Adaline Lorraine

Our big ultrasound (morphology) where we were to find out the sex of the baby was Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. Wes and I took the girls with us. Anna is 6 and Rebekah is 3. They were very excited to go. We had talked about it for weeks. The girls wanted a sister. The mere mention of a brother and they were not happy. We had decided if it were a girl we wanted to name it Adaline Lorraine. Adaline was my great, great aunt’s name and Lorraine is a province in France and historically sometimes in Germany that is called Alsace Lorraine where Wes’ ancestors come from. For weeks Bekah called it “baby Adaline” and she was constantly asking about her. We would on varies occasions still ask her what if it was a brother and she would persistently say no. A few days before the ultrasound she would say “my baby sister Adaline is in mommy’s tummy and my baby brother is alive.” It was a strange phrase that I kept wondering about and now gives me chills.

After a few minutes of looking at the baby on the ultrasound screen the tech asked Wes to take the girls out in the hall so she could talk to me alone. I knew before she told me what she was going to say. It confirmed all of the thoughts and feelings I had since the pregnancy began. The tech said your baby has no heartbeat. The baby’s abdomen and skull/brain were full of fluid. I told her to bring Wes back in and the girls would fine to come back in. I told Wes three times that the baby had no heartbeat before it sunk in, mostly because I told him as the girls and him came in the room and the room was noisy from the girls coming in. Anna was devastated. Rebekah went to the other side of the room, sat down and pouted. It killed me emotionally to see her like that. I called my mom to come pick the girls. Dr. W arrived a little while later. She told me the options for how we were going to deliver the baby. She said with much concern that I must go right away to the hospital and be admitted to Labor and Delivery because I was at high risk for DIC (bleed to death internally or with one cut). She said I would have another ultrasound done to determine the size of the baby. The size would determine if I could have it naturally or c-section. I have had two previous c-sections so high levels of inducement drugs were out of the question because I could risk uterus rupture.

At the hospital we sat for over two hours before they took me to have another ultrasound. The baby measured at 16 weeks, 4 days. It was not possible that the baby died at that time because I had had a doctor appointment with us hearing the heartbeat at 17 weeks 2 days. At this point I was 20 weeks 3 days. So they were not exactly sure of the date of the death. I asked the tech if she has seen lots of babies lost in the second trimester and she said no but these are the ultrasounds you do not forget.

They let me have dinner then after the food settled they gave me the first dose of drugs. After they brought me dinner I sent Wes home to get some things including my laptop. I was so bored sitting there. It had been four hours since I was admitted. While Wes was gone I tried to find something on TV and was reminded why I rarely watch TV. Dr. T. (not my regular doc, but doc on call) came in while Wes was gone. He stated all that Dr. W (regular doc) had debriefed him on my situation and said that it appeared the baby might have developed an infection. The bloated stomach and fluid around the brain indicated the likelihood that it had died of an infection. To me this made since because one and half weeks earlier I had suddenly become very ill.

About two hours after I ate they gave me the inducement drugs. They gave me low doses and far apart because of previous c-sections. I could not sleep and I was in no pain for most of the night. Since I could not sleep I stayed up and worked on my laptop and talked to Wes. Early in the morning I started feeling the contractions. The nurse encouraged me to start morphine. I finally agreed. It helped me calm down enough to sleep or at least for an hour. An hour after starting the morphine I had a reaction to it. My stomach and back felt like someone had punched me really hard (not that I have been punched before but I could imagine) and it felt like my stomach or some organ near there was swelling and contracting. The pain it cause was worse than the contractions. I wanted off of it immediately. I would rather deal with the contractions without medicine. The contractions were nothing compared to the pain caused by the morphine. Dr. P, the next doctor on call, came in, introduced herself and explained that I was not progressing fast enough so she wanted to increase the frequency of the inducement drugs. She also said if I did not continue progress I would need a c-section. After she left I lost it emotionally. I could handle loosing the baby but a c-section on top of it. I was hysterically upset. The nurse reassured me that the c-section was the last option. It would be one thing to have a c-section and go through the recovery and have a baby to hold but to go through all of that with no baby would be awful. Fortunately, I progressed over the next couple of hours. The nurse encouraged me to get an epidural before the pain became too intense and especially with the risk of having to do a D&C. I agreed to the epidural. At 12:31 pm on Thursday, March 18, I delivered the baby with no doctors or nuses. The baby was still in the sac. I called for the nurse. The doctor came right away. My placenta, etc blood came out on its own and some with the doctors help and I did not have to have a D&C – yeah!!!

I called my mom and asked her to bring the girls to see the baby. The nurse cleaned the baby. The nurse wrapped her in a receiving blanket. We confirmed it was a girl. Her hands and feet were perfect. Her abdomen and head for swollen just like we had seen in the ultrasound. Her umbilical cord was very twisted – big at the top but super, super thin at the base of her body. Her skin was very thin so she was dark red color. She was the size of my hand.

Anna and Rebekah arrived with my mom. Wes took pictures. We let Anna hold the baby and Rebekah was able to hold the baby with the help of Wes. Rebekah kept asking about her skin. She wanted to know why she was not white. We kept explaining to her why. After a little while the girls and my mom left.

A specialist came in to look at the baby and determine the kinds of tests they could run. After the specialist was done the nurse took the baby to take pictures and do hand and foot prints. Later on the hospital gave us a still born packet with pictures of her laying on an afghan and a fake dress on top of her. Also in the packet were the afghan, dress, hand and foot prints. The packet is made of fabric. The packet is reminder to me of how valuable charity work is.

After the chaos of the delivery and post delivery I was able to get some sleep. I was released the next day.