The anesteologist (sp?) was very sweet, she told me how beautiful our baby was and how sorry she was about our loss. Most of the nurses and the doctor left the room and the one nurse in charge of my after care stayed. She asked us if we'd like to hold the baby (still nameless) and I did. It was a very weird experience because other than being blue, he looked healthy and complete. He was far enough along that he was all baby and not "fetus" if that makes sense? At this point, I couldn't help but think that he looked big enough and strong enough to survive outside me and I wish we had taken him out before it was too late. When the bleeding had started, all I could think was that it was too soon and he needed to stay inside me as long as possible. Little did I know that he was actually at risk inside once the placenta had detached. I don't know how it works, but it's horrible to imagine that my baby essentially suffocated inside me. It seems like a cruel & horrific way to go and it's heartbreaking to imagine (which of course I do).
I am not a religious person, but I do have some collective beliefs that I consider my philosophies. One of them is that as a spirit, we come to this world many times to learn and grown. Each life we have is hand picked before we come, with certain experiences and the harder the life the more we grow. I had read in a book a few years ago specifically about babies of miscarriage, stillborn and preemie death. Those who have the same philosophies as me, believe that these spirits have accelerated growth from this experience and that they have knowingly chosen this experience before coming here. I take some comfort in these thoughts, that my baby has benefits from this tragic end rather than being some sort of punishment.
I also realised that I am more optimistic than I thought. As much as I question what happened and will it away, I have to believe that somewhere in the big picture it was for a positive reason. Like perhaps the will of the universe was for me to lose my husband or toddler but instead Wentworth gave his life for us in that place. As much as we are mourning Wentworth now, we didn't actually get to meet him and get attached to a particular personality, so it is more of a mourning of lost opportunity than the mourning of a specific person. I think for every day & week & year you have with someone, that pain and hurt would be magnified. If you asked me if I'd rather have Wentworth be born but pass away after a week, I'm not sure that I would choose that. While it would have been precious to meet this little man, the pain would probably be even more unbearable and I don't know that I'd be strong enough to get through it.
After we took some time with Wentworth, we had to call some of our family & friends. We were scheduled to have a big Christmas party at our house that day so I had to cancel the party and thus a few friends found out right away. Calling family was really hard, I had been up all night with no sleep and so I had even less capacity to handle the emotions, though I had lots of adrenaline so I wasn't feeling tired.
Once you're cleared to do it, the nurses like you to shower right away. During that shower Tyler and I were talking and we were both adamant that we never wanted to go through this again so we were never going to get pregnant again. Maybe we adopt. However, I think it was by that afternoon or evening, we both already forgot that vow and were thinking we would want to try again. It's weird how quickly things change? I think we had both already done some healing and once out of the immediacy of the situation realized how much we wanted another child and for that child to be ours as much as possible. Plus it looks like we really do make beautiful babies together :-)
It was important to me that we name the baby and give him a proper burial/cremation and existence in this world. The hospital does have the option of letting them do a generic burial if you don't want to deal with it (which I'm sure works best for some people). Because of how close we were to the end, I really wanted to honour his memory and not just "sweep it under the rug" or pretend it didn't happen. We hadn't had a name picked out for baby boy yet but we had a few front runners. However, we were hesitant to use a name we LOVED because if we had a boy in the future, our short list of names would be even shorter. Wentworth and Elliott were on the list of names we liked but probably wouldn't use. Wentworth was nixed before because of how unique it was and we didn't think it'd be fair to saddle someone with that name. Elliott was nixed earlier because Tyler didn't really care for it and because I didn't like any of the potential nicknames. So, since this little boy was never going to have to deal with playground teasing, etc or worry about nicknames, we felt like Wentworth Elliott would be a good fit. We loved the sound of it and didn't have any of the hang-ups. In hindsight, the name Wentworth is also appropriate because although he "went" away it was still "worth" it.
I wanted to leave the hospital as soon as possible. Our room had no windows and it felt like a dungeon plus the "scene of the crime" so to speak. I wanted to take solice in seeing Dexter and appreciate what we did have instead of dwelling on what we lost. However, one hard part of leaving the hospital was that it felt like I was abandoning Wentworth there, leaving him all alone. The logical part of me knew that this was just a body and his spirit wasn't there, but it still felt like that.
