This post is a very long and personal one - one that I’ve gone back and forth about writing. It’s putting a lot out there, and it could make people uncomfortable to read if they feel it's something that should be kept private. On the other hand, if I don’t write it, I’m not acknowledging something very important that has happened in our family over the last few months - something that has caused Paul and me great joy and also tremendous heartbreak.
When Owen was born, it didn’t go anything like we had imagined it would be. I had a placental abruption at 29 weeks, he was in distress, so he was born via emergency C-section. It was scary, chaotic and traumatic. Not to be too graphic, but between the puddles of blood that I left in my car, parking lot and hallway as I walked into the hospital, the moments that I didn’t breathe while we waited to discover if our baby was still alive, the visit from the Neonatologist telling us that a baby born at 29 weeks could be born deaf, blind, have cerebral palsy, or worse, then on to our chaotic 7 weeks in the NICU, watching Owen have awful tests and medical procedures performed on him, hearing the monitors beep each time he held his breath and his heart stopped…. I really didn’t think I ever wanted to go through childbirth again. I knew our situation wasn’t normal, but it was all that we knew and it was very difficult on us. Many nights, I sobbed all the way through the hospital to the parking ramp because no matter what I did, I wasn’t able to produce enough milk and Owen had horrible reflux when we’d have to supplement his feedings with formula. The stress and the guilt were overwhelming. I’d be so excited to hear that they were able to up his feeds, but then it would hit me that it was more milk I needed to produce and wouldn’t be able to. Through all of it, we remained incredibly grateful that our beautiful boy was healthy and that we were at a hospital as amazing as Children’s. When the time came, we took our baby home and the chaos of being first time parents began. I tucked away the feelings I had about his birth.
When he was 6 months old, I had testing done to determine why I had the placental abruption and thankfully, they weren’t able to find anything wrong with me. The doctor said that I had a 10% chance of it happening with a second pregnancy and that the odds would go up approximately 10% each time I had one. I went home and did a lot of reading about them and discovered that in many cases, the mother doesn’t live through an abruption because of the blood loss. That struck me hard for two reasons. One, because I have very vivid memories of the blood loss. As I mentioned before, I lost a lot of blood and physically seeing it pool at my feet was a scary thing. After they had me change to a gown, my legs were covered with blood and the doctors and nurses all were continuously looking back and forth from my pile of bloody clothes to each other with a very alarmed look on their faces. Those looks are etched in my brain and I don't know that I'll ever forget them. Secondly, I know it sounds crazy, but at the time, it never crossed my mind that something could happen to me. In my mind, bleeding meant something was wrong with our baby, so I was busy pleading with God to protect him. Since then, I’ve been haunted by the thought that if I got pregnant again and something happened to me, Owen would grow up thinking that he wasn’t good enough so I had to try for another baby, leaving him to grow up without a mom. I've also dwelled on what kind of a mom I would be to Owen if I had another abruption and lost the baby late in the pregnancy. Was I strong enough to deal with that kind of grief and be a good mom?
Over the years, more people than I can count have reminded us that Owen needs a sibling and that we better get going. I just never felt ready to go through that again. I knew that another pregnancy would not be a relaxed, joy-filled pregnancy, as I’d worry about every single cramp, pain, ligament stretch, movement, or lack of movement by the baby. Paul and I talked about adoption and about whether or not we were okay with Owen being an only child, but never made a final decision on those just in case I reached a point where I did feel ready. Paul was always supportive and left the decision up to me. I don’t want Owen to be alone as he grows up and I know how much love Paul and I have to give another child. We have always envisioned our family to be a family of 4. So, after a lot of soul searching, I came to the conclusion that the decision couldn't be left up to me because I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to put my fears aside. I decided to trust my faith and put it in God’s hands and if it was meant to be, I would get pregnant and maybe by me not having to make the decision, it would help eliminate some of the anxiety.
