as my family just moved cross-country and it had been all craziness the last couple of months, and will continue to be so for the next months. I apologize for not responding immediately, but all your comments come straight into my mailbox, and I read them all, and send out my thoughts to you, I just haven’t been able to get online and type. My heart is with you all, and all your sweet babies.
Awww Hi Guys,
Thank You For Thinking Of Me On Lexi’s Birthday, We Went Cemetery And Sung Happy Birthday And Released Balloons Into The Sky. Was A Special Day.
Omg I Can’t Believe What I Read Above, Cams, Congrats, Im So Happy For You. It Was Just A Little While We Were Talking And I Was Discussing With You The Extra Care You Get After A Loss. Don’t Time Fly, My Son Is 1 Next Month And I Am Gonna Throw Him A Party Because He Means the World To Me x
Will Catch Up Soon
Louise (Sending All My Love And Prayers To All The Angel Mums)
Thinking of you all, this pain is truly something I never expected to experience in my life.
We lost our beautiful little girl Willow almost a month ago on may 21 2011, at 34 weeks. I still just can’t believe it.
Anyway, I just wanted to say I was thinking of you all and that reading other people’s stories really does help me get through the day.
Lots of love
Annette
Xxoo
Hello fellow members of a club we never planned on joining,
I have read all of your posts and I hate to say this but they do offer me some kind of peace that I am not alone in this pain. My daughter Gemma Love was born still and perfect on May 24th 2011 at 5:13 pm. She was exactly 40 weeks. I had a good pregnancy for the most part. I was very nauseous and had to take zofran the entire pregnancy. I also was a “spitter” and had to carry a cup with me everywhere to spit my excess saliva in. Now of course I regret ever complaining about these symptoms and would go back in a second if she was still alive and inside me. So many of your words are exact thoughts and things I have said this past month. I had begun labor the week before but being my first pregnancy I was unsure. I called my doula and she said that it sounded like early labor. I called my mom and she planned on flying out the next day. I am single and conceived Gemma with a donor through iui. I am over 40 and was sick of having Relationship after relationship fall apart over the subject of children. I had been married once for 8 years but we were too young and not compatibile. I wanted a baby so badly that I was willing to brave it alone. My family was super supportive because they knew how badly I wanted to be a mom. I did everything and read everything to get pregnant and conceived her on my 3rd try. I was very cautious the first 5 months. Each hurdle we passed I wouldn’t celebrate because it seemed to be another one around the corner. I wouldn’t buy her anything until I was 6 months and then it was only a stuffed polar bear. At 7 months I started to feel like I could breathe and was getting excited to meet her. I sang to her every night since it was just the two of us. Things started to get stressful. Both of my dogs got sick and I had to put them down 5 weeks apart. They were both old and clearly didn’t want to live without each other. In between these passings my mom had to have a hysterectomy for uterine cancer. It seemed so crazy but I tried to stay calm for Gemma. When my mom got a clean bill of health I thought ok that’s 3 so we can relax now. I left my job in early may and had my baby shower knowing she was weeks away. My friend had me apply for the Ellen degeneres new mom show and I got on. They gave all the moms in the audience tons of stuff for free. It was a windfall and my apartment looked like I had robbed a baby store. Kinks had everything and was waiting for my girl. After my labor had begun I went to my ob and he said I was not dilated at all and then instead of a nst they did an ultra sound. Her heartbeat was good and she was sucking on her fingers like she always was. I wonder if her hand Wasn’t in the way if we would have seethe cord around her neck then. He sent me home and said If. Don’t see you this weekend come back on Monday. The next few days my labor subsided. I had a friend draw me pregnant and happy. (it now feels like I will never be that happy again) on Sunday my labor started up again. After lunch Gemma was kicking me like crazy. I even taped it on my cell phone. I called my doula and she said it sounded like I was back in labor but still early since there was no pattern to my contractions. I wish I had gone to the hospital so badly. Maybe she would still be here. I hate that video so much. It’s so painful to think my baby was in duress and I did NOTHING. The next am I went to the ob and he checked me and said I was only dialated 1cm. Then he asked if I wanted an ultra sound and I said yes. When she put it on me I knew instantly and said there is no heartbeat! My dr came in and turned white. He grabbed the Doppler and frantically began looking for the heartbeat. I wailed. He said no plead no. My ob has been my. For 8 years and wanted this so badly for me. The next few hours are a fog. They began to induce me and I delivered her the following day. She was 7lbs 11 oz and 22″ long and perfect in every way. The cord had been around her neck 3 times and nice under her arm. I lost everything that day. I gave up on love to just have my child. I gave up everything for her. I just wanted her. Now everyday is a struggle to wake up. I don’t believe there is any reason god or whomever should take a perfect child. Now I am planning a memorial for her. Now she is in an urn instead of my arms. Now I am moving home to my parents because I can’t handle staying here without her all alone. This is the greatest paini have ever known and I hate that all of you know it too. I am desperate to try again using her same donor. I hate having to wait a few months to heal. I want her sibling so badly. Maybe then I can get to know her a little more than what I do know of her. I know each child is different but even just a little bit would help. I made an appt for September to come back and see my dr’s and start to try again. I want to honor Gemma but time is not on my side so I have to try as soon as I can. I haven’t been able to journal yet but just typing this to all of you is my first step in getting it into written word.
