Birth Story

Willow’s Birth Story

I want more than anything in the world to tell  you this story has a happy ending… But I’m going to warn you from the start that it does not. It doesn’t end the same way most birth stories do, with a picture of mom snuggling baby on her chest with tears of joy in her eyes and dad happily wrapping his arms around them, his perfect little family. It does end with tears, but not tears of joy… 

I have recently read too many birth stories and watched too many magical videos of how beautiful it was and how everything went as planned, or at least close enough. I know why moms write them, it’s supposed to be one of the happiest, most surreal, days of their lives. 

But mine was a little different. 

A LOT different.

It all started on Friday, May 5^th2017. I had Braxton hicks my entire pregnancy, since 18 weeks, so contractions were nothing new. But these ones were more intense, starting to hurt a little, not just a tightening but something real. I didn’t say anything at the time because we were at my parents and I didn’t want to set off any false alarms. Like I said, I had had Braxton hicks close together almost daily. We were packing up to come back to Lebanon after a quick weekend in Gresham. Jon’s friend was in Portland so we came up to visit and made a weekend out of it. We got in the car around 3pm, I had lots of cramping and an active baby sticking her little feet in my ribs the whole way home. It makes that 2 hour drive feel like forever when you’re thinking you could possibly be in labor and you have toes jabbing  your ribcage.

I had contractions all that evening and through the night. They were getting more and more intense but I knew Jon had a long day Saturday so instead of waking him I went out into the living room and bounced on the medicine ball to try an alleviate the pressure. I got tired of that and returned to bed, by then it was almost time for Jon to wake up. He had set his alarm for 7am because he had to be to Corvallis by 9am and it’s a 45 minute drive. But by 7am I was pretty convinced this was the real deal so I let him know what was going on once his alarm went off. He decided it’d be best for him to stay home for a while and just go late if it turned out to be a false alarm.

We went back to bed and were both able to sleep a couple more hours.

Around 10am my contractions were coming fast and hard again so I decided to take the dogs for a walk. Around that time I also noticed baby girl wasn’t being very active, could I even feel her at all? Or are her movements just being masked by the contractions? Am I supposed to feel my baby move while I’m having contractions?

*Everything was so new to me being a first time mom so I didn’t have any of the answers I wanted*

Jon told me to call the dr. so I did that while I was walking the dogs. People say walking encourages labor right? I was sooooo ready to get this baby out and kiss her chubby little cheeks! 

The phone call went something like this:

Me: Hey I know it’s the weekend but I think I might be in labor.

Dr: Oh good! I expected you would have gone by now since you were dilated to a 5 last week.

Me: Okay so what do I do?

Dr: How long and intense are the contractions?

Me: bla bla bla (it’s not the important part so I can’t even remember, but they hurt!!)

DR: Okay bla bla bla (I can’t remember this either)

Me: Oh, and we haven’t really felt her move since yesterday around 3. Is that normal? I figured her movements have just been masked by the contractions?

Dr: Oh really…?  Okay I think it’s time to have you come to the hospital and we’ll see how far dilated you are now.

It’s been a few months so I can’t remember our EXACT words, but they were along those lines. He made it sound like everything was fine because he probably thought everything was fine.  The thought that something wasn’t crossed my mind, but as soon as it came I pushed it away so fiercely that it was afraid to come back; or maybe I was afraid of it coming back. I thought “there’s no way. My baby’s fine. People overreact all the time. Pregnant moms jump to the worst possible problem all the time and, since everything with baby has been 100% perfect thus far, I’m just overreacting… right?”  

When I get home Jon's listening to a lecture on the computer with headphones on so I don’t think he hears me enter. I walk strait to Willow’s room and start grabbing clothes and folding them, things aren't done yet. I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. There's so much left to do. And SOCKS. Yes, socks. Okay I need to get all the socks out of the stupid plastic thingies because she can’t have cold feet. Babies with cold feet get sick and she can’t get sick because babies have low immune systems and socks are the answer. Oh, but which socks to bring to the hospital? Which will match her outfits? Crap, do the outfits I packed have footies built in? How do I not remember the outfits I packed for the hospital!?  