Very shortly after that, I got pregnant. I couldn’t wait to take a test and share the news with Paul. Pregnancy tests are supposed to take two minutes, but I swear, those two lines appeared in two seconds flat. We were both so excited. Paul was secretly hoping for a girl and I was hoping for another boy, although as cliché as it sounds, we just wanted a healthy baby and a normal birth experience. As many of you know, I suffer from pretty debilitating migraines that are hormone related, so pregnancy is not a very fun time for me (or Paul or Owen either!). I had 11 migraines in the first 5 weeks. Add that to “all-day” sickness, a cold that I couldn’t seem to shake and trying to be a mom to a 3 year old and it wasn’t an easy first trimester. During those first few weeks, I started seeing a counselor that deals with pregnancies after traumatic births and was slowly working through my fears and anxieties.
Because of my placental abruption with my first pregnancy, I went back to the specialist that did the testing on me instead of my normal OBGYN. My first appointment was a lot different than last time around. They did an ultrasound, so Paul and I got to see the baby and its crazy fast heartbeat of 174 bpm. We even got to bring home photos of the baby! With Owen, we didn’t have an ultrasound until 20 weeks. We were excited to learn that our due date was December 27 - a Christmas baby! As the weeks passed on, I started weighing the options of doing another C-section or having a VBAC, we starting talking about names, I ordered Owen an adorable fire truck themed BIG BROTHER shirt, and I created a cute little photo of Owen with Santa to share the news with all of you that Santa had an extra special present for Owen…he was going to be a big brother! We bought paint and new bedding and planned to switch Owen to a big boy room so the baby could use the crib/toddler bed that he currently sleeps in.
I think most of all, we were just so, so excited to share the news with Owen. He is incredibly sweet and gentle with babies and he will be an amazing big brother. We wanted to wait a few more days until our next appointment and make sure that all was well before we told him, but it was getting harder and harder to wait. We just wanted him to be able to share in our joy!
I woke up in the night on June 6 and felt some tightening in my stomach. It wasn’t overly painful and I wasn't bleeding, so through my paranoia, I convinced myself that I could wait until the morning to go to the doctor. Even though I feared I'd hear bad news, I really, truly thought they’d do an ultrasound, show me the baby was fine and send me home.
Tears ran down my cheeks as I sat in the waiting room with all the pregnant women. I was extremely nervous and scared. When the ultrasound popped up on the screen, the all-too-familiar forgetting to breathe thing happened again. I could see the baby on the screen right away, but the difference was that this time, there was no crazy fast heartbeat. Our baby was gone and by its size, they could tell that it had been gone for a couple of weeks. A missed miscarriage they called it. My mind automatically thought, “How did I not know? I swear, I felt the baby moving just the day before. Where was my mother’s intuition?” Because I honestly thought the outcome would be okay, I had told Paul that he didn’t need to come to the appointment, so I called him at work and he met me at the hospital. We sat in a little family waiting room talking about the options with the doctor. We could go home and wait days or weeks for nature to do its thing, but because the baby had passed away a few weeks prior, there were risks of infection and it could happen while I was at the grocery store, at work or wherever and I’d be on my own to handle it. I couldn’t do that. I could take medication to induce labor, be checked into the hospital for up to 48 hours (in a room near all the moms who had just delivered their babies) and go through labor to deliver the baby, (nope) or I could have a D&C. The thought of the procedure bothers me - I don’t like being put under, but it was quick, fairly painless and I could get on the road to healing instead of having to wait for it to happen. We opted for the D&C.
The people at United were amazing. I not only received top-notch care, but they hugged me, cried with me and many of the nurses shared personal stories with me of their own babies that had gone to heaven. One nurse, whose only contact with me was to take my pre-op blood pressure, gave me a huge hug and reminded me that this baby was real, it existed and to honor it. I've even had nurses call me within the last few days just to tell me that they are thinking of me and ask me if I need anything. At the time I was in a haze and it didn’t touch me like it does now, but as I look back, the staff was pretty incredible and have contributed to my healing, both physically and mentally.
