My first brush with mortality

Well, my first blog on this kind of venue, thought I would talk about my children.

When Seth and I decided we were ready to have kids, it didn’t take much. Maybe 2 months to conceive our first son. Everything was smooth and easy-we had one tiny bump with some spotting earlier in the pregnancy-but everything was fine. We were getting excited about our 20 week ultrasound and finding out what we were having.

I was at work when I was 18 wks pregnant, feeling some cramping, but not worried about it. I just thought it was ligament stretching. My boss says to me, “If you weren’t so early, I would think you were having contractions” and of course, I was like, “no way!” I went to the restroom a few hours later, and I feel this weird *gush*. I look into the toilet and it is full of blood. I am freaking out of course. I jumped up and ran across the hall into the employee break room and lay down on the floor with my feet in the air. One of the employees saw me run in there and followed me in to check on me.

Apparently, I was virtually laying in a pool of blood. He called 9-1-1 and then called my husband, who happened to be about 5 minutes down the road. It took just a few minutes for the ambulance to get there, and Seth walked in as they were loading me up. I was hooked up to IV’s, etc…it was awful. I was definitely in shock.

When I got to the ER, I was followed immediately by the rest of my family, who drove to the hospital with the help of several truck drivers who helped move the traffic out of the way for them.

After a couple of hours, and an ultrasound, it was discovered that my water had broken. Pretty much the worse case scenario. Once your water has broken, then your uterus is open to infection. We were transferred to a different hospital closer to home to deliver our child.

We still hadn’t found out the gender of our child.

When we got to the hospital, the nurse was so kind, and obviously thought I would go into labor any second. But I made it through the night-and so did the baby. When they gave me an ultrasound to check on the baby, the hb was still over 150!

Seth and I discussed our options, and told the doctor that as long as there was a heartbeat and no infection, we wanted to wait and not induce. The doctor was so very supportive and kind…he ordered regular blood tests to check my white blood cell counts. We were so hopeful that maybe God would work a miracle for us, but we also really gave it to Him. We didn’t know what had caused the water to break. I told God that if this child had physical issues that would keep him/her from living a good life, or that I wouldn’t go to term, I would rather God took this child now, before they had a chance to feel pain.

The next morning, during the ultrasound, I could see my mom and my sisters face, and knew that the baby had passed sometime in the night. The doctor came in and confirmed it.
So, they started an induction with cytotec and gave me a morphine pump for pain.

Late that night/early the next morning, I felt something strange. Pastor Loretta was up with me, and went and got mom and the nurse. I dropped my morphine pump and spent the 10 minutes of labor trying to get ahold of it.

When the baby was born, the first thing I said was “it’s a girl-right?” I asked because I had wanted a boy so badly, and I just KNEW this one was a boy, but because of everything I went through, I didn’t trust my instincts anymore.

I’d had a boy.

We named him Nathaniel Arnold R.

A family member (seth’s cousin) who had gone through something similar told me I needed to hold the baby. I couldn’t believe that someone was going to MAKE me hold my baby. I thought she was crazy.

The nurse came in with Nathaniel and basically handed him to me, no option. As hard as it was, I can still feel his precious little body in my hands. Seth held him too, and we wept together. When it was time to let him go, I struggled with wanting to keep him, and knowing that nothing I did would change this. He was gone.

We had a beautiful memorial that afternoon in the chapel. Though I was devastated, I still remember how I felt about the wonderful outpouring of sympathy and support from our family and friends. It was overwhelming. There was a beautiful moses basket, filled with babies breath flowers and a blanket draped over the edge, and several photographs of me pregnant.

Going home was hard. But picking out a grave was even harder. Thankfully, we were blessed with friends and family that stepped up and supported us during that difficult time and worked out the details.

So, that is my basic story of my first loss. I will be back to write about my 3rd loss, the beautiful Elijah.