“Honey…… Why are you crying? And why are you folding socks?”

“The Dr. said its time to go to the hospital.”  Plus a bunch of blubber about how I need to get the dang socks out of the plastic thingies and probably how socks were the answer to solving all the problems. 

“Okay, what do I need to do?”    ---- Boom, him asking me that finally brings me back down to earth… we're going to be okay, Jon's here. He’ll make sure everything is fine. 

11:00 am Saturday May 6th

At the hospital: 

They check us in and walk us down a bunch of halls to the room. Not just A room. THE ROOM. The room my baby will be born in and our lives will change forever. 

Nurse #1: “How’re you doing? …… Okay lets first find babies heartbeat.”

She took a while rubbing that gooey stuff all over my belly trying to locate her heart. Why isn't she finding it? It never took the Dr. this long to find it. She must be new… she just doesn’t know what she’s doing. 

Nothing

Nurse #1: “I’ll go get someone more experienced, sorry I’m not very good at this.”

Jon knows exactly what’s going on. Finding a babies heartbeat with a little plastic metal thingy isn’t rocket science. He sat next to me on the bed and put his arm around me forcing a smile. He knows I still have hope. We pray… Dear Heavenly Father, please let everything be alright with our baby girl… PLEASE… 

Head Nurse: “Hi I’m going to use a better doppler, it’s probably similar to the one they use at the dr’s office.” 

Oh thank goodness, the other one probably just isn’t working. This one will work. This one will find her heartbeat. Good thing they grabbed the head nurse, she knows what she’s doing…. 

Nothing

Head Nurse: “Is there a location the dr. usually goes to find the heartbeat?”

Me: “Bottom right”

Still Nothing

Head Nurse: “Okay let me go see if one of our ultrasound technicians are here.”

Silent tears start tricking down my cheeks but I don’t even notice. I just look at Jon with the hope of a mothers love praying my will alone can help them find a heartbeat. Please God,  PLEASE. I’ll give anything to have them find a heartbeat. Anything… Let me trade her places on earth… please… anything… I’ll give anything…

Ultrasound tech: “Hey how’re you? Haven’t seen  you since you were jogging laps for me at 20 weeks.” (Willow was stubborn at her anatomy scan and he had me walk around the hospital for her to move into a better position). 

More mall talk as he searched…    

Then he got real quiet and I PRAY he won't say what I already know…

Ultrasound tech: “Ariel, I can’t find a heartbeat. I’m so sorry.”

I can’t believe it, this can’t be real life. This can’t actually be happening. The sound of my heart breaking into pieces echoes out my mouth. Animalistic. Raw. My entire world is crashing down. My chest is tight; I can’t breathe, I can’t see, all the tears. Jon’s holding me so tight and his own tears are soaking my hair. Hearing those words… about our baby girl!? The child that’s still in my belly? The baby I’ve so carefully carried for 9 long months, the baby we’ve planned our entire life around, the baby we have so many hopes and dreams for?

She’s gone. 

In those 5 simple words.

It’s all over. 

They must have called my Dr. because he showed up not much later in his street clothes. 

Dr: “I just looked at the ultrasound, we see there is some fluid in her lungs. By the amount of fluid we estimate her heart stopped less than 12 hours ago.” He probably said some other things but this is what plays over and over in my head. Over and over and over…

12 hours ago? Where was I 12 hours ago?  Flash back to the car on our trip home yesterday, those little feet jabbing my ribs… was that the last time I felt my baby girl move? Was that when it happened? 

Me: “Are her organs still viable? To be transplants for other babies?” 

Dr: “Unfortunately not since her heart has stopped beating.”

He gives his condolences, he says how it doesn’t make sense and how perfect everything was with my pregnancy. He looks so lost, so helpless. I know because it's the same way I look. The same way Jon looks.

