Day 4

I feel full of unanswered and unanswerable questions.

Is it ok if I feel awful?

Is it ok if sometimes I feel normal and then suddenly, for no specific reason, I feel awful again?

Is it ok if I’m scared of what happens next?

Is it ok if I try not to think about it sometimes?

Is it ok if I want to think about it and cry sometimes?

How do I keep this from overtaking my efforts to be a good mother for Evan and June?

How can I use this experience to help me be a better, more loving person?

How do I deal with this?

Yesterday Jarom stayed home from work. We didn’t really do much all day. I woke up around 5:30 when June needed something, and when I came back to bed I sobbed for an hour or two. Eventually I fell back asleep and Jarom got up with June the next time she woke up. In the afternoon we all went on a walk, and spent a while outside. I chilled in the swing with June; she fell asleep on my lap. I only had a few moments where I was overwhelmed – for some reason, seeing myself in the mirror sets me off. But I went to bed early. Jarom and I started listing 3 things we’re grateful for at bedtime. On my list yesterday: (1) I have Jarom. (2) My buddy Megan brought us dinner and Drumsticks for dessert. (3) We didn’t have to sit through all of Jack the Giant Slayer. We’d gone to see it Tuesday night to distract ourselves – it was the next movie playing when we got to the theater – and it was so bad, we ended up leaving. I literally preferred to go talk about the impending death of my baby than finish watching that movie.

Today Jarom went back to work. This morning the kids went over to a friend’s house – I was shocked beyond words that Evan went willingly, since he wants to stay at home even when I ask if he’d like to go out for ice cream – and my friend Bridget came over with donuts. I’m glad she did, because I learned that being alone isn’t good for me right now. Bridget and I went to an antique store for a while, but once I got home I broke down again. Jarom was able to leave work (it’s nice that he works for a small company and they’re very understanding), and we ended up going back to the antique store together. They had a big box of Legos and a Lego table we bought for Evan as a surprise for when he got home.

By the way, before this all happened, we’d explained to Evan that if we had a baby girl, he’d have to trade rooms with June so we could put the two girls together in the bigger bedroom. He was actually excited about the idea of moving into June’s smaller room and asked frequently if we could go ahead and move their stuff. The plan was to wait until we knew if the baby was a boy or girl and then, if needed, trade rooms; since we still don’t know the gender and it sadly isn’t relevant to the bedroom setup anymore, I switched the kids’ beds yesterday. It gave me something to focus on. Today while the kids were gone Jarom and I finished cleaning their rooms and moving the toys and clothes around. When Evan came home and saw the Legos and the table, he was thrilled. It was definitely worth the money and the effort to get it set up for him.

This evening one of the girls in our neighborhood came to babysit for a few hours. I asked her on Sunday if she could come over, so after the stress of Monday and Tuesday I debated cancelling. (Honestly, it was mainly because our house is such a disaster right now. It’s embarrassing. But I sort of have an excuse . . . right?) Jarom and I didn’t have any specific plans, so we made up a date as we went along. Pro tip: Spanish Fork basically closes at 6pm. Don’t bother trying to browse downtown later than that. The only places open were a pet store and an international market. After the disappointing Spanish Fork scene, we spent a while in Barnes & Noble, where, by the way, they are currently selling adorable donut pillows. Just in case you feel like you should send me a little something to cheer me up. We had hot chocolate and cheesecake in the cafe and then used a Best Buy giftcard to get Toy Story 3. Right now I really feel like spoiling Evan and June a little . . .

Tomorrow I’ll take the kids to a neighbor’s house in the morning – their kids are the same ages as mine, so they have a lot of fun together. Then breakfast with a friend and an hour or two to myself. We’ll see how that goes. Jarom needs to renew his driver’s license before it expires on Monday (it’s his birthday!!!), so he’ll take care of that before we meet with the OB at 4. We sat down this afternoon to make a list of questions to ask. Every single thing on the list was awful. I don’t want to need to ask any of them. I was doing ok with the list until I got to “When I have the baby, will I be in Labor & Delivery with all the other expectant moms?” The thought was too much. I’m scared of everything about that day, but especially of being surrounded by so many reminders of what I’m losing.

