My JJ Story

Well, my cerclage gets removed tomorrow (I guess now that it's so late, it's really today...) and after that this little guy could join us at any time.  Doctor says 20% chance I'll go right into labor.  Doctor also says I might not even have an incompetent cervix and might be totally fine.  Doctor also says he's induced plenty of women who had cerclages.  Bottom line, after tomorrow, we don't have a whole lot of plans.  I'm hoping by this weekend we'll know if we're going to have a baby RIGHT AWAY or if we have a few more weeks.  Remember, his official due date still isn't for another month.

In the last few months, I've found some wonderful blogs by other women who've lost babies like I did with JJ.  I've gotten a lot of peace and comfort from their words.  I think that since everything looks to be okay with this pregnancy, it is a lot easier for me to deal with my feelings about my first "failed" one.  I read these stories written by women who lost a baby two weeks ago and have already been able to record their story!  I told myself that before this baby came, I would record my JJ story.  I would write it down, so I had it, before I had another delivery story to fade my memory.  So I did that tonight (I didn't use to procrastinate, I promise!).  It ended up a lot longer than I thought it would.  I tried to slim it down before submitting it to Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope and I could only cut out a few lines, a few paragraphs.  So I guess, even though I didn't see it this way, my story is long, and I remembered a lot more about it than I thought.

As we get ready to start our family here on earth with this new baby, I know that recording my JJ story was good for me as a mother, a wife and a griever.  At times in this pregnancy, I've worried that by getting pregnant again we were leaving JJ behind.  Having a baby here with us would make us forget our baby in heaven.  Being excited about baby #2 meant we'd forgotten about baby #1.  But writing the story down was good for me and I know that JJ and I will have our time together, now just isn't it.  Here it is in all it's detailed glory.  (Oh, and wish me luck in getting Jason to record his story too...)

I selected my OB based strictly on geography.  When I asked my general doctor for a referral, she knew of only one doctor in the area near my work.  I called the office and scheduled an appointment for infertility.  We had been trying for a year and a half with no success and I was ready to talk to someone who might be able to help.  Since I’m a teacher, I called at the beginning of my summer and they didn’t have any openings until the end of my summer.  However, one week before my appointment I took a pregnancy test and found out I was pregnant.  We were so excited, we’d been married almost five years and now we were going to be parents!  I called the office and changed my infertility appointment to a pregnancy confirmation appointment.

At the appointment the lady asked me how many pregnancy tests I’d taken.  I said, “Just one.”  She couldn’t believe me.  I thought to myself, I’d taken so many in the last 18 months and none of them had ever been positive, I didn’t need to take another.

The pregnancy continued without any great difficulty.  I had a few additional ultrasounds at the beginning for some small hemorrhaging behind the placenta, but it turned out to be nothing.

We found out on a Tuesday (10/20) at 19 weeks that we were going to be having a boy.  My husband, Jason, was so excited he couldn’t even stay in the room for any more of the ultrasound he had to leave the room to tell everyone he knew.  I, on the other hand, was a bit sad about it being a boy.  As I sat on the medical table and dealt with my disappointment, his life flashed before my eyes and I could see him leaving me on his mission.  And I was sad.  I had to reassure myself, he isn’t even born yet!  You have 19 more years before he’s going to be leaving you, Relax!  It was then that I knew having a boy was going to be okay.

The following Sunday night (10/25), we were at my parents for the annual family pumpkin carving party.  We had bought me a pumpkin to carve but when I got there I just didn’t feel up to carving, so I told my cousin I’d hold her baby so she could carve with her little kids.  I looked at it as good practice and an easy out.  I was sitting on the couch holding the baby when I felt the first contraction.  However, as a first time mommy, I didn’t realize that’s what it was.  I just thought it was my dad’s chili paying me back.

I don’t remember much about the next day at work and how much pain I was or wasn’t in.  I’d experienced the normal pregnancy “discomfort” and I think I just chalked it up to that and worked through it. (Teachers don’t have the luxury of having the time to be sick.)  But I do remember that that night as I ran some errands with my sister I felt horrible.  I remember telling her, “It’s a good thing we have to take care of this shopping, because I feel like crap.”  I remember talking to my friend on the phone on the way home, tell her something similar.  