I send all of you that are here and all of you to come my love and deep condolences. Our losses are profound but may we find solace in one another.
Carrie
Hello fellow members of a club we never planned on joining,
I have read all of your posts and I hate to say this but they do offer me some kind of peace that I am not alone in this pain. My daughter Gemma Love was born still and perfect on May 24th 2011 at 5:13 pm. She was exactly 40 weeks. I had a good pregnancy for the most part. I was very nauseous and had to take zofran the entire pregnancy. I also was a “spitter” and had to carry a cup with me everywhere to spit my excess saliva in. Now of course I regret ever complaining about these symptoms and would go back in a second if she was still alive and inside me. So many of your words are exact thoughts and things I have said this past month. I had begun labor the week before but being my first pregnancy I was unsure. I called my doula and she said that it sounded like early labor. I called my mom and she planned on flying out the next day. I am single and conceived Gemma with a donor through iui. I am over 40 and was sick of having Relationship after relationship fall apart over the subject of children. I had been married once for 8 years but we were too young and not compatibile. I wanted a baby so badly that I was willing to brave it alone. My family was super supportive because they knew how badly I wanted to be a mom. I did everything and read everything to get pregnant and conceived her on my 3rd try. I was very cautious the first 5 months. Each hurdle we passed I wouldn’t celebrate because it seemed to be another one around the corner. I wouldn’t buy her anything until I was 6 months and then it was only a stuffed polar bear. At 7 months I started to feel like I could breathe and was getting excited to meet her. I sang to her every night since it was just the two of us. Things started to get stressful. Both of my dogs got sick and I had to put them down 5 weeks apart. They were both old and clearly didn’t want to live without each other. In between these passings my mom had to have a hysterectomy for uterine cancer. It seemed so crazy but I tried to stay calm for Gemma. When my mom got a clean bill of health I thought ok that’s 3 so we can relax now. I left my job in early may and had my baby shower knowing she was weeks away. My friend had me apply for the Ellen degeneres new mom show and I got on. They gave all the moms in the audience tons of stuff for free. It was a windfall and my apartment looked like I had robbed a baby store. Now I had everything and was waiting for my girl. After my labor had begun I went to my ob and he said I was not dilated at all and then instead of a nst they did an ultra sound. Her heartbeat was good and she was sucking on her fingers like she always was. I wonder if her hand Wasn’t in the way if we would have seen the cord around her neck then. He sent me home and said If. Don’t see you this weekend come back on Monday. The next few days my labor subsided. I had a friend draw me pregnant and happy. (it now feels like I will never be that happy again) on Sunday my labor started up again. After lunch Gemma was kicking me like crazy. I even taped it on my cell phone. I called my doula and she said it sounded like I was back in labor but still early since there was no pattern to my contractions. I wish I had gone to the hospital so badly. Maybe she would still be here. I hate that video so much. It’s so painful to think my baby was in duress and I did NOTHING. The next am I went to the ob and he checked me and said I was only dialated 1cm. Then he asked if I wanted an ultra sound and I said yes. When she put it on me I knew instantly and said there is no heartbeat! My dr came in and turned white. He grabbed the Doppler and frantically began looking for the heartbeat. I wailed. He said no plead no. My ob has been my. For 8 years and wanted this so badly for me. The next few hours are a fog. They began to induce me and I delivered her the following day. She was 7lbs 11 oz and 22″ long and perfect in every way. The cord had been around her neck 3 times and wrapped under her arm. I lost everything that day. I gave up on love to just have my child. I gave up everything for her. I just wanted her. Now everyday is a struggle to wake up. I don’t believe there is any reason god or whomever should take a perfect child. Now I am planning a memorial for her. Now she is in an urn instead of my arms. Now I am moving home to my parents because I can’t handle staying here without her all alone. This is the greatest pain I have ever known and I hate that all of you know it too. I am desperate to try again using her same donor. I dread having to wait a few months to heal. I want her sibling so badly. Maybe then I can get to know her a little more than what I do know of her. I know each child is different but even just a little bit would help. I made an appt for September to come back and see my dr’s and start to try again. I want to honor Gemma but time is not on my side so I have to try as soon as I can. I haven’t been able to journal yet but just typing this to all of you is my first step in getting it into written word.
