October 30, 2007

‘I had felt the baby move’ that was all I could think as I walked to the train. ‘Everything is just fine I felt him move last night’ But I still couldn’t stop thinking about it on the train ride that seemed to take 10 times longer than ever before. As I sat waiting for the bus, I pulled out a notebook that I had grabbed the night before. All I could write was “healthy baby healthy baby healthy baby’ over and over again. It just couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. I was just over reacting and letting my imagination run wild. I always had cramps, and maybe I wasn’t spotting after all. It was so faint I was probably seeing things, that just had to be it. I had spent the whole pregnancy thinking that something was going to happen, how could I have 5 healthy pregnancies and babies? I was thinking about my last appointment as I put the notebook away in my bag. I had heard a strong heartbeat, it had been there. Sure the doctor had a hard time finding it, but it was there. So why was it that in the moments he couldn’t find it I just knew it was the end, the baby was gone? But then he found the heartbeat and it didn’t make me feel any better. I still felt like my baby was dying. Now here I was, going to my ultrasound. I had started cramping on Saturday night, but I always get cramps and stuff, they just stop fast and these hadn’t. I called and talked to a doctor the day before and he told me it was probably nothing, maybe something with the placenta, but nothing to worry about unless I started to really bleed. My thoughts were still racing when I got off the bus at the doctors office. I check in and sat down to wait for them to call me back for my ultrasound. As I waited, there was a woman there who was upset because they had scheduled her ultrasound for the wrong day, but they were going to fit her in. Of course they put her in in front of me. I sat there sipping my water and trying to read some story in some magazine to pass the time. I don’t remember any of it other than just wishing time would go faster. ‘I felt the baby last night, didn’t I? It has to have been the baby; it just has to have been!’ Finally they called my name, I told the doctor who does the ultrasounds about what had been going on and how the doctor I talked to said that it was probably the placenta so we should check it really good. As I lay down on the table, I gave him the video tape to record the U/S like I had promised the kids. They really wanted to go but I was so afraid of hearing something bad and I didn’t want them there for that. The minute the wand was on my stomach I knew something wasn’t right. Jay wasn’t moving, and I couldn’t see the heartbeat. The tech was checking the head as well as looking for the heartbeat. He made a comment about finding it for me and I said something back about wanting to see it, maybe that I couldn’t see it. After a pause he tells me what I already knew was coming. There was no heartbeat. Jay was gone. He told me that the head is swollen, which says that it has been awhile. I’m trying to lay still while he measures the head, stomach, and legs, but inside I’m screaming and I want nothing more than to just curl into a ball. The head measures at 15 weeks, the stomach at 17 weeks, and the legs at 16 weeks 5 days. He told me the legs are the most accurate so I listened very closely to what he said they were. 16 weeks 5 days, the same day I heard the heartbeat and just knew my baby was dying. I had played it off as fear and nothing more, but I was right. The tech asked if I wanted anything on the tape, I told him no but I would like some pictures. In my head I’m screaming that I need pictures, but even more I need to wake up. ‘This has to be a dream, I’m going to wake up at any moment now and I will be in my bed and it will be time to come to the ultrasound’ The tech gives me some pictures and directs me to the bathroom so I can “empty my bladder and compose myself” He says he will let the lady at the front desk know to call my doctor to see if I can talk to him. In the bathroom I text my aunt and Chas “Jay is gone” My phone starts to ring, my aunt is calling, but I can’t answer it. I walk to the front desk and tell them that they are supposed to call my doctor and everything changes. The smile goes away and they treat me different. The send me to my doctor’s office to wait while they try to reach him. My phone rings a few more times, text messages from Chas and my aunt. I can’t bring myself to call them or text back. ‘My baby is dead. My baby’ is all I can think. I sit for what seems like forever. A nurse asks if they are trying to reach my doctor, the lady from the desk keeps checking on me, then comes to sit with me. My doctor is on vacation and can’t be reached, but I can talk to one that he works, with she tells me. He tells me he’s sorry, I ask what happens now. He tells me that hopefully I will just “pass the baby” on my own because the surgery that they do causes the mother “lots of trauma and stress” I keep asking questions, but he won’t answer any of them, or else he gives me vague answers that just scare me more. The lady from the desk wants to give me a ride home after I tell her that I rode the bus, but I just can’t be there any longer. I have to leave, now. I head out to the bus stop, but just can’t wait and then ride a bus, so I start to walk. So many things run through my head, I just want to turn time back to when I heard Jay and he was ok. I’m walking past people with tears running down my face, but no one even gives me a second look. They don’t have time for me. I’m asking God why, why my baby? Why anyone’s baby? How could He let this happen? After a while I call Chas, I’m sure he’s worried about me. I tell him that I’m walking; I just couldn’t wait for a bus. We keep talking and I tell him everything I’m thinking. I am so alone right then; I just need to hear his voice. I had called him so many times on the way to the ultrasound telling him that I just wanted to go home, that I wished he could be with me, but that the kids just couldn’t go