The hospital was willing to release me 6 hours post delivery, around 2pm at the earliest. Before I could leave they had some pills to give me to cease milk production (which seem to be working really well) and the on-call doctor wanted to talk to us. The doctor said that its pretty unusual for someone having a perfectly average pregnancy to end up with a stillborn. I had just had an ultrasound at 32 weeks (so 11 days before) and everything was fine in that. The factors that are know to bring on placenta abruption are: trauma, cocaine use, diabetes, smoking and high blood pressure. There was nothing that happened on Saturday that would be trauma (such as a fall), I don't smoke or use drugs, I passed my gestational diabetes test and my blood pressure has always been perfect. There is one other factor that could have contributed and that is a genetic pre-disposition on my part. Pregnancy can give false results so I have to wait until 4 weeks post partum to go for testing. The results of that test will impact our decision on whether or not to try again. If I get a negative result on the blood test, that basically leaves just random bad luck, which my doctor said the positive side of that is its far less likely to occur again.
The on-call doctor also told us that they are reviewing our case to make sure everything was done properly. He double checked some facts with me, and said he looked at the file and the only thing he could see is that if I had been at Grey Nuns they probably would have kept me on the baby monitor the whole time (which means they would have seen baby's heartrate dropping and likely would have emergency c-sectioned). If Leduc hospital was at fault in any way, that would be much harder for me to deal with. As of right now, if feels like something horrible but possibly unavoidable. Knowing the outcome could have been different makes it much harder to accept. I wish I could turn back the clock and do things differently. I was also the one who chose to go to the Leduc hospital (5 minutes away) first instead of driving to Grey Nuns (30 minutes away). In my mind, being at a hospital was important and I had felt they would know if I needed to be sent to Grey Nuns right away or not.
We've had lots of time to review that day and what happened and for me the biggest question for the Leduc Hospital was why they didn't send me to Edmonton right away. As far as my post-delivery googling information has told me, 3rd trimester bleeding is 95% likely to be placenta abruption. In that case, I would need to deliver baby ASAP and Leduc is not set up for deliveries or c-sections. So, I'm wondering, in what instance would they have been equipped to help me and why were they hesitant to send me onward? Is there any non-serious reason I could have been bleeding? Especially as the Edmonton hospital is 30 minutes away, the conservative decision would have been to send me there ASAP as that delay could mean the world of difference. In my non-medical opinion, this was a mistake and if the doctor was following procedure than I think procedure should change. This situation makes it even tougher to deal with what happened, because I can't help but blame myself for going to Leduc hospital. And I can't help but question if I had just gone to Grey Nuns, would my baby be alive and with me today. It's not productive or helpful to think these things but it's impossible not to.
An amazing service the Grey Nuns offer is a memory box of your baby if you'd like one. A photographer comes to take some pictures of him, they do a foot mould, foot prints, take a lock of hair and give you some of the paper documents. I also got a receiving blanket and knit outfit that they had put on him for the photos, as well as a teddy bear donated by a family that went through the same thing. The idea behind the teddy bear is so you don't have to go home with empty arms. Our after care was amazing at Grey Nuns and I'm thankful that if we did have to go through this, that they have such amazing programs and people in place for support and understanding.
We went home that afternoon and I finally got some sleep between 5pm - 7pm. A few of my friends from my mommy group stopped by to drop off tons of food that they had put together. My friend Shannon also told me that she was starting a donation thing so that we wouldn't have to worry about the cost of cremation, urns, etc. [Tyler has been off work since July and things have been tight with us. There have been a few job opportunities in Fort McMurray but we've been holding out for local work as we both really want him home every night, especially as I was pregnant. Family is really important to us so we've been sacrificing financial security in the hopes it'll work out soon.] It feels very weird to be the subject of a charity but we honestly are in a place of need. Once we are back on our feet financially I am hoping we'll be able pay forward all the generosity we have received (*more on all of the generosity in a future blog). Despite being an optimist, I am not a "rainbows & sunshine" kind of girl, so I have felt pretty overwhelmed by the love and support we are receiving for all avenues and the amount of it. Some people that we barely know are hurting for us and it really gives me faith in human kind.
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