Loss

As most of you know we suffered a loss last week when we found out that the baby that I was 16 weeks pregnant with had no heartbeat.

On Wednesday I went in for a regular check up and the nurse couldn't find a heart beat. She got a second person to come in and try and she still couldn't find it so they got a third person to come in with a newer machine and try. When she couldn't find the heartbeat they called the doctor and I called Dave. The doctor brought in a portable ultrasound machine and she also could not find a heart beat. They sent me upstairs to the big ultrasound machine where they confirmed that the baby was gone. They said that even though I was 16 weeks the baby was only measuring 13 weeks. This could mean that he had been gone for a while and my body had done nothing about it...I had NO signs. We went back down to my doctor to talk with her about our options. She said that she would need a specialist to do a D & E (they do this instead of a D & C when there is a baby involved and in the 2nd trimester).

We met with the specialist on Thursday morning, where they did another ultrasound to again confirm the findings. He talked with us about what all the procedure would include and about our options. We scheduled the procedure for Friday afternoon, but I had to go in on Friday morning to spend the day in the hospital so they could give me meds to prepare for the surgery.

Dave and Nora spent the day with me at the hospital keeping me occupied. The doctor said the meds could cause some pain, but I never noticed anything...I was just REALLY thirsty. I walked into the operating room and we had agreed that I wanted to be completely out for the procedure. They gave me some light meds that put me under but not too deep. They woke me up in the operating room afterward and took me to recovery. I never had any pain at all and still haven't 2 days later. They let me eat dinner and sent me home that night. We were gone for a total of 12 hours. The boys spent the day with a babysitter and were both in bed when we got home.

We decided that we felt that genetic testing was our number one priority because we want to know if there is something that will affect trying again in the future. But the remains will be released to a local funeral home where they will cremate him and give us the ashes. The doctor said that he didn't think that the baby had actually been gone more than a week, but because he only measured 13 weeks he had stopped growing. I feel that it was a problem with the placenta. On the ultrasound they saw nothing physically wrong with the baby, but the timing of the whole thing is about when the placenta takes over and it doesn't look like the placenta was able to do that. This pregnancy had problems from the very beginning...lots of bleeding and low progesterone levels in the beginning, but we thought that everything was fine when we had a normal ultrasound at 12 weeks. The testing the doctor will do may or may not tell us anything...we should hear this week.

We feel grateful that we had already decided to name him Samuel, Sam. I'm not sure why him having a name provides a bit of relief, but it does.

Physically I am doing really well, emotionally it's been hard on us both. I was almost 4 months pregnant. We had bought a new car, decided on decorations for the room, bought a baby book and a blankie. We had a stocking hanging on the fireplace and only 2 days before had started talking to Connor about how he was going to be a big brother again. Our family had 3 boys in our every thought of the future and that is the tough part to deal with.

Also, I have either been pregnant or nursing every single day of the last 3.5 yrs. I am trying to focus on things that I can do now that I am neither (drink spiked eggnog, take a hot bath, wear perfume). The boys are a good distraction because they still get up at 7:30am and go, go, go all day so there is no time to sit and focus on the sadness. And really, that is all I feel...a deep sadness. I am not angry or depressed or anything else but deeply sad.

We know that in a few months we will try again, but for now we will try and mourn the loss of our son, Sam.