This Isn't How It's Supposed to Be

“When a child loses their parents, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses [their] partner, they are called a widow or a widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them.” Most likely because it seems so inconceivable to society that a child should be taken from their parents, that an innocent can die so young, warranting a label for those they leave behind. But it happens more often than we think, and unfortunately, it happened to me. And here I stand, without a label and without my child.

Something’s Wrong

The pregnancy had started off like any other, simply navigating through the first-time mom anxieties of surviving the first trimester, waiting for genetic test results, eager to see the little blob of a baby nestled in my womb at the monthly check ups and hear that rapid little heartbeat pounding away in me. The weeks flew by without a hitch, a pregnancy much easier than the conception challenges I detailed in my previous post. We made it to 12 weeks, and I noted that the doctor had some trouble seeing the baby on the ultrasound screen, saying the baby was a bit small, but after a few adjustments with her machine, the ultrasound went on without an issue. She took the baby’s measurements and again I noted the length, 4.44 centimeters. Being raised on the imperial system, it wasn’t until I got home and used my trusty centimeters to inches converter on Google that I realized the baby was half an inch smaller than it should have been. My new mom panic ensued, and it took hours of self-talk and journaling to calm myself down, reassuring myself that if something had been wrong, the doctor would have said something, and I needed to relax. I wrote to myself in my journal that my baby was fine and we would be a happy, healthy family soon.

At 19 weeks, it came time for the anatomy scan. The technicians declared that everything looked fine and everything was developing as it should, but they noted the baby, a little boy, was smaller than he should be. Though they couldn’t get a doctor to come speak with me at that moment, they assured me they believed he was fine, and that my due date would simply need to be adjusted as it was probably miscalculated. I left initially concerned, but again spent the week reassuring myself that my son would be okay. I went into the next doctor appointment confident, my only concern being that in moving the due date, I may be stuck in the hospital over the Christmas holidays. Little did I know how menial my stupid holiday fears would become. Meeting with a midwife standing in for my vacationing doctor, she laid out the diagnosis that hit me like a freight train: Intrauterine Growth Restriction. The baby wasn’t growing like he should, most likely due to a poorly functioning placenta and not enough nutrition filtering to my child. It was then I had learned that my earlier suspicions had been right, the baby had measured small during my 12 week check-up, but the doctor hadn’t been concerned as he was only slightly smaller than he should have been at the time, and she didn’t feel the need to mention it. His condition had worsened considerably in the last 7 weeks. I was warned of several concerns, the possibility of early delivery, hospitalization, careful monitoring, birth complications, even the small but unlikely chance of stillbirth. I was referred to a perinatal specialist, and I went home and sobbed on the couch for the rest of the day.

Following my first scan with her, the specialist was less enthusiastic about our prognosis; the baby continued to fall behind in his growth and if he stopped growing before he was the size of a 24 week old fetus, she would not be able to save him with early delivery. I tried to remain optimistic as more tests were run, including bloodwork and an amniocentesis to rule out other possible causes, and felt a bit brighter when the next check up showed he had remained stable thus far. But when the doctor measured him two weeks later, not only was he continuing to fall behind in his growth, but he had developed a circulation problem in his umbilical cord. Although he was measuring at 22 weeks, just two weeks shy of our goal for delivery, I was 26 weeks, and the doctor warned me that babies in these circumstances had a low chance of survival. For a moment I sank under the weight of her prediction. I left the appointment and sat crying in my car, lamenting that my baby was going to die. 

Overwhelmed by the weeks of anxiety and stress, in a moment of pure emotional weakness, I thought to myself I can’t sit around and wait for my baby to die, if he’s going to die I wish it would just happen already. After all it was better than sitting around with false hopes for a miracle that wouldn’t come. In spite of my dark moment, the next day, I had managed to pick myself up and convince myself to continue fighting for my son- after all, he may die but he wasn’t dead yet. He spent the day kicking and bustling around inside me, and I believed that we were going to make it, he would grow to 24 weeks. I believed we were going to be okay.