I send all of you that are here and all of you to come my love and deep condolences. Our losses are profound but may we find solace in one another.
Carrie
Carrie,
I am so sorry that you too know such pain. I hope and pray that you find comfort and peace in the arms of your family. You may have to take it day by day sometimes minute by minute. Do allow yourself this time, you need it. You do need to heal both physically and emotionally for the months to come. I know that your Gemma is a beautiful girl and that she is always with you one way or another. So be kind to yourself. I wish you and all the others well.
Rose
I am 19 and on January 28th 2011 I gave birth via c-section to my baby girl Eva at 8:45 am. She was 9lbs 6oz and 39 weeks along. I can’t speak of it, I can barely think of it …. But it is getting better. I find myself so “baby crazed” now. I want another so bad, but I don’t understand why. Truthfully, I’d rather have her back with me but that isn’t a reason to have another…. I’d feel so guilty being pregnant again, I’d feel like I would be betraying my girl. Everything was so ready for her, I was ready…. my boyfriend was ready. When I was 39 weeks I went for my weekly check-up only to find that the doctor could not find her heartbeat. Naturally I panicked, I knew something was wrong all along. For a couple of days I wasn’t feeling her move and I called the hospital only to be told that I should wait 48 hours. I’ve been to the horspital dozens of times during my pregnancy while everything was fine with me, I pushed the nagging feeling in my stomach away…. I thought it was just another episode of me benig a hypochondriac. I am heartbroken that I did nothing while she was passing away… I can’t even type it…. I miss her so much, I miss her rolling around in my tummy. This is a terrible thing to go through, I cannot type anymore.
Jamara.
Jamara, I Was 19 Like You When My Daughter Was Stillborn At 40 Weeks, I To Couldn’t Believe It Happened.
I Totally Understand You Wanting Another Baby, I Was “obsessed” With Getting Pregnant Again. I Believe Its Because You Have All These Feelings Of Love Towards Your Baby, But Your Baby Is Gone. Also You Have “empty arms”, All that Excitement Of Having A Baby Turned Into A Nightmare.
Read More About My Story Above, If You Ever Want To Talk I Am About, Im Now 21 And Have A Son Who Is 1. I Had My Daughter Lexi (Stillborn) on 12th June 2009, I Still Can Remember It Like Yesterday.
All My Love Louise x
Jamara, big ((hugs)) to you. I wish you have Eva with you. I do not understand either, and I don’t think I ever will. It all seems random and cruel.
We found out today four years ago that Ferdinand no longer had a heartbeat. It is still like yesterday and though some days it almost feels like a distant memory, the pain is still close at heart. I think eventually we all heal to a certain extent but it sure takes time.
I hope you are having some good support around you. Take good care, much love to you.
Janis
Reading everybody’s stories of loss is making me see I am not alone…Delaney Marie was born at 11:28 on May 2nd, 2011…April 29th will forever be etched into my heart as the worst day of my life…the day they told me my little girl’s heart was no longer beating…It started off as a joyous day watching Prince William and Kate getting married and I knew I was going for my 22 week ultrasound later that morning…My husband and I thought that we were feeling my little girl’s kicks for the first time on the outside that day as well (later to only find out it was muscle spasms) After Delaney was born “sleeping” the doctor would tell me that the baby’s cord was twisted in 3 different places and later we would find out that she was missing an atery in her cord as well…it’s been almost 6 months and like some of the other moms I feel baby-crazed and hopefully this month is the month I will find out that I am pregnant again…but why all of a sudden I feel overwhelmed with fear…when would I tell everone? Do I keep it to myself for as long as possible( I am on the heavier side so that would give me maybe 6 months)…I am tired of telling everyone that I am having a rough day and I wish that people knew how I was feeling…sometimes I just wanna scream and hit something so hard that it would stop this crushing pain in my heart…thank god I have 3 other children (all boys) to help me make it through the day…
hi,
i was 39weeks on the dot when i started geting pains we went to the hospital and they sed everyting was fine few hrs later they ruch me to the next hospital i found myself just beggieng for there not to be something wrong few hrs later we hear our first child Aiden Juan (A.J) has no heart beat 16hrs later i gave normal birth to him holding that liveless body was my worst nightmare i did everyting right but still i lost him the hospital never let my husband hold his child that was the worst for me he lookd just like his dad yet he wasnt gona go hame with us wow 30march 2011 will always be the worst day in my life and now we are strugling to fall pregnant again 😥
Nadia,
I am so sorry about Aiden Juan. I feel terrible that the hospital was not supportive and did not let your husband have the opportunity to hold your baby. I wish you and your husband peace in healing and hope you get good news soon. Take care, Janis
thanks hun yes we had gone tru hel the last 10 monthes but the gini sed that we are ready to have a nother baby well that is my bigist wish now. it will not make my pain and grief for A.j any less but it will hopefully make me feel like i am a mother.
