First of all, I want to thank everyone for the enormous amount of support and kind words for my sister, Kristen's story. It took a lot of courage for her to share the heartbreak of it, and brought up a lot of emotions, but the positive feedback was well worth it. As promised, here is part II of Kristen's birth story published on Momquery. This is the perfect example that there is light at the end of every dark tunnel.
If you haven’t read Part 1 of my story, read it HERE
The day after our son, Jack Henry, passed away, I lived in a zombie like state. All I did those initial few days post Jack Henry’s death was replay the previous two and a half weeks in my head. Over and over. Over and over. Not to mention my milk was coming in and I was experiencing the release of hormones that I would have had he been born alive. And yet I had no baby as the prize during an already difficult process
Everything was dark. Bleak. And yet, if you would have asked me if I needed to talk to someone I would have told you no.
After a few weeks, Mike let me know that he couldn’t let me go on living the way I was. He was worried about me. I was so mad at him at the time as it seemed to me like he had processed Jack Henry’s death with ease and moved on. But I loved my husband and my marriage and so I set up an appointment with a recommended psychologist.
My initial visit with Paula, my psychologist, was a time for me to basically verbally vomit my experience to someone who actually wanted to listen. I met with her twice every week followed by group therapy once per month with a small group of women who had gone through fetal loss as well. After a few months (frustrating months for her, I’m sure) I decided that I could probably benefit from some medicine; at least a little something to help with my anxiety and the panic attacks I’d started having. In May, six months after Jack Henry’s death, I decided to consider an anti-depressant .
All of my depression and the anxiety that Jack Henry’s death had caused was too much for me to handle. and yet my pride made me feel as though taking medicine was admitting to defeat. It was not until September, almost a full year later, that I began taking medicine regularly to try and help with my depression and anxiety.
As far as my therapy went, Paula was a God-send. Group therapy was rough, but completely necessary. There were about 3-4 of us each session, all there for various reasons that our babies had died. We always started each session giving a little outline of our story to the new members and then opening the floor to questions. There was a sweet girl in our group who had lost TWO babies. I had such a hard time wrapping my head around that— that this could happen again.
These ladies and this time were so precious to me. As time passed, I wasn’t a newbie anymore, I was the veteran. I was determined to continue therapy through the year anniversary of Jack Henry’s death. On that date, a woman, B., was led in by her sister. She couldn’t speak. She sat there crying. With her permission, her sister told us all about how B.’s son had died in utero a few days before he was to be born. I remember sitting back and wishing I could run up and grab B. and hug her and tell her that she WOULD get through this. That was how I knew that I was starting to heal and get better.
One day after school I walked into our house to find Mike sitting in the office with a strange look on his face. I was so confused as to what could have happened. He was studying for law school finals or the Bar— surely this would not make him so rattled.
He explained to me that he had taken a break from studying to watch SportsCenter when ESPN did a feature on a coach who had lost their child very similarly to how Mike and I had. He was so shaken by this and then it hit me.
What I had taken as Mike brushing off our son’s death with ease had actually been the embodiment of selflessness. He was so worried about me that he put his grieving to the side to help me through it all. Day after day of him walking into our bedroom, seeing me crumpled up in a ball, crying; finding me in the bathtub with a picture of our son’s sonogram, crying; coaxing me to come inside from my car so that he could give me a hug and help me calm down. This was all him trying to take care of me. And now that he could see that I was getting better— it was his time to grieve. It was one of the most special and precious moments of my life to see how much my husband loved me. I am so thankful that this terrible event, so early on in our marriage, strengthened our bond and love for each other.
Time went on. Mike graduated law school and landed a position at a great firm here in Dallas. We bought a puppy. And then a house. And in April 2013, I was feeling a little off. Before I decided to call the doctor, I decided that I might want to take a pregnancy test to make sure I wasn’t pregnant. As we weren’t exactly trying to have another baby yet, I was sure that it would be negative.
7:00 AM. Positive. Pregnant. Two lines. Pink. I swallowed and wanted to squeal in delight and throw up at the same time. We were pregnant. I was shocked.
I rushed to get Mike out of bed and tell him the news. After his initial surprise and lawyer’s mind processing that this pregnancy was happening a little earlier than we’d planned, we were both elated.
Because of our first pregnancy, this pregnancy and any subsequent pregnancy that I have will be labeled high risk. For the first twenty weeks through the anatomy scan, I would alternate weeks of appointments with my OBGYN and my High Risk Specialist to look for any signs of neural tube defects or other abnormalities like our son had.
For most people, sonograms are moments of pure joy. For me, they are not joyful. I white knuckled my way through them, tense, anxiety ridden that they would find SOMETHING. And while you can tell a lot in those initial weeks, our first big scans wouldn’t come until after the first trimester.
At about twelve weeks, we went to the high risk specialist for our first anatomy scan and to have all of our genetic screening done. From an hour meeting with a genetic specialist to discuss every disease ever known to be had by any member of both sides of our family, to giving LOTS of blood (even Mike, whose grandmother was Ashkenazi Jewish, had to go through special blood tests!), to high resolution sonograms where they invite medical students in to study you and learn from your old case and how your new case is different, that first anatomy scan was a whirl! Dr. Magee did a great job at assuring me from the get go that our baby looked to be A+ and that it was growing perfectly.