I got home and crashed on the couch, telling Jason I felt horrible.  He was worried about me and asked me to call the doctor to see what he suggested.  I wasn’t sold.  It was 9:30 at night, what on earth could the doctor tell me?  I had work in the morning.  Jason called our neighbor, and home teacher, as asked him to help give me a blessing.  In the blessing he spoke of the doctors and of them helping to find out what was wrong so that everything would be okay.  I was so worried about something happening to the baby that I only listened for something to that effect.  After that blessing I knew I had to call the doctor.  The on call nurse told me she wanted me to go to triage at the hospital to get checked out.  She asked me a few questions that threw up some red flags for me, “How far apart are the pains?” “How long do they last?”  I told her it wasn’t really like that, but I knew that based on those questions, she thought I was in labor.

We lived over 30 minutes from the hospital, so by the time we got to the hospital it was 10:30 and I was still just worried about work the next day.  I texted my coworker to tell her we were checking into the hospital and I would keep her posted.  In the car was the first time I felt the pains in waves and then I started to get worried.  I told myself that if I could just hear his heartbeat, I would know everything was okay.

Triage checked me in, she found his heartbeat quicker than they ever had before at prior appointments, and I felt a wave of relief. They put me in one of the Triage rooms and started monitoring the contractions.  After monitoring me for about 10 minutes, they came back in and said I was experiencing some pre-term labor symptoms and they would give me some Terbutaline shots.  While Jason was worried and I was nervous, none of the nurses seemed to reflect those feelings.  They asked us if we had a name picked out yet.  We told them we’d only known for a week that it was a boy and hadn’t decided yet.  They made it sound like I would get these few shots and then they would send me home shortly.  We hadn’t even told our parents yet that we were at the hospital.

In between shots, the nurse did a vaginal ultrasound.  Everything looked good.  After the ultrasound, I told the nurse I felt like I was “leaking” she said it was probably just the lubricant from the ultrasound.  Then she lifted my gown and saw that it was blood.  Then they checked to see if I was dilated.  I was dilated 3 cm.  Things then changed very suddenly.  The doctor came in (the same one I’d seen less than a week earlier telling me everything was fine) and told us that normally this hospital didn’t deal with women this early in labor and they might have to air vac me to another hospital in Phoenix that specialized in women in labor this early.  I then told Jason he could call our parents, we were going to be here for a while.

Even though I was only 20 weeks, I ended up staying at that hospital. (Jason told me later that the doctor told him I was in too precarious of a situation to air vac and they had to keep me there.)  The doctor made it perfectly clear that if I did deliver this early, there was nothing they could do to make the baby survive.  Nurses rushed in and gave me the warnings for taking magnesium sulfate, “mag,” inserted a catheter, and worked on an IV.  And those same red flag questions came back, “On a scale of 1-10, how much pain are you in?” “Are the contractions getting more painful?” “Do you feel like pushing?”  Once I was hooked up to mag, everything got a little blurry for me.

I remember being wheeled into an L&D room.  I remember them elevating my feet and lowering my head trying to keep blood away from my pelvic area.  I remember vomiting once the mag was in my system for twenty minutes.  I remember being monitored every 30 minutes. My parents showed up about 45 minutes later and I could tell from the way my mom looked at me that things were pretty bad.  But she stayed with me and kept me company.

I made it through the night and the contractions lightened only slightly.  The next morning the specialists started to visit.  First it was the neonatologist with the strong accent.  She was in there for about three minutes and said exactly what I’d heard the night before.  If I delivered my son this early, there was nothing she could do for him.  If I could make it even three more weeks, then she could help.  Then it was the perinatologist with the snakeskin boots who started to throw around words like “incompetent cervix” and “cerclage”.   He told us that if they could stop labor, then he could perform a surgery to stitch up my cervix.  I would be put on bedrest for a while and should be able to carry the baby full term- if they could stop labor.  He told us he would come back after lunch and monitor my progress.  Thank heavens he had a busy day and didn’t make it back to my room until 9:30 pm, because by then, labor had slowed extensively.  After a day of high doses of mag, regular shots of Zofran to combat the nausea, and elevated feet, he cleared me to lower my dose, lay parallel with the ground and even sit as needed to drink and eat if I felt up to it.

The second night in the hospital went a lot better.  I could finally have that drink of water I had been asking for since Triage.   Wednesday (10/28) was a good day.  I was able to sit up for most of the day and watch movies with my sister.  Friends who came this day said I looked great and were happy to hear that I felt better too.  It looked like that cerclage might actually be an option.  My dad even offered to stay at the hospital with me that night so Jason could go home and rest.  Jason declined and said he’d be okay.  Thank goodness he was there that night.

That night Jason asked the nurse to give me a sponge bath to try and cheer me up.  While the sponge bath happened I could feel the contractions coming on stronger.  But I wasn’t worried, I had had a great day, I had felt great.  I just had to sleep through this, get some more medication and I would be fine.