Nadia,
I know how you feel. But remember that you are already a mother. The grief will always be there but hopefully the pain will feel less over time. It truly is a roller coaster ride, I wish up more ups than downs. ~ Janis
thanks i will keep in touch with you it feels so awsome to share a lil of my pain with somebody who knows how i feel. A.j is my lil angel realy i miss him so mutch but i belive that he will look over me and his dady and be proud of how far we have come since his birth
Marie,
So sorry for all of your losses. I too know how you feel, I was 18 weeks preaganant when I found out that my beatiful babby boy had passed away in my wom, i was having a routine ultrasound, happy, thinking that I was going to find out his sex. There was no heartbeat and I was told that he had been death a few days before that. The 19th was my fathers death aniversary and I was counting on good news. I too had to be hospitalized and induced to deliver a dead baby. My heart aches every miniute of my day (Januaray 21 will make a month that my baby died. My named him Joseph Samuel as he was born around Christmas time. I have three other healthy children who I have to be there for. My baby died of cord injury. Too affraid to get pregant again as I’m age 42. I can’t stop crying over my baby’s loss. Please keep me and all of you in our prayers so that God can gives us strenght and confort. I pray for all of you.
hi all hope you are well we are in month 2 of trying to have a new baby everybody tels me to not think about it but it is all that i can think of i just want my own bundel of joy living breathing and at home i need your advice please and what makes it worse is that a.j would be turning 1 in march 2012
Dear Marie,
thank you for sharing your story here. I am so sorry to hear of the trauma and heartbreak you had to go through. I think one of the worst things in my life was being induced to deliver a baby who will not cry. Thinking of you and Joseph Samuel tomorrow, as you mark one month into this journey. It is truly hard and will have ups and downs, I wish that you find comfort and support.
take care,
Janis
Hi Nadia,
trying again after a bay has died is really stressful, and then there is this complicated web of grief and hope to deal with. You can try first to speak with your OB/GYN and see what he says and he may give further recommendations from there. No true advice but I can acknowledge I know how you feel, that feverish urge to hold and love somebody small that is a part of you and your loved one.
Hang in there,
Janis
HI,
thanks we went to the gyn 19 des 2011 he sed that we can try he has me on a pil but ya as you sa emotionaly its a mess realy and in S.A stil birth is not someting to talk about and nobody around me wants to talk about him so ya its very hard but we will make it
today i am a mess i miss him alot and some friend are so crule i feel like why can a unmaried girl get a 2end baby she barly can look after the first one and i had to loose my lil boy its tearing me apart realy i wish i had my lil aj all the time maybe this is not the place for me now 😦
Nadia: I am sorry you are experiencing a difficult and challenging day. We all have that, and we all have questions why me? The world does not make sense sometimes and at times I don’t think it ever will, we just need to keep faith and do our best. Hope your spirits lift soon.
Janis
Hi my name is Lisa, i had a stillborn baby on the 20th of feb 2008 at 32 weeks, everything was fine until i woke up one morning and didn’t feel any movement, we rushed to the hospital, the midwife couldn’t find a heart beat and sent me for a scan, the women told me my baby had passed away, it was like being in a nightmare that you cannot wake up from. The midwife gave me a tablet to prepare my body for labour, and then i had to wait 3 days intil they induced me, after a painful labour my beautiful daughter Jessica was born weighting 4lb 3oz’s she had a true knot in the cord and its was also wrapped around he neck. We buried her a week later in a family grave with her grand parents. There isnt a day goes by that i dont think about her, i miss her so much it hurts. 3 months after Lossing Jessica i found out i was pregnant again, i was so ill all the way through with worry even though i was told what happened wouldn’t happen again, it was a freak accident, and cord accidents arent down to genetics, and plus im lucky enough to have 3 healthy children, they sent me for extra scans and the midwifes came to my house every morning to listen to the heart beat, finally 37 weeks came and the induced me and Luke was born weighing 6lb’s 12 oz’s he was born in 20 minuites so was blue and had low blood sugar levels so had to stay in for a week, but other then that he was perfect!! Luke has now turned 4 and i count my self ver blessed to have 4 beautiful healthy children, and there is light at the end ofthe tunnel!!!