Confused. Caught off guard. Defeated.

There is nothing we can do. She's gone. Willow, our sweet baby girl. Gone. Forever. All over. Nothing we can do. There’s nothing left to do. 

Next came options. Do we want to proceed with a vaginal birth or would we like to opt for a cesarean section.? Here’s the pros and cons of each…. I recommend vaginal for future births… I can’t even hear him, am I in a dream? This can’t be real. This can’t be actually happening. How am I having this conversation right now?! This is wrong, so wrong… This is not what I  planned for. They told me to “Make a birth plan then stick to it.” Good one. Cruel joke people. 

Jon calls my dad so they can start the 2 hr drive down from Portland, then his dad to tell him the news. Both of them answer the phone asking if it’s baby time…  yep , it’s time. We hear my mom scream in the background and the disbelief in both of our dad’s voices. I still can’t believe it myself. How can I? How can I live in a world without my child? It’s all so wrong. I hate this world.

The Dr. breaks my water after confirming I’m already in active labor. That’s a super weird experience… Glad no one else is in the room for that! Jon ran home to check on the pigs (our two French bulldogs) and my parents are out in the hall. They made the 2 hour drive in just over an hour. Not surprised.

Next thing I know I’m being drained of probably 30 or more vials of blood – testing. They run hundreds of tests to try and find out WHY. The question that to this day is still unanswered. The questions that will bounce around my brain until the end of this lifetime. Why…? 

Next, I’m being hooked up to an IV. (In my elbow, yep. Couldn’t bend my arm or the machine would beep at me. I hate that machine). They say Pitocin is optional because I’m dilated to a 7 but I opt for it to speed up the process. I want this hell over with as fast as possible. Then came the huge needle, I wasn’t gonna do this “natural” if I didn’t get to keep my baby after. I just want to numb the pain. Numb all the pain… too bad the epidural can’t go to my brain instead of my abdomen.  

The nurse anesthetist who gave me the epidural is a character. He’s telling us his life story and how he was just chopping wood with his schizophrenic son when he got the call to come in. He’s wearing dirty shorts and what look like slip on sandals from his high school days. When he left the room the epidural started going up instead of down, too bad it wouldn’t have actually numbed my brain. A girl can dream. So they have me sit  up higher to try an make it go down, now it’s only numbing my right side… So it’s numbed from my bellybutton UP, and my right leg… It sort of skipped a crucial part, like the main part. They try having me move in all sorts of positions but nothing helps. This day just kept getting better.

This was NOT how I planned to have my baby girl. I didn’t want Pitocin, I didn’t want an epidural. I didn’t want to NOT wear a baby heart monitor. I didn’t want to be streaming tears the entire time because my heart was literally breaking inside of me. I wanted tears of pain, from being a badass and doing it without drugs. This is ALL. WRONG. 

So we wait. 

I have Jon help me limp to the bathroom once since my right leg was only partially numb, I can still move it. We get in trouble for that. I guess you’re not supposed to get out of bed with an epidural, let alone walk around… oops! They were afraid I’d fall down or something. 

Brock and Hannah arrive, my mom brought us blizzards, dad takes a nap on the chair that transforms into a bed. It’s late. Then everyone goes home. They expect her to come sometime Sunday. Everyone is tired, and all I want to do is sleep. To escape this.

Welp, looks like we were wrong, it was showtime. Jon called my parents. Mom and Hannah were outside the room around 1am. The Dr. came back and it was time to push…  

The whole thing HURTS. LIKE. HELL. (the epidural didn’t numb down “there” remember?) I start off with a mirror, but once the Dr. says “I’m just gonna make a couple little snips” I’m like NOPE. Not watching that! Besides that, the pushing is the best part. For a lot of it only Jon and I are in the room. He’s holding my leg and encouraging me with every push, even when I’m beyond exhausted. He’s SO perfect, my only solace in this depth of physical and emotional anguish. I wouldn’t have it any other way. The way he looks at me… The love in his eyes so tangible I can feel it wrapping around me. Like he wants to protect me from everything. I know if he could, he would take all of the pain for me. He would go through it just so I didn’t have to. He knows I’m doing the hardest thing I’ll ever physically do, and soon we’ll both do the hardest thing we’ll ever have to do… There’s nothing more binding than walking through hell holding hands.