The following day, I was back to work, a busy day that found me on my feet and moving constantly, so it wasn’t until the end of the day, lying in bed that I noticed I hadn’t felt him kick all day. I panicked for a moment, but de-escalated my fears by acknowledging that he had probably moved during my active day and I just hadn’t felt him. The words of my doctor echoed in my ears that he was small, and I would likely have days where I wouldn’t feel him move and I shouldn’t worry. The next day, however, my attention was trained on my womb; he hadn’t moved like he usually did when I first woke up, and food, movement, poking, and jiggling didn’t stir a response from him either. My mom tried to reassure me, and for a moment I thought about waiting the two more days for my next doctor appointment, but I couldn’t manage the suffocating anxiety for another two days. I decided I was going to the hospital to be checked. Driving there, I had a small sliver of hope for good news, for nurses to find the baby alive and well and silently heave a frustrated sigh at these new moms and their dramatic overreactions. But part of me knew to prepare for the worst.

I was already crying before the nurse entered the room with her Doppler ultrasound. I held my breath as she swiped it over my belly, and a slow rhythmic beat emerged from the speakers. Too slow for a baby, I realized. Either this was my heartbeat, or the baby was dying. The nurse suddenly rushed from the room and in moments returned with a doctor and a mobile ultrasound machine. The doctor quickly checked my stomach and the deafening silence filled the room. I glanced at the screen and saw my son curled up in a small ball in my stomach, as he often was, but there was no sound, no movement. I could barely manage to whisper, “I’ve lost him, haven’t I?” The doctor said she believed the earlier heartbeat we had heard was mine but needed confirmation from the OBGYN on duty. She left to retrieve him and he returned. Without saying a word to me, he ran the ultrasound and simply stated “I agree.” With that, after six and a half months, my son was gone.

I blubbered the news to my mom over the phone, and she rushed to the hospital as they advised me they were going to prepare for delivery. However, sensing my discomfort and hesitation, the doctor gave me the option of placing a balloon in my cervix to begin dilation and sending me home for the night. The plan was to return the next morning and begin the worst day of my life. I agreed and went home, carrying my dead son in me, running my hands over my stomach and knowing he could no longer feel me. I sobbed through the night, being pummeled with occasional contractions. My mom and I returned to the hospital the following morning and she guided me to labor and delivery as a I wept that I wanted to go home, that I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to birth my dead baby.

When Hello Means Goodbye

The delivery room was dim and unwelcoming. We were immersed in a dark cloud and I thought ‘this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.’ There was no joy in it, no eager anticipation or excited well-wishers, just darkness, silence, hospital staff expressing condolences and eventually the arrival of tearful, mourning visitors. I waited four hours to see my delivering doctor, who was busy with an emergency delivery and a triage patient. I was monitored by a friendly nurse who was too cheerful for the circumstances and had my blood drawn by a phlebotomist that mistook me for a happy expectant mother, unaware that my baby was dead and asked if I was excited to meet my child. The doctor eventually came in and ordered the medications needed to induce labor, and luckily my plucky little nurse was replaced by another who was likely a therapist in a different life or heavily trained in situations such as these; Amanda handled the majority of my care for the rest of the day, going above and beyond the call of duty to carry me through this desolate day. And she was the only one of all the medical staff in this whole ordeal to ask me my son’s name: Jace.

Jace was my first baby, I had no idea what to expect or the level of pain that could await me. The doctor and nurses had been liberal in offering pain medications as they assured me I could have whatever I needed and I “don’t have to feel anything at all” if I didn’t want to. It went without anyone having to say that this was possible because one doesn’t need to worry about the effects of medications on a dead baby. We discussed the epidural as well as IV drugs. Not being a fan of pain meds, I refused them for awhile as the contractions grew, planning on waiting for the epidural, but eventually I gave in to the IV drugs and soon any sense of contractions left my body. I sat in my hospital bed, distracting myself with the Golden Girls and Wall-E on TV, breaking down into tears during commercial breaks and after a visit from the nurses. My dad and stepmother visited, my brother and sister-in-law were on-call as we tried to judge the effectiveness of the induction meds and predict a possible delivery time; the doctor gave the liberal estimation of a few hours to a day or two. I was only 4 centimeters dilated at this point but the doctor had shared we would likely not need to go to 10; Jace was much smaller than normal, after all.

About an hour and a half after I was given the pain meds, I was hit with a massive contraction. Assuming the medication was losing its effectiveness, I sent my mother to request another dose. Seconds after the contraction subsided, another began. I paged the nurses once more, and they responded that the pain meds were on their way. I cried out suddenly with an explosion of pain, and I felt Jace drop. I panicked, yelling out “the baby is coming! The baby is coming!” and as though they dropped from the sky, five nurses and the doctor were in my room, rushing about to finish the delivery that was nearly done. Jace was mostly out, it would only take another push or two to bring him into the world he would never know, but I couldn’t do it. I was crying hysterically with my mom and stepmother on either side of me, gripping my hands. My mind hadn’t registered the nurse directing me to ‘bear down’ and push, and I didn’t really want to, because I didn’t want any of this to be happening. I didn’t want it to be real. I didn’t want my baby to be dead. I finally mustered the strength to push and felt my son slip out of me, slip away from me. There was no celebration, no newborn wails, just my own guttural sobs in the otherwise heavy silence. This was not how it was supposed to be.