just to give everyone a positive message 2 of my friends had stillborn babys, one due to slapped cheek illness and one causes unknow and both went on to have healthy children, one has has 2, so it is very likley that you will havea healthy baby too 🙂
The way i cope with day to day is that i talk about her all the time, i have a cupboard with her picture on and things i get each timei go on holiday and christmas’s ect, i even talk her photo on holiday with us and place her photo on the christmas table, that way i alway feel that she is with me and a part of the family no matter where she is and her brothers and sister know who she is and that they have a sister, i find this a big comfort and when people ask how may children i have i say 5 but i lost one, Jessica might not be here in person but she is and alway will be a big part of our family xxx 🙂
the only time i can talk about aj is when i am alone with my husband it is as if other ppl just dont want to hear about my aj
hi,
still no luck with geting pregnant again 😦 not where i want to be at this moment but ya
We lost our baby boy Cutu to a cord accident when I was 35 weeks pregnant on nov 10, 2011. He is my first baby and I did it all that a good mother does – set up the nursery, booked the day care, breastfeeding classes, labor coaching classes, and everything under the sun. However, I could not keep stress down. Sometimes I believe even happiness could be so overwhelming! I use to be a soo estatic, Like a totally different person. I shopped really hard to get the best products in our nursery! So like many moms, I tried to take my lesson from what happened. I miss my baby so much. Even if I had an anterior placenta, I felt him move from 14th week itself and we bonded so well. I had a talk with other moms who had a similar situation and I learnt for them all, the day it happened was super stressful. So, the only thing I learnt was, to have a calm mind and lower ones level of activity. I mean everyone is different. Its good to accept that and not to start something new while u are pregnant. I was also working full-time. May be its best to leave work after 28 weeks and sit at home as in old days. Or better still to go and live at your mom’s place or have your mom come over, if she can. Something like a pregnancy vacation! Even day to day chores can be stressful. I read a research about a certain Dr. Hobel in LA who has provided a check list to gauge the stress level. Even before stress starts showing up in medical tests as pre-clampsia, it affects us in a much bigger way
(http://www.consciousparentingguide.com/PREGNANCY_files/Stress%20%26%20Pregnancy,%20Fetal%20Affects,%20on%20MedicineNet.com.pdf). Does anyone know this doctor? Any thoughts on that?
Also, I wonder if I can get Dr. Collins contact info. I tried all possible phone numbers, but no luck. this blog has been really useful, since I never believed my doctor that cord accidents are rare and cannot happen to someone again. Thank you so much, Janistan.
Chinu, I am so sorry about your baby boy Cutu. Preparing for a first baby is full of joy, and as you said, can bring upon some stress as well. But please do not fault yourself for the cord accident. We all experience levels of stress during pregnancy, sometimes even despite taking all forms of measures against it. We can do everything right and yet have everything go wrong. It sure is hard to find security and faith in intentions after something so tragic like this happens.
I do not have any telephone numbers for you, but it sounds like you have a good direction to go with. I wish you peace as you continue on your journey. Please feel free to check in anytime you need support.
Janis
What horrible statistics in the article. Do I really have less than 25% chance of having a healthy baby next? A 44% chance of miscarriage? 5x more likely for this nightmare to happen again?!
We just lost our baby girl, Ruby Jayne, on February 13, 2012. Her due date was Feb. 26 (I was 38 weeks pregnant), and I always hoped I might have a leap year baby, born today. We have no explanation, but are still waiting for the pathology report to come back from the placenta.
I have been looking for answers, for encouragement, for support, but reading these statistics have broken my heart all over again.
My baby Ruby Jayne was 6 pounds, 10 ounces, exactly the same size as our best friend’s healthy baby just born two weeks before.
I am shattered and broken and this just makes me feel like it is totally hopeless to try again, like I am somehow terribly flawed.
Sara please never give up we lost our aiden almost a year ago on 39weeks and we are strugeling to fall pregnant again the answer is NEVER GIVE UP NOMATER WHAT PPL SAY
s
Sara,
I am sorry that the statistics were painful to read. It really is a hard thing to do after your baby has died.