Wednesday night was even worse than the first night in the hospital in more rooms than just mine.  The L&D wing was buzzing with activity and getting any nurse response was a slow process.  I first asked her over to see if they could increase my mag dose.  The doctor allowed her to increase the dosage, but not to as much as it had been when I first checked in.  We had to go through the need for Zofran again.  I couldn’t sleep through the pain and all the nurse could offer me was Tylenol or a sleep aid.  After two nights of no sleep, Jason was finally able to sleep on the couch in the room.  He missed most of the pain I was in.  

The contractions were now closer together than they had ever been since my hospital stay.  By the time I could relax enough to go to sleep, another more painful contraction would start.  Early, early in the morning, the nurse could tell that there wasn’t a lot they could do to stop the labor.  The doctor thought they might be able to try a medicine usually for arthritis patient that might relax the uterus, but she was having trouble locating it through the pharmacy. She then said they could give me something stronger for the pain, maybe some morphine?  A few minutes later she asked me if there was anyone I wanted to call, clergy? Parents? 

 I felt bad waking Jason but knew I had to.  He called our bishop and my parents.  Both arrived shortly.  My mom held my hand through everything.   She gave me words of comfort and told me everything would be okay.  The bishop and my dad gave me a blessing (Jason was too worried to do it).  I listened to that blessing intently too.  Waiting to hear the words about him being taken from us.  Nothing.  I remember hearing, “Heavenly Father has a plan for your son.”  To me, that meant, he was coming to this earth to live out his plan.  Even then, I still didn’t think I would deliver this baby right then.  Everything was going to be okay, my body would cooperate and keep him in.  I would be fine.  I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the room who still felt that way.

The minute I felt like pushing, I knew my hope and faith wasn’t going to fix this situation.  I knew what that meant.  I remember my mom saying to me, “He just needs you to give him a body, can you do that for him?”  Jason was outside on the phone when the pain really swelled and the urge to push started.  This was also about 7:00 am on Thursday, October 29, 2009 (21 weeks exactly), while the nurses were changing shifts.  After a rough night all around the hospital, there was a lot of things that had to be discussed and there were no nurses anywhere near my room.  My dad went to get any nurse he could.  After he left and the pain got truly horrible, I screamed.  Jason heard me down the hall and came running.  My first push, I was all alone with my mom and husband.  By the second push, the entire nurses’ station had swarmed inside my room.  Just in time to catch my son and hurriedly clean up everything.  

The nurse who cleaned him and weighed him said, “He’s breathing. Do you want to hold him?” I looked at my mom and didn’t know what to say.  In all my dreams and all my thoughts of the day my son would be born, I wasn’t going to be faced with this decision. I trembled out an “Okay.” I knew I didn’t have the time to think about it before the time was over.  While the nurses continued to work through the room, Jason and I held our son and shared his perfection together.  My husband was holding him when JJ took his last breath.

I remember calling my coworker, in tears, ten minutes before the bell would ring on campus, and telling her what had happened.  She was wonderful, as she had been the last two days making my sub plans and monitoring my class.

I remember my mother telling me I was the strongest person she knew.  She had always been impressed by my strength and she knew that I would get through this.  She knew I would get to be a mother in this life.  She knew that Jason and I would be okay, we would “go through our dark tunnels” and come together in the end.

For the rest of the morning, my nurse would bring his body in and out as family came wanting to see him and cherish him too.  A photographer came and captured some of the precious moments on film.  My nurse worked to help my body get put back together.  She took out my IV.  She removed the catheter.  She helped me to the restroom.  I remember what it felt like when I first stood after being in a hospital bed for almost 60 hours, that emptiness inside me with the absence of my son.  Family and friends came to visit, to offer comfort with the words they couldn’t find.  I was still in shock.  My body was finally mostly back to normal, I was no longer in labor or on mag. It longed to roll over in exhaustion.  My mind didn’t have the energy to make sense of what had happened.  They asked us about burial options.  Someone from the state came to discuss the birth and death certificate.  The counselor came to see how I was doing.  All I wanted to do was sleep and be alone with my husband.

During one of those brief moments of solitude, Jason asked me if we could name our son after him.  Of all the decisions I had to make that day and of all the things I wasn’t sure about, I knew that was right.  I knew our son was meant to be named after his father, because even at 21 weeks, he resembled his father.  In the days after JJ’s death I would look at my husband sleeping and see our son’s face in his.  I know that our son has even more in common with his father and when I do get to raise him in heaven, after this life, all of those similarities will be made known to me and then, hopefully, I will understand why he was too pure, too holy to share his life on earth with us for longer than he did.