"Our Nightmare" - Our Story, Part 12

This pregnancy was a HUGE surprise but very welcomed. We were thrilled and overjoyed to be expecting a third baby and especially after only trying for one month! How good is God?! We were also, to be completely honest, scared to death! When this baby was due to be born, my little girl would only be 26 months old. Wow. I did not know how I was going to do it. When I had Savannah, my son was 7!! I had never had two babies in the house at once but I knew that God would take care of it all. I didn't need to worry about the future right now. All I had to worry about at this very moment was the excruciating nausea that was about to hit and how I was going to keep myself out of the hospital this time around.

Like clockwork, at 5 1/2 weeks along, I started to feel sick. Not horribly sick, just that constant and nagging feeling of nausea that lasted all day and all night long. I took that to be a good sign! This must be a strong baby and a healthy pregnancy. I felt this way with both of my others and they were just fine. I called my OB/GYN and asked for a blood test to confirm my dates. I went in and had my blood drawn and they called that afternoon to say that everything was OK. My levels weren't high and they were not low - they were perfectly in the middle. I hung up the phone and awaited the next blood draw that would take place in 48 hours. My levels should have doubled by that time and then after that I would go in for an ultrasound. We were on our way to having another little miracle...

BUT, something felt wrong to me. I wasn't getting SUPER sick like I did with my son or my daughter. I was very nauseated but I wasn't throwing my guts up and I hadn't ended up in the hospital yet for dehydration. Hmmmm. Then, we we received our second test results, the levels had doubled like they were supposed to, but just barely. It made me very nervous and I remember talking to my mom, my husband, and my sister who assured me that all was OK - that I was just having some anxiety over it all. I had to admit that they were right... everything looked OK but something still seemed wrong. I decided to try to place it out of my mind and move forward with the pregnancy. Had I not learned to rely on God and stop looking to myself for answers?!!! My goodness... hadn't He shown me enough in the past for me to just trust Him completely and not take it all in my own hands?! Boy, we sometimes can be so stubborn.

I went in for a ultrasound at about 5 1/2 to 6 wks. knowing what to expect. Since I was an OB/GYN nurse who also worked for 4 years as an OB ultrasound technician, I knew just what I was going to see on the screen. I needed to see two things for me to feel comfortable. One, that the pregnancy was inside the uterus and two, I needed to see a yolk sac. For those of you who do not know what that is, it is a little white appearing ring seen during those scans - you can see it before you can see the baby! It is the source of nutrition for the baby that is visible in the early weeks prior to the placenta taking over. At that visit, I saw one out of the two things. The pregnancy was in the uterus but I saw no yolk sac. The nurse assured me that that could be normal and that I could be off on my dates, etc. For me not to worry and that they would see me back in 3 weeks for another ultrasound. OK, I thought... I just need to get through 3 weeks and once I see that baby and it's heartbeat, I will feel much better.

We left the doctor and pondered what I saw on the scan quite a bit. Would the baby be OK? Is everything growing the way it should? Did we press our luck and ask for too much? Could the office have missed something? My mind was wondering and I was beginning to panic again. I had to just stop and take a deep breath. "All is OK", I kept telling myself. Stop thinking the worse...

The next 3 weeks seemed to take forever. I took my Zofran every 8 hours and kept the nausea at bay the best I could. I never threw up and for that I was thankful. The few days prior to my ultrasound, I seemed to feel a little better. I was up, moving around and taking care of my kids. I felt like the Zofran was working and I was feeling quite good to be 8.5 weeks along. At this time in my last pregnancy, I was in the hospital for the second straight week about to receive a central line so they could feed me. This go around, I was up and trying to play with my 18 month old. I thought it could be an answer to prayer! We had prayed for me not to be so sick and I was hoping that was why I was feeling like I was feeling.

On August 14th, 2006, my husband and I went in to see my doctor. We purposely left our 8 year old behind "just in case" something were wrong. As I hopped on the table so the ultrasound technician could do her thing, I was grinning from ear to ear. I couldn't wait to see that little teddy bear on the screen with that heart going a mile a minute. I knew this pregnancy was different and even though I had allowed those feelings of uncertainity to come in and haunt me for the prior 3 weeks, I was still optimistic about what God was doing in my womb. I was ecstatic to be having another little miracle. The young lady who started my scan never turned the screen my way - which totally annoyed me. Didn't she know that I was there to see my baby and didn't she know that I KNEW what I was looking at. I wasn't some patient who didn't have a clue what was going on - I use to work with this very doctor for goodness sake!

"May I look please?", I said to her.

"Um, let me get a few measurements. You know I can not say anything to you. You have to wait for the doctor".

Whatever, I thought. Just show me the screen already!!! She never did. She kept looking, and pushing buttons, and measuring, and ignoring me. I was getting anxious.

"I want to see the screen", I told her again.

She repeated herself, "I can not tell you anything about the scan."

"I know that", I said. "Just let me see my baby".

She tore off the pictures and turned it toward me. There on the screen was my precious baby. A little part of me and my husband. My children's sibling and my parent's grandchild. But this time around, I could tell there was no life there. It lay motionless, with no heartbeat, and measured only 7weeks and 5 days. My baby had been dead for almost a week and deep down, I think I had known it.

She hurried out of the room and I turned to my husband and began to cry. He was smiling because he had no idea what he was looking at. He thought all was OK.

"That is not a normal baby. That baby is not alive. Our baby is not alive!!"

By that point I was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. My hubby said that maybe I was wrong and that maybe everything was actually OK but I told him otherwise. I knew what I had seen on that screen and I knew what I had been feeling deep down in my gut all this time was true... and yet, I couldn't believe it. I was in total shock. I was definitely pregnant again, but this time my ending wasn't going to be a fairytale... it was turning into a nightmare.

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