I must say after being on the other side of the statistics, I do not really believe in the good statistics anymore either. When people say most babies are born healthy, I always thought, well, I was in that low 1% (or whatever that number may be), reading about the number of stillbirths that occur daily made me want to throw the book I was reading (which was about trying again after a babyloss) into the fireplace … it can be hard to continue to bear hope and try again. I hope you will find the peace, hope and strength to do so again. Life truly is a series of risks, and hopefully we all come up better against the chances.
Thinking of Ruby Jayne and sending you much peace
Janis
I have spent all day reading the different stories and thought I’d share mine. I found out I was pregnant with my daughter Olivia in october 2010 a week after my husband left for training for a deployment. My entire pregnancy went great just minor problems with back pain. My husband came home on friday june 3 2011 for the birth of his 1st daughter. we spent the weekend visiting family since he was home on leave. I was still feeling her move on Sunday June 5 which was my sons 2nd birthday. I was scheduled for a dr’s appt and a hospital visit to induce and try to turn her on June 6th. I went in for my dr’s appt at 10:00am on june 6, 2011. At 3cm dilated he sent me to the hospital. After I got to the hospital they were hooking me up to all the machines to monitor the baby and my contractions and spent 30 min rotating nurses trying to find the heartbeat. The finally called the dr to come check using the portable ultrasound machine. He confirmed that there was no fetal movement and no heart beat. My husband and I were devistated. he took me downstairs to “double check” in the ultrasound room of the hospital. same results. Even though the baby was breach he told me I would be delivering Olivia naturally. I agreed. My husband went upstairs and told his mother who was also in the hospital with complications with MS. I delivered Olivia at 420 on june 6, a beautiful baby girl that we both knew we couldn’t take home with us. As soon as I delivered the dr found the cord was wrapped tightly around her throat. They later found out it was around 3 times. I am thankful for the military unit my husband was with for giving my husband some extra time at home before he had to return to the deployment. No amount of time will ever heal the heartbreak my husband and I felt that day. Today I am 19 weeks pregnant with another baby boy. I pray everyday everything works out with this pregnancy and we are able to bring our baby boy home. One day my husband and I may try again for a little girl but we are undecided at this point. This pregnancy has been scary I started bleeding at 10 weeks and FINALLY stopped at 13 weeks with no reason or explanation as to why it happened. As of now he is a healthy steadily growing baby boy 🙂
Hello
Im Tarni I turned 24 on the 24th Feb, on the 25th Feb 2012 at 0200 I gave birth to my first child Ava Madison she was 41 weeks and Stillborn, weighed 7lbs 4 and was 52cm long. The last time i heard my daughters sweet heartbeat was at 39 weeks 2 days. It was 145 and as i walked out of my GPs office he said “next time i see you, ill meet your lil baby”. That turned out to be anything but the truth. The day after my appointment I felt that she had slowed down a bit, her big kicks turned into smaller popping movements and i was a little concerend but nothing really worried me as I was only 4 days till my due date and everyone told me babies slow down before they are born. I got a cold drink and could count 8 kicks in 40min so i was pretty happy she had simply run out of room. My due day came and went and I had an appointment at 40 + 4 to see the Obstetritian and book an induction for 40 + 10 which is hospital policy. The night before my 40 + 4 appointment i said to my fiance that i was super anxious about the appointment and i felt something was going a bit wrong but couldnt put my finger on it. That morning i woke up at 4am and my fiances father who died when he was only 10mnths old popped into my head and i whispered to him ” i dont know why iam saying this but please make sure my aby is ok”. That day at the appointment my world ended. Everything i had dreamed and planned over the past 9months shattered into thousands of tiny pieces of glass and each tiny piece cut through my heart and killed me over and over again. The dopler didnt pick up a heart beat and being a nurse I knew then that my fears were real, i coudlnt look at the ultrasound screen and when i finally said Ïts not good is it”and the ultrasound man looked at me and shook his head I knew my little darling girl had died. I jumped off the table and started screaming out i didnt think i was breathing at one point i felt like although i was yelling out ÖMG how did this happen, whats going on im scared, they just stared at me and my fiance with this sad face and i think my mind blacked the rest out to protect me from going mad. We went home because i started pacing the ultrasound room and started screaming and asking for a cesarean after being told no i ran out of the room and said id come back another day. I think that being a nurse knowing that it was all going wrong and knowing what its like to be on their side of the situation made it so much worse. We went home and tried to process it, we cried and hugged my mum and sister were there and helped us. At 11 the next day we went to maternity and got spoken to by all sorts of people. at 1am on the 24th feb (my birthday) i was given the gel to induce me, at 630 my waters broke on their own gushing out and the tears gushed out too i was devastated that i was in labor and i wasnt going to get to