Day 3

As strange as it is to think of, the most surprising thing in this is how caught by surprise we were.  We were surprised at each step of the process, and continued to be surprised by how everything is unfolding.

We were surprised when we were at the ultrasound.  Mika’s other two pregnancies, while having their difficulties, were really quite remarkable in how well they went.  I always worried before the ultrasound, usually about things like whether the baby had all ten fingers and toes.  Despite my worries, I never actually expected anything to be wrong.  During the ultrasound this time, I noticed that the sonographer kept mentioning how hard it was to look at certain things in the baby, even though in previous pregnancies he was able to see these things fairly easily.  I shouldn’t have been surprised when he was eventually concerned at the low levels of fluid, but I was.

We were surprised by the meeting with the OB.  I fully expected that the meeting with the OB would be a fairly simple affair where they told us that things were serious, but that there was a chance of things being OK.  However, as Mika later pointed out, they don’t schedule things so quickly when everything is OK.  I was surprised when Mika told me about how all of the major causes of low amniotic fluid usually result in the infant’s death.

We were surprised by the meeting with the perinatologist.  I, perhaps foolishly, assumed that the meeting with the perinatologist was just a precaution.  That we would get a stern warning about the dangers of low fluid levels, and that Mika would be put on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy.  After the first ultrasound, Mika sent me an email that they were having trouble finding the baby’s kidneys.  Even then, I was surprised when she showed up in my office  in tears.  I was shocked when she told me that not only was our tiny baby, the one who I had felt kick and move, was sick; but the baby was so sick that it would not live.  So sick that there was not a single thing we could do.  So sick, that the doctor’s used phrases like “the baby’s condition is non-compatible with life inside or outside the womb.”

I was surprised at how devastated I was.  I had always heard growing up that parents love their children equally.  I never understood this.  I understood it a little bit better when I fell in love with Mika, and there just seemed to be more room for love in my heart.  Even then, I worried when we were pregnant with Evan, that somehow having a child would result in a entropic transfer of love from Mika to Evan, where there was ultimately less love than there was before.  Again, I was pleasantly surprised when it seemed that my capacity for love grew upon Evan’s birth, and again at June’s birth.

However, with both Evan and June, I only noticed the love when they were born.  I remember feeling the swelling that my heart had grown when I first saw them.  I assumed that it was their birth that led directly to the increase in love.  When Mika told me that there was little chance our baby would be born alive, I was surprised to find how much I already loved the baby.  I was already to love this child that I had never met.  It was like finding out that there was a hole in a place in my heart that I didn’t even know was there.  I am left wondering: how am I supposed to fill a hole I didn’t know was empty in the first place?

Day 2

I hope no one is offended if I haven’t gotten in touch directly with an update. Writing is a lot easier for me, and a blog post is a lot faster than many phone calls and texts.

Jarom had meetings this morning, so I went to see the perinatologist alone. The sonographer was really nice and tried to ease my worries when I first went in. She said there’s no specific fluid level they need at this point and a “low fluid level” diagnosis is fairly subjective. I appreciated that she explained everything she was looking at and made it easy for me to see what she was doing. As time went on, though, she said less and less. Eventually she said she wanted the specialist to come in and take a look because she had some concerns.

The specialist introduced himself and then was silent for the next 15 minutes as he looked very, very hard for any indication that the baby’s kidneys were working. After that long, though, I was pretty sure that no good news was coming. I lost it when he told me that the baby’s kidneys hadn’t developed, and that as a result, several problems ensued, primarily the lungs failing to develop.

There is nothing that we can do. Without functioning kidneys and lungs, the baby won’t survive.

As you can imagine, it’s heartbreaking news to hear. We’ve been given several options but aren’t sure yet what we want to do next. Right now, we’re trying to love our family more and more.

Please ask any questions you have. Writing and talking about this is really helpful for me, so don’t feel like you need to avoid the topic.

I can safely say, thus far in my life, this is the worst day I’ve ever had. What’s especially awful is knowing that a worse day will come soon.

:(