One Year...not forgotten

So, Friday, March 6th marked the one year anniversary of the death of my third baby. I have not forgotten the pain and still question our choice to end the pregnancy, but now that I have Mason, I know that things were supposed to be this way. It's almost as if God blessed us with getting pregnant with Mason so quickly & easily (and totally unintentional) as to tell us He was ok with our decision. (For the record, I started this blog on the 4th and just now finished it; it was supposed to be posted on Friday).


Let me explain.


On February 26, 2008 I was scheduled for my 20 week ultrasound. The city of Toledo was shut down...there was a huge snow storm and everything was closed, schools, offices, stores, etc. My office even closed, but my doctor's office did not, so we were all excited to go to the ultrasound. We were going to find out the gender of our baby and were taking Allison and Preston with us. David did end up going to work, so he drove separately and met us there. My appointment was at 2:30 or 3:00, I can't remember exactly. We got there and waited for Linda, the ultrasound tech, to call us back. When she did, we all went back and got settled in for my ultrasound; we were all very excited. Now, David and I had already had 2 children, so we knew what a normal ultrasound looked like; we knew at 20 weeks, we would be able to see the baby and make out most of the features. Not at this ultrasound...Linda put the wand on my belly and the room was silent. We all knew something didn't look right. We couldn't really make out the baby's body. Linda rolled the wand over my belly for a few minutes before saying a word. She asked me who I was seeing that day for my appointment. I told her Donna. After a few more minutes of silence, she leaned over quietly and said "I'm seeing a mass in front of the baby's belly". She continued, "It could be the intestines, I just can't make it out. I'm going to go get a doctor to look at this with me". I immediately started crying, but trying not to let my kids see me, as I didn't want to alarm them without knowing what we were facing. Donna, my midwife, and Dr. Read came in. Donna started rubbing my legs while Linda and Dr. Read looked at the screen again. After a few more minutes, Dr. Read suggested putting me in an exam room and she would be with me in a few.


After sitting in an exam room for about 15 minutes, Dr. Read and Donna came in to talk to me. Immediately, Donna said started giving me her condolences. Dr. Read explained there was a mass in front of the baby's belly, they couldn't really tell what it was. They wanted me to go see the Maternal Fetal Specialists, and were trying to get me an appointment, but the office at the Toledo Hospital was closed (probably due to the weather). They said they had a call into the office at St. V's Hospital and that they would call me direct to set up an appointment.


So, we left the office, not knowing what we were facing and not knowing what was to come. I don't even remember the drive home; I had the kids with me and David was driving separately as we had met at the office. That evening was very tough...everyone knew we were having our ultrasound that day, so the phones were ringing off the hook and I was getting text messages from everyone...expecting me to tell them the gender of the baby. Poor David had to intercept many calls that evening and explain that we didn't know yet, and that there was something wrong with the baby. I cried myself to sleep that night...not knowing was the hardest part.


I went to work the next day; Allison and Preston had school and I couldn't just sit home by myself...I would have gone crazy sitting in the silence all day. When I got to work, my unit/team were all sitting with anticipation for me to tell them the gender of the baby. I broke down trying to tell them what was going on. Needless to say, I didn't get much work done that day. The office of the Maternal Fetal Specialist at St. V's Hospital called early that day and was able to get me in the next day, first thing in the morning. I spent the rest of the day researching different fetal anomalies online. I've seen enough baby shows on the Discovery channel to know that a baby being born with the intestines on the outside of the abdomen can be fixed. It's not the ideal situation, but it can be corrected. I prayed for that until my ultrasound with the specialist the next day.


On Thursday, February 28, 2008, David and I went to the specialist first thing in the morning. After a short wait in waiting room, we went into an exam room, I had my blood pressure checked, had to pee in a cup, etc. Finally, they took us into an ultrasound room. The ultrasound tech came in, her name was Jen. I'll never forget that appointment. Jen didn't say much during the ultrasound. We could see the baby, and the mass, but we could also see the heartbeat, going strong. We saw the baby move and could tell the hands from the feet, etc. After about 45 minutes of ultrasound, Jen said she was finished. She was going to go over the ultrasound with the doctor and they would be back in to discuss it with us. What a horrible waiting period. David and I sat in the room for about 20 minutes, waiting... Finally, Jen came in with Dr. Sallah, the specialist. He looked at us and told us the worst.