take her home. I got an epidural at 11am and by 5pm i was only 2cm. I was delerious i hadnt slept in days hadnt eaten in days my family were taking turns trying to be there for me but we were all like zombies. By 9pm (4hrs later) i was 10cm to everyones surprise and i started pushing at midnight she was born sleeping at 2am. They arnt sure if it was because she was stillborn but her sholders got stuck and it was a massive ordeal to get her out. They warned me that next time i may need a Cesarean to avoid this complication again adn that if i did go to natural labor id have to hurry to hospital as 4hrs to go from 2cm to 10 with an epidural is huge and id risk having bub on the bathroom floor if we labored at home. Because i dialted so fast my epidural was a complete waste and i felt everthing. Yes it hurt soo bad, worse then i ever imagined but Iam so thankful it didnt work. Iam so honored to have felt every inch of pain Being able to feel myself giving birth to her is the greatest experience of my life iam so honored to have had the opportunity to do that. I love my little girl so much and every day is a struggle. I am glad I found this site and got to tell my story. It helps to know Iam not alone. I want to try again we hope in 3 cycles to start trying. Iam petrified but know that giving Ava a little sister or brother would be an honor as well and hopefully i can bring this baby home with me physically and not just in my heart as We have done with Ava. Sorry for the long post but its good to tell my story. Just as i finnished typing this I can smell my little girls scent . Just to prove to me that she is always here. Mummy loves you darling angel girl! xx
i’mnotalone,
you are right, you are not alone. So many broken-hearted parents out there and I am so sorry you have to join this club that no one wants to be a member of. Nevertheless, I hope knowing you have companionship will help you on your path. It is so meandering, full of ups and downs, and I wish you much peace and strength.
Many well wishes to you in the remaining weeks of your current pregnancy (I know how long even a week can seem when you are trying again after a loss!), and remembering and honoring Olivia.
hugs,
Janis
Tarni,
thank you for sharing the story of you and beautiful Ava Madison. How your story broke my heart, it feels too familiar and I still cannot understand why this heartache has to happen over and over again, through the world to people all over. I am so sorry of the trauma you have to endure. You are such a brave, powerful and beautiful mama to have given birth to Ava. I can understand how you feel and what you are talking about, labor and birth brings pain but it is also an honor and ecstasy. May sound weird to some but so true.
I am glad Ava made her presence known to you. You are deeply connected, always. It is not always easy to hold the love in the heart only, but you are forever her mother and she your daughter.
I wish you the very best for your next pregnancy.
Take care,
Janis
Dear Tarni
Reading your story was like living mine, we had the same experience, here is a brief out line of what happened to me, bearing In mind I was 19 at the time, I’m 22 this year x
I too had the most problem free pregnancy, I was even booked in for a water birth (which means you have to be very low risk to have). On the day of my due date I went to the hospital with mild contractions, they told me that I wasnt in enough pain and the contractions are not strong enough, so go home and get some rest.
They checked the heartbeat and everything was fine, so i went home. During that night I expercienced very bad contractions around my stomach, but they were very irregular so i didnt want to feel stupid and go to hospital, only to be sent home again.
They continued through the night and when morning came i felt nothing. All day i waited for contractions, so by mid afternoon they came and i couldnt take no more, so i went hospital. When i got there they asked me when i last felt the baby move, i didnt know, i was too caught up in pain to know.
So the midwife used a doppler and seemed very puzzled, she then called in another midwife and she tried. Nothing! they then ushered me quickly to a private room and did an ultra scan. At that moment I frooze and tried not to get upset, cause in my heart this was a mistake, my baby is alive!
Then the news broke and I was heartbroken all i could scream is Why? on the 12th June 2009, 2 days after my due date and After an induced 18 hour labour my beautiful Lexi was born, she was my angel.
The Post Morterm to 2 months to come back and i was told the reason was Unkown, I wasnt expecting anything else.
Also I had what you were talking about, the shoulder thing, they call It shoulder dystocia, My baby girl weighed 8 lbs 3 oz, she managed to get her head through but her body would not budge, was pushing for over an hour and had an emergency team rush in and they tried everything to get her out, my legs were up on strrups and everything, nothing was working so they had to snap her arm as she was so stuck, breaks my heart to think they broke her little bones. After she was born they placed her on me, I glanced at the baby I would never see again, they snatched her off me and one of the midwifes started pressing her hands, in a hard force full pumping motion on my lower stomach and I started screaming, I thought she was trying to kill me, I was so scared, after the ordeal I asked what happened and it turned out I was hemmoraging and was losing loads of blood, she had to pump to make sure all the blood came out as it was gushing, was the worst 1st time experience of labour I have ever been through and I have sworn down I would never have another natural birth after the trauma i Went through.