They cleaned him up and asked me if I wanted to hold him, though I had been told I wouldn’t have to if I didn’t want to. Of course I wanted my son, I needed to touch him, I needed to see him, and they handed me the several sizes too-large receiving blanket with the tiny little human I had grown wrapped delicately inside. His skin was under-developed and a deep red color, his eyes were slightly opened, and with no functional muscle control, so was his small mouth. His head was shrouded with a knit cap, again far too large, but his soft skull had come out misshapen by the birth canal and the loose, wrinkled skin that crowned it was better left hidden from sight. However, a quick peek under the hat revealed small, feathery wisps of black peach fuzz in small patches here and there. His features were all developed, his little nose, ears, lips, even his ten fingers and toes showing hints of small nails beginning to grow. Though it was hard to tell which parent he would have looked like more, one ringing declaration of my maternal claim to him was the tiny middle toe on his left foot, jutting upwards above the rest of the carefully lined appendages. The deformation was one I too bear on the same foot, and lovingly call my “funky toe.” I marveled at the genetic consistency, adoring that it was even reflected in the tiny footprints the hospital staff had gathered for me.

I spent four hours with my son, memorizing every detail of his face and body. I cradled him, whispered all my love to him, along with apologies for my body’s failings, my own failings of not being able to protect him, to save him, and begged his forgiveness. I sang “You’ll be in my Heart,” a song I had played for him while he was in my tummy and rocked him. I swaddled him in his oversized blanket and for a moment, I was able to be a mom to him. My family took turns holding him, but for some it was more of a challenge, either it was the realization that their grandson or nephew was gone, or just being overwhelmed by the heartrending appearance of a 26 week fetus who never should have died. They passed him around and cried. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

The nurse had informed me of a volunteer who would come professionally photograph him if I wanted. My initial reaction was of how macabre this must be, who would want pictures of a dead baby? But after seeing my baby, I knew I wanted these pictures, needed these pictures. I wouldn’t take photos with him, but I agreed to the photographer. Kayleen came shortly after 9pm, just after finishing photographing another family’s heartbreak, and took several wonderful photos of my baby. In a moment I immediately decided I wanted photos with him, holding him, and even some of my family members did the same. The hospital staff made a bracelet for me with Jace’s name on it, and made a beautiful shadow box with his name, footprints, and birthdate in it. They bundled up his blanket and baby cap for me when I left.

There was nothing more difficult than being wheeled out of the hospital with empty arms, leaving my baby up in the delivery room, waiting to be transferred to the morgue until the mortuary would pick him up the following day. I sobbed all the way down to the hospital entrance and climbed into the car. No baby, no car seat needed, just a quiet, devastating drive home, and a somber black parade back to my apartment door. Nothing at all like I envisioned my return home after giving birth. I cried until the early hours of the following morning and fell asleep clutching his empty baby blanket.

The Fallout

The first days after his death were a blur. My body was slowly recovering from the delivery, the only silver lining being that I’d had no complications following Jace’s birth. The bleeding subsided, my body quickly regained its pre-baby shape, but biology doesn’t acknowledge dead babies, and my milk soon came in, my breasts aching from the engorgement, my heart aching for a baby I would never nurse. As difficult as this was, when my milk began to dry up, I felt the last sense of motherhood I had slipping away as well.

I stayed locked up in my apartment, leaving only once to make arrangements for Jace’s cremation at the mortuary. When given a task in mourning, some people function better with the distraction, and I managed the exchanges with the mortician well until it came to filling out paperwork, when a line asked for my relation to the deceased. I realized that for the first time in my life I was writing that I was someone’s mother, but I was writing it on his death certificate, and if my heart had already broken and shattered, this decimated the shards into a fine dust. A week later I would retrieve my son’s ashes, stored in a small brass urn and embedded in the body of a soft brown teddy bear. The bear was the funeral home’s default selection for untimely infant deaths, and probably carefully selected with grieving parents in mind who could cuddle the bear and feel some semblance of holding their own baby. At least that’s what I’ve spent many nights doing since he came home.