Okay, it’s time. A couple last pushes and she’ll be here. I turn off the pain in my head and do it. Here we go little girl, mama can’t wait to see you.

Sunday, 1:40 am. Our beautiful, perfect Angel. They put her warm little pink body on my chest. Jon and I just stare at her for a second, amazed at how pure and sweet her spirit is and the way it encircles us in the purest kind of love. But it doesn’t take long for my motherly instincts to realize she isn’t crying and she never will. We’ll never get to see her open her eyes, or know if they’re green like mine or blue like her dad’s… The nurse weighs her and says she’s 8lbs. The Dr. looks at her and tells her to weigh her again, that he knows she’s at least 9lbs. He was right, the nurse forget to press a button on the scale. 9lbs 5oz. 21” long with a full head of curly brown hair. 

I tore 4 inches, had an arterial bleed and was hemorrhaging, so it took the Dr. over 40 minutes to stich me up. Did I mention I don’t numb well? Oooouch. But the physical pain I feel is nothing compared to the all encompassing despair I feel, holding my lifeless baby in my arms… She was swaddled in a pretty blanked we brought that had my favorite flowers on it. Peonies. 

After I’m stable again my mom and Hannah came in. They both hold her commenting on who she looks like and how perfect she is. They also notice the intense spirit in the room with us. She may not be encompassing the body we hold, but she’s encompassing everyone and everything in the whole room. She filled it with her pure love. There are many tears but there’s also a sense of peace, God knows our situation and He is there for us.

By now I’m so emotionally and physically drained I can hardly keep my eyes open. Losing so much blood and crying my bodyweight out in tears makes it hard to stay awake, and I finally got the release sleep had promised. 

The next morning, we woke and Jon’s brother and sister in-law Jake and Katie had dropped everything once they heard the news and drove from Idaho to be with us. Their precious baby boy Landon had gone to live with Jesus the same way as Willow and their love and support at this time was priceless. 

We held her, had a photographer capture our last moments together as a family, sang songs to her, and then finally gave the okay for them to take her away… The most heartbreaking part of all. But even as her body left the room, her spirit stayed with us. She wrapped her daddy and I up in a way I can’t even describe. She was comforting us as if to say “I miss you too, but we’ll be together again soon. And I can’t wait!” 

______________________________

But this is not the end of the story… Only the beginning. 

The beginning of a beautifully raw story of a mother and father coming closer to Christ. Allowing His soothing balm to heal their broken souls. Learning to lean on each other in the darkest of time, and having unconditional love as they each grieve in their own ways.

Jon and I have learned so much from Willow over the past year. She has strengthened our testimonies in the plan of salvation and KNOW we will see her again and get to raise her. She may not be physically with us but we feel her spirit STRONGLY every day. A blessing that only comes from losing a child. It may be the most bitter thing in the world, but it is also the sweetest. She’s here, and she always will be. We have gotten to see glimpses of her personality and know she loves and misses us as much as we love and miss her. We also know she was taken early for a reason, we may never know exactly why, but she has work to do on the other side of the veil. She’s a busy little bee over there and we couldn’t be more proud of the hard work we know she’s doing. We’re sure she’s preparing her younger siblings to come join us and telling them all about their mommy and daddy and how to push our buttons. She’s going to be the best big sister guardian angel ever, and we couldn’t be more grateful for that. 

We love you so much Willow <3 We’ll talk to you again soon, and one day see you in Heaven. Until then, give Jesus a hug for us. 

XOXO, Mama