Went on to Conceive My son 4 months after losing Lexi (I was broken hearted I needed and wanted my baby back)
I had an elective c-section which was just as well as he weighed in a whooping 9lbs 6 oz
So I cant imagine if I went through labour and he had got stuck 😥
If you want someone to talk to, I am here, Its a shame you had to find this website x
Louise x
Also I’m suprised that you mentioned that they said “They warned me that next time i may need a Cesarean to avoid this complication again”
No one even said anything along those lines to me, I had to push the consultant to give me a c-section, as she keep trying to make me go natural and she knew full well I was having a big baby as she did the scans every 4 weeks! she had no idea how truamatised by the ordeal I was and that I would never go natural again, It wasnt enough I was only 19, Carried a baby for 9 Months and she died and my labour was horrible and I could have full well needed a blood transfusion, It really upset me that she wasnt understanding my fears, they just dont get it x
Louise, thankyou for your reply and for sharing your story with me. It is really comforting to know you went on to have a beautiful baby and got to take it home with you ! I hope that I get this one day. I cannot even being to imagine what trauma you went through when they had to break your little ones arm to get her out, my heart breaks for mums like us that have had really traumatic births in a really traumatic situation. But thankyou for your kind words they mean so much!
janistan –
Thankyou so much for your kind words. They have really touched my heart. So glad to know that Iam not alone and that people really understand my pain and care for me even when they dont know me! Thankyou
HI all
i have some great news my aj would be turning 1 30 march this year and we found out that we are pregnant again yesterday i am hapy yet so terifyd of what can hapen but staying strong
Great news indeed, Nadia!! Thank you for coming back and sharing with us.
Wishing you the very best for this pregnancy!!
warmly,
Janis
Congrats Nadia, Its A Scary Journey, But A Great Reward At The End 🙂 Keep Strong And Positive, Dont Let The Fear Take Over x
hi girls wow this is hard for me i get the most horific dreams of loosing this baby to i mis my aj he would be turning 1 in 7 days its hard im sad for my loss and happy for the new baby but it doesnt feel rite
I am so sorry Nadia, the pregnancy after is certainly very hard and filled with anxiety, as well as all kinds of emotions, roller-coaster rides. Thinking good wishes for you, and remembering aj with you. hugs, Janis
An interesting discussion is definitely worth comment. There’s no doubt that that you ought to publish more on this subject matter, it may not be a taboo matter but typically people do not talk about such subjects. To the next! Kind regards!!
Thank you for telling your story and sharing Avery and Quinn with the world. My angel Poppy was stillborn in December 2011. We knew she had a heart condition, but we just trusted the doctors that they would get her out in time. We didn’t and she never took a breath. I am shattered because I still blame myself for her death, I noticed reduced movements the day before but a quick trip to the OB said her heartbeat was stable. How I wish I’d just gone to the labour ward and had a trace done properly…
We want another baby. Our living child needs another sibling to grow up with. But we too are terrified of the long path ahead. I really hope I can get my doctors to agree to more monitoring, it should be routine.
Thanks again for touching many lives with your story.
Useful information. Lucky me I discovered your website unintentionally, and
I am shocked why this twist of fate didn’t happened in advance! I bookmarked it.
You made some really good points there. I checked on the web to learn more about
the issue and found most individuals will go along with your views on this website.
Jerome
I used to be recommended this blog by way of my cousin.
I am not positive whether this put up is written by means
of him as nobody else understand such particular about my problem.
You are incredible! Thanks!
I am not certain where you are getting your information, however great topic.
I must spend a while studying much more or working out more.
Thanks for fantastic information I was searching for this information for my mission.
Hi there, I enjoy reading all of your article post.
I like to write a little comment to support you.
Spot on with this write-up, I actually feel this web site needs much more attention.
I’ll probably be back again to read through more, thanks for the advice!
I know this website provides quality dependent content and other stuff, is there any other web site which gives these stuff in quality?
Very soon this web page will be famous amid all blog visitors, due
to it’s fastidious articles
Started new web stand out
http://ally.ablogs.relayblog.com/?entry-annabella
yvette porn porn ipod touch womans overy porn best free porn photo aaron austin muscle porn gay