with. Now I wish more then ever that he was there or that I had just turned around and gone home instead of going. I need him more than ever and he is far away. While we are talking a call comes in at home from my aunt wanting to know if he has heard from me and if I’m ok. I tell Chas that I’m heading to my aunt’s work and that I’m almost there. We hang up as I get to just across the street from the building. I go in and call her to let her know I’m downstairs. So far I have the tears under control, but the minute I see her I lose it. “Come here baby” Is all I hear her say to me. I feel like my legs can’t hold me up, I don’t want them too. I want to be a pile on the floor, I want to scream and cry and throw a temper tantrum like my boys do. After a few moments we sit down in the chairs behind me and I show her the pictures of Jay. She keeps telling me that something was wrong with him and after looking at one of the pictures she tells me that he had too much spine and that I couldn’t handle that. I don’t say anything but in my head I’m screaming ‘There is nothing wrong with him! He was perfect! It only looks like that in the picture because the tech took it so fast; he didn’t look like that on the screen! He was my baby; I could have taken care of him! I would have given him the best!!’ Then she tells me that God has a reason, and that maybe this was God’s way of saying “Tammy, no more babies” Again I’m screaming. How dare she tell me that I lost my baby because I wasn’t supposed to have anymore? If God didn’t want me to have anymore then why did he give me Jay when I wasn’t even sure I wanted another one? Why would He hurt me like this? I couldn’t believe it. I know she meant well, I know everyone thinks I’m insane because we have 5 kids already, why would we ever have another one, but really!! If I wasn’t supposed to have a baby I just wouldn’t be able to get pregnant! I wanted out of there, I had to go. I just couldn’t sit there anymore. I left to walk to the library; I figured I would find a book that could help me. But no, they only have books about miscarriage in the first trimester or having a stillborn in the 3rd trimester. Even ones that say the deal with “late miscarriage” only talk about stillborn or babies lost at birth. There was nothing at all. I headed to the train, I had to go home. My boys needed me and my step-daughter, Clowie, would be leaving soon and we had to tell her before she left. I sat down to wait for the train and pulled out my phone. I sent my younger brother, Shawn, a text message “Had ultrasound 2day. I lost the baby” I don’t remember how I got home. It is all a blur. I called Chas several times as I traveled and we talked which made it easier. I called as I was almost home and he met me outside. I fell into his arms, I just didn’t want him to let me go, but the kids were screaming for him, they didn’t know why he told them to stay inside while he went out. We both went back in and we sat on the couch with them and told them that Jay had been to sick and had died. It took them awhile to understand. They thought that it was my fault, after all I was supposed to take care of Jay, the doctor had told me over the weekend to take it easy, and so I must not have been careful enough. I told them that Jay was already gone by the time the doctor had told me that, so it was already too late. The kids kept talking, and most of it I don’t remember. Bryson said that God would just have to put another baby in my tummy soon and I told him that I wasn’t sure if we would let God put another baby in my tummy. Clowie kept going on and on about when her sister was in her mom’s tummy and it just hurt so much. It took everything I had to not scream at her for it, but I knew it wasn’t her fault, she just didn’t understand. I finally had to ask Chas to just make them stop and leave me alone. He had called into work and told them he couldn’t come and why so he was staying home that night and then he had the next day off for Halloween and our anniversary. I had mentioned to my Aunt that tomorrow was Halloween and our anniversary and that it was supposed to be happy, I was supposed to help at Bryson’s school and we were going to have a party. It was going to be so much fun. She told me that it was still going to be fun, because just because Jay was gone didn’t mean I “stopped living” I would still go help at the school, Halloween would still be fun. Yes, I had to grieve and morn, but I couldn’t stop doing all of that stuff. All I could think about though was that from now on Halloween and our anniversary would always be “the day after” At some point that night I got a call from my mom, I couldn’t stop the tears, my heart was so broken. “Mommy, I want my baby back!” I sobbed into the phone. It was all I could think to say to her, it was the truth. We talked for a while about a lot of things, and she scared me even more about what was going to happen to me to get Jay out. She told me how she had a friend that had been through this and it was going to be terrible. Chas got on the computer and tried to look up what was going to happen, but even then we couldn’t find anything. We ended up doing a search for a D&C/D&E because I had heard about it online on a board I go to. I had been telling everyone that if the doctor expected me to go through labor and delivery they could think again, there was no way I could do that, but after reading what would happen to Jay if I had a D&C/D&E I knew that I would have to go through labor and delivery. That night I cried and cried. I remembered that I had asked God to make me miscarry. I had begged for it. Now I was living it. Every time I lay down I thought I felt Jay move, I was so sure of it, yet it couldn’t be. He was long gone. It just made it hurt more knowing that it wasn’t real yet I was feeling it anyway. I kept getting up and walking around or getting on the computer. I didn’t want to live, it hurt too much. But my boys needed me; there was no easy way out. I had to live it because my boys needed me. I finally fell asleep, but I don’t know how I did.