A few days later, I was having a hard time just lying around and was anxious to get back to my normal routine so I could have some distraction. I was healing okay physically over the weekend, but then on Monday, I started experiencing excruciating cramps and very bad clotting. I ended up in the ER and at first, they mentioned that they may have to do another D&C. I was heartbroken all over again. Paul was in St. Louis at a conference, so he hopped on a plane and headed back so he could be there with me. Fortunately, after several hours of waiting, an IV of pain meds and fluids, they sent me home to heal and I didn’t have to have the D&C done again.
My nurses warned me that it takes a while for your brain to catch up and that is true. I would feel cramping those first few days and think, “Oh no! I hope the baby is okay." Then I’d have to relive the pain all over again as I came to the realization that there wasn’t a baby any longer.
Last Friday I went in for my follow-up appointment and I am healthy and healing nicely. At the time of my D&C, I signed a consent form for them to do some testing on the baby and on my tissue so they could determine a cause. Science is a pretty amazing thing. My doctor was able to go through the lab results and explain to me more about why it happened. I met with a genetic counselor and she explained that our baby had Turner’s Syndrome (which occurs when a baby is conceived with only one chromosome, or one healthy and one damaged one instead of the normal 2). Many times, babies with TS pass away early on in the pregnancy. Some make it to 20-30 weeks and are born stillborn, so we are grateful that we lost our baby at 12 weeks instead of at 30. Often times, parents are asked if they want to abort instead of having to go through having a stillborn baby. Again, we are grateful that we never were asked to consider that because we couldn't have done it. 1% of babies with TS are born and can live outside the womb, but don’t have ovaries, don’t develop breasts, can have physical deformities, their organs often times develop outside their body and they have to endure numerous surgeries. I can’t imagine our baby having to live that life. We believe God is good and although it hurts us to not have her here with us, His plan was to welcome our baby to heaven where she could be healthy and happy.
At my appointment, the genetic counselor shared with us that our baby was a girl. We’ve decided to honor her by naming her Abigail Helene Mordorski.
There are so many things that are hard about a miscarriage. People don’t know how to talk about it or what to say, and we understand, because neither do we. We want our friends and family to know, but there is no good point in the conversation to say, “By the way, we are grieving the loss of our child….” I think that is why so many people grieve privately. There are probably people that don’t understand why we are grieving a baby that we never got to meet and because we weren’t very far along in the pregnancy. The best way that I can describe it is not only did we lose our daughter, but our hopes and dreams for who she would become and how she would change us and our family. We lost her first smile, first "mama," first steps, first date, her graduation, her wedding... her everything. We grieve because it took courage, anxiety, tears, prayer and faith to be able to open our hearts to the possibility of her and after all that, she doesn't even get to be here with us. Life moves on and some days it is comforting to have a routine to follow. Other days, I just wish I could lay in bed and cry because I feel empty without her and because we won’t get to meet her here on earth.
There weren’t a lot of resources available for us when we were "pregnant after having a traumatic birth," but (sadly), now there are a lot of support groups, books, online groups, etc., that are available for parents who’ve lost a baby. For that I’m grateful. I’m grateful that these brave women started the groups and are open to sharing their stories in order to help other parents heal. It sometimes feels like the easiest place to be is at my support group because these women understand and they get that grief is cyclical. One meeting they cry with me, the next we can laugh together.
We’ve told a few of our close friends and family members about losing Abby and we've been blessed abundantly with prayers, well wishes, meals, flowers, cards, offers to take Owen so we can have some time alone to grieve, etc. People have been amazing and we appreciate the love, support and prayers more than we can tell you. These past few weeks have reiterated to us that while we may not always understand God’s plan for us, He puts amazing people in our lives to walk our journey with us and help us through the hard times.
I guess the one thing that we hope is that Abby won't be forgotten. We know you didn’t get to share in the joy and anticipation of welcoming her with us and your first introduction to her has been us telling you that we are grieving her loss, but she is very real to us. She existed and we’ll never forget our little girl.
Abigail Helene Mordorski
(The dark spot in her head is Abby's brain and if you look closely, you can see her cheeks and nose in the profile of her face to the right of her brain. Her feet are at the bottom right.)