I had a condition called "Amniotic Band Syndrome"; beware, this gets pretty graphic (I'm warning you if you "Google" it). We had never heard of it before. What happens is that the first few layers of the membranes surrounding the baby had ruptured at some point during the pregnancy. These ruptured membranes are then bands, (look like wires) floating in the amniotic sac with the baby. These bands are sticky and basically, what they do is attach themselves to the baby or wrap themselves around the baby's limbs and literally rip the baby apart. My case was very severe and the mass in front of the baby was actually it's intestines, liver and bladder. The baby also had two clubbed feet, it's spine was twisted into the shape of an "S" (a healthy baby's spine should be in the shape of a banana), the kidney's were enlarged, they thought there was a hole in the heart and they couldn't get a good picture of the baby's face, they thought that part of the chin was missing. Dr. Sallah had Jen take a few more looks with the ultrasound. Then he told us we could continue to "try to carry the pregnancy and see what happens" or "terminate the pregnancy now". I couldn't believe what I had just heard. If I continued the pregnancy, there would be no change; actually, things would get worse as the baby got bigger, if it survived, as the space in the sac would get smaller, the bands would do more damage. Dr. Sallah took us into his office. He explained that this was not genetic, it is a rare, "fluke" thing that happens in like 1 in 10,000 pregnancies. There is nothing I did or could have done to make it happen or prevent it. He was very thorough in his explanation and then asked if we had any questions. The only question I had: "Is my baby in pain?" Dr. Sallah explained that this obviously has been something that happened earlier in the pregnancy, and basically, the pain has been chronic for the baby, so the baby was "used to the pain" by now. That's all I needed to hear; how could I continue this pregnancy and wait for God to take my baby if it was in pain? Dr. Sallah seemed surprised that we didn't have any more questions; but he was very clear on the outcome of this pregnancy, either decision that David and I made was going to have the same outcome: We were not going to give birth to a live baby. Now we had to make the decision to either terminate the pregnancy on our own or wait for the baby to die and then have to deal with the aftermath of that. I felt that the longer I carried the baby, the harder it was going to be to lose it later on.

I'm not going to go tell all the details of the rest of the story. Let's just say that since the baby was still living, ending the pregnancy would be an actual abortion. None of the hospitals in our area would perform the procedure, even though the baby had no chance of surviving. I was forced to spend 3 afternoons in an abortion clinic, speaking to a grief counselor. Let me say that Kristen, my counselor was awesome. She understood my situation and they never made me sit in the waiting room with the people that were there because they chose to be. The clinic treated me with a lot of respect and consideration in that dark time of my life. I still had to wait the 48 hour waiting period for the state of Ohio. We really did not have a choice...after the procedure was done on the evening of March 6, 2008, Kristen came out to talk to me. The baby was a girl, which we later named Grace, because I wanted to think of her as a beautiful, graceful little girl that I know she would have been had my body not destroyed her. The damage to her body was as extensive as the ultrasounds had picked up..even worse, which is why I never saw her...I didn't want to see my baby that way.

Abortion to me is not black and white anymore. I hate that we have to call it an abortion; in my eyes, David and I were being compassionate to our unborn child. We were trying to end the suffering of our baby and be loving parents.

We did have her cremated; and I was going to spread her ashes over my mother-in-law's grave site as if to ask Irene to take care of my baby...but even after a year, I haven't been able to bring myself to get rid of those ashes; they are all that I have left of her. Someday, maybe.

I know that if I had given birth to a healthy baby girl, I would not have had Mason, but I still struggle with they why. I still wonder why one baby had to die in order for another to be born. I know and believe that everything happens for a reason, but hope that someday I will know the reason.

I had planned to post this blog on Friday, on the one year anniversary of my "abortion", but couldn't get through all of it without crying..having to take lots of breaks, etc. Plus, I have a new baby and two school-aged children, so my free time is very limited as it is.