Despite this good news, I went home and broke down. Of course, I was elated. But here I was, living in such a happy time with another child on the way who appeared to be healthy— was I forgetting Jack Henry and what he meant to me? And besides, we were nowhere near out of the woods yet as there is only so much that can be seen at 12 weeks, was this little baby really going to be okay? I was extremely stressed.
We continued to alternate appointments, and had another big scan scheduled for 18 weeks. This would be the dreaded BIG anatomy scan; we’d go back to look at the heart more closely when it was fully developed at 20 weeks.
As I waited in Dr. Magee’s office with Mike, I started shaking like a leaf. I was terrified. Four years ago, this moment had rocked my world and thrown my life into a tailspin. It had been and still was the worst moment of my life. Dr. Magee came in and noticed my distress. Mike took one of my hands and his nurse took my other. Dr. Magee immediately did his absolute best to assure me through my tears that every single part of our baby looked absolutely perfect.
After making it through such a difficult appointment, I scheduled the heart scan which was supposed to be no big deal. We were almost in the clear.
Mike was working crazy hours as a young attorney and so two weeks later my mom came to Dallas to take me to the appointment.
The Fetal Cardiologist was pleased with everything she saw, but there was a little catch in her voice that I recognized from our sono tech’s voice four years earlier. I knew something was wrong.
I started to panic.
“Legally, I have to tell you this. But it probably isn’t anything.” Unfortunately for her, saying that “it probably isn’t anything” doesn’t register with me. I’d already lived the lightning strike.
“Your daughter has a bright spot on her heart which can be a soft marker for Down Syndrome. She probably does not have Down Syndrome, but we do have additional testing you can have done if you’d like to know for sure.”
I burst into tears. I had been so anxious my entire pregnancy and now to get all the way to the end of my testing and to have this news. Not that we wouldn’t love a baby with Down Syndrome more than anything in the world, but this was not the news we had expected.
I gave a vile of blood and all too familiarly was notified that we would have the results within fourteen business days.
I received the call during class and stepped outside my room of 8th graders to take it. The results were negative. Our little girl did not have down syndrome. After 22 weeks of anxiety over waiting for blood test results and sonograms to detect genetic abnormalities, open neural tube defects, closed neural tube defects, heart defects, brain scans, etc. we were in the clear. Our daughter really, truly was perfectly healthy.
We spent the next half of our pregnancy actually enjoying it; getting her nursery together, arguing over her name, attending baby showers, child birth classes, and finally, waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
My mom came up to Dallas on January 26th. We got our nails done, went shopping, and waited. I also watched that Budweiser horse and puppy super bowl commercial set to horribly sad music about twenty five times and cried that my relationship with Frank, our dog, was going to change.
I was over being pregnant. And so ready to meet our little girl. I scheduled my induction for the 30th.
The morning of the 30th came and we went to the hospital at 5:00 AM. My first nurse (who was only there for two hours because she worked the night shift) was truly an angel. I didn’t realize how emotional I would get as memories of my first delivery with Jack Henry flooded back to me. She rubbed my back and let me know that today was going to be a totally different experience.
She was right.
Pitocin was started at 7:00. I was fully dilated at 2:30. Dr. Haddock let me labor down and I began pushing around 4:00.
At about 4:30, Dr. Haddock came into the room to deliver my daughter.
Hadley Wilder Nelson was born at 4:49 PM, weighing 8 pounds, 1 ounce and 20 inches long. She was and is perfect.
They immediately set her on my chest and I noticed she had brown goo leaking out of her mouth. She had terminal meconium (swallowed her first bowel movement; yes, disgusting) and was not spitting up the meconium like they needed her to.
They took her from me and began to, what seemed like at least, beat on her back, trying to get her to spit it up. They informed me that they were calling two NICU specialists down to work on her but that if they couldn’t stabilize her breathing she would have to spend the night in the NICU.
While Dr. Haddock was tending to me, she tried to assure me that our baby would be fine.
They decided to try one last thing to stabilize her— kangaroo care— where they put her naked body on my naked chest to try and get her to calm down. It worked almost immediately and soon thereafter our family was invited in to meet our little girl.
So far, Hadley’s six months have been filled with joy and bliss (and of course some anxiety and tears.) She is a sassy little girl with such a big personality. But the best compliment that I get about Hadley is that she is such a happy baby. She really, truly is, and it has been the greatest honor of my life to be her mommy.
At the same time, I must admit that I still think about Jack Henry every day. There are moments that I find myself sad that he didn’t get to squeal at Frank while playing in the exercauser. Or a bit angry that Hadley will grow up not knowing her older brother. Or frustration that I can’t fully explain to every stranger who asks that Hadley is not technically my first born. So I settle for yes, nod my head and smile, all the while in the back of my mind and in my heart remembering my Jack Henry.
At the end of such a dark period of my life, it is so wonderful to hold my little girl, kiss her perfect face and know that she is truly my rainbow- a fulfilled promise of peace after forging through a terrible storm.
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