Most of my friends and family were aware of Jace’s prenatal complications, and to derail the frequent questions and requests for updates, I wrote a painful post on social media detailing his passing. Before being inundated with texts and phone calls to salt the wound, I requested space and time to recover. Previous downfalls of my life typically resulted in my withdrawal and refusal of any support system, but having a history of depression and suicidal tendencies in my teens, I knew isolation could potentially cripple me. So I tentatively opened myself to a small circle of support. My immediate family stayed with me most of the first week, my mother staying over the first few nights, my dad and stepmother coming over for dinners and check ins, my brother, sister-in-law, cousin, and aunts taking time off work to fill in other times. Their support ended up being crucial in those first hours, whether they provided momentary distractions from the torrential grief or just listened to my rambling ruminations of the pregnancy, the delivery, the aftermath, whatever I needed to get out of my head by expelling it aimlessly into the universe. They brought me food, flowers, even gifts, so similar to how things would have been if he had lived, and yet so different, still so dark. It wasn’t an endless stream of family and friends coming to meet the baby and dote over the new mother. It was a funeral procession. This was not how it was supposed to be.

But in spite of the support and their nearly constant presence, when they did leave, the loneliness I felt was unexpected and all-encompassing. Solitude has never bothered me before, I’ve been single for quite some time and often found peace in being on my own. I never required a partner for happiness, but being a mother was another story. My desire to be a mother was born 15 years earlier and it never subsided; I needed this to feel complete. When I had finally learned I was pregnant, I fantasized of the adventures my little one and I would share in this life and dreamt of the family we would make. For the 6 months I had him, I had been a we, and I never wanted to be just me again. I regretted the moment I wished for his quick death, because it meant in ending the torturous waiting, I missed out countless precious moments with him, talking to him, feeling his little kicks. I would give anything to feel just one more kick, to have just one more day with him. With him gone, the emptiness in me drowned me, the fear of being alone, dying alone, washed over me like a tidal wave. In writing this, it has been a month since I lost him, and I still feel as though I’m fighting the undertow, thrashing for the surface and never quite reaching it.

Breaking free of the loneliness wasn’t an easy task as this meant rejoining the living world, a world oblivious to my recent heartbreak. Like a seamless transition into a Teasdale poem, I had stepped through the soft rains and found a world that continued on without me, without my son, a world full of laughter, celebrations, and of course, new babies. The nuclear holocaust that had leveled my life was confined to the bubble of my small existence and everyone around me went on about their lives, giving my red-rimmed, swollen eyes a quick glance at the store before awkwardly averting their own to the ground and moving on, never knowing the depth of my grief. I half wished I could wear a sign saying “my son died” as if people might steer clear, stop staring, avoid baby talk, keep their newborns out of sight, and let me get on with my shopping without inciting a meltdown. Of course, this isn’t realistic, so all I can do is clench my teeth, avoid the baby section of Target, and blink away the random tears that catch me unawares when a sudden thought of Jace resurfaces.

As time goes on, moments where Jace resurfaces come in waves; some days are fairly easy, which sounds like it would be a relief, but it actually feels worse to start to feel better. Going through a day without crying seems as though I’m beginning to move on, I’m beginning to forget him. I feel guilty for laughing, for allowing myself to have a good day, for doing anything but bury myself in endless despair, in constant emotional self-flagellation. But in spite of the brief guilt-ridden reprieves, the whippings are still in full swing as the bad days rear their ugly head, creeping in out of nowhere and clinging to my back as I try to learn to function again. I’m not sure those days will fully go away. His loss is a hole in my heart that will never heal.

I wish this could be some inspiring blog of recovery, how I battled and permanently banished the dark cloud of grief and loss, but the pain of losing a child never dissipates, you just learn how to mitigate it. I’m still learning. I’m still dodging pregnancy announcements, new baby posts, diaper commercials. Still trying to figure out how to tell people I don’t have on social media why my baby bump has suddenly disappeared. Still trying to master this balancing act of remembering and cherishing my son without revisiting the explosive pain of losing him. I still cry myself to sleep with his blanket, I still cuddle his teddy bear urn. I look at his pictures every day and pull out his memory box, the baby book with his ultrasounds to look back on the short life he had. And while I’m not anywhere near the end of this road, this is the path to recovery that I must walk, saturated in pain, but only because there was so much love for my son to begin with.

I love you Jace, and I miss you every day.