I lost my innocence about life 9 years ago today. Our first born baby....our daughter Mackenzie.....arrived stillborn. At this anniversary of her birth & death each year, I am flooded with the memories and emotions of that day. Some describe the feeling as bittersweet. Bitter because losing a child is a tragedy. Sweet because she brought me into motherhood. My husband & I were only 25 years old when our lives were changed forever. [She arrived on my husband's 25th birthday] I am so thankful to God for every moment I had with her.
I was eager to start a family. Motherhood was a strong desire for me even during my college years. As we planned our wedding, I also added plans for our first child. 25 years old.....the year 2000.....didn't that seem like a really cool time to start a family? Women used to collect household goods in a "Hope Chest" for their marriage....shortly after our wedding, I started collecting baby items. I kept them in the closet, in a box that my husband affectionately named "Project Baby 2000." I wanted to get pregnant in August. I thought being pregnant from August to May was the ideal time. My irregular cycles did not cooperate, so we had to aim for September instead. I read so many pregnancy books, pouring over the details of every second of development, and anxiously tried to calculate the absolute earliest day I could get a pregnancy test to register. My impatience got the best of me, and I went in for a blood test even before a urine test could register. It was negative. Bummer. Maybe next month... until my cycle was later than usual...the HPT was positive! We were so surprised, because we had already accepted that it didn't happen, so we would have to try again next cycle. My husband was studying when I gave him the news. He was so shocked. His reaction was, "I was just sitting here working on my math homework, and now we are going to have a baby! Wow!"
I had a pretty normal pregnancy. I scheduled my first prenatal appointment immediately, shared the exciting news with our family, friends, and coworkers, and browsed the baby aisle every time I went to the store. I had all-day "morning" sickness the entire first trimester. I am suspicious it was worsened by my job. I worked in biomedical research, and my line of work involved cell culture from mouse organs. Let's just say that those sights and smells were a real trigger! I spent a lot of time gagging and heaving in the lab. Cheeseburgers and Coke were the only things that would settle my stomach. I ate them practically every day. My boss assured me that cheeseburgers covered all the food groups, with the meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and the bun! Each prenatal visit, Dr. S would ask me if I was feeling any movement. Each time I would report no. I didn't report feeling movement until I was 18 weeks along. I laugh at myself over that experience. I had actually been feeling Mackenzie move for almost a month prior to that, but I did not realize it. I kept excusing away the sensation of butterflies in my stomach, as I was just excited about having a baby. Then, at 18 weeks, I was sitting at my desk concentrating on work when I had the sensation again. I had not even been thinking about the pregnancy, so it wasn't that I was just excited! When I realized that I was the feeling of the baby moving, I had a good laugh, because I had been feeling those movements for a month, but I kept telling the doctor I wasn't feeling anything.
I could not wait to learn the gender of the baby. I did not have a gender preference, but I had a strong need to know all the details I could get my hands on! I had my first ultrasound at 10 weeks. I made sure to tell the tech that if there was any way to identify the gender, I wanted to know. She laughed and told us that the baby was just too small to see anything yet. I had my first anatomical ultrasound at 21 weeks, but the baby kept her legs crossed and would not cooperate with gender identification. I was so disappointed that I almost cried. I had dreams at night...nightmares really....that even after delivery no one would tell me the gender of the baby! The only glitch I had with this pregnancy was that I had a false positive result on the alpha-fetal-protein screen, which indicated I might have an increased risk for Downs Syndrome. We went for genetics counseling and learned that we did not have a risk factor of a family history of Downs Syndrome, but we did have a family history of twins (which we knew already). I was given the option to have an amniocentesis to tell for sure, and a focused ultrasound to look for physical traits of Downs Syndrome, such as an elongated femur (thigh bone), cleft palate, and/or thicker skin folds at the back of the neck. We chose to have the focused ultrasound, but opted against the amniocentesis due to the miscarriage risk of that procedure. I wanted all the data I could safely obtain about our baby, so that I could prepare myself and seek resources for whatever we were dealing with...but we were going to take her any way that we could get her! The focused ultrasound revealed a healthy baby GIRL! I was so excited to know her gender. The doctor had difficulty getting good views of her heart, so we returned a month later for another ultrasound. Her heart was fine and she was still a girl. We had settled on her name, so we called her Mackenzie from that point forward.
Mackenzie was active in the womb and quite a kicker! She responded strongly to her Daddy. Every time he put his hand on my belly, she would kick it. I felt her jump once when the dog barked. We played music in the lab at work, and one day we were listening to the song "We Will Rock You" by Queen. Each time there was a strong drum beat, Mackenzie would imitate the beat with her kicks. I brushed it off at first, but her pattern continued. My coworkers pushed repeat on that song a dozen times, and we all enjoyed feeling her kick me to the beat of that song. That night at home, I showed my husband what she was doing. He is a fan of drums and of Queen, so he replied, "That's MY girl!" To this day, we think of Mackenzie every time we hear that song.
Another fun memory I have of that pregnancy is the day I had the glucose tolerance test. To complete this test, I had to go to the lab and pick up a sugar drink, down the drink, return exactly 1 hour later and have my blood drawn to see how well my body managed the sugar load. My workplace was in the building next door to the clinic, so I was able to go pick up the drink, return to work, and then return to the lab at the scheduled time. My drink was cola-flavored! My husband decided to make a fun game out of it. He bought a Coke and chugged it at the same time I chugged my glucola drink, racing to see who could finish first! That turned a yucky experience into a good laugh!
We had a good time in childbirth preparation class, a breastfeeding basics class, and a baby boot-camp class. Even though I saw a video of 3 different births, I still could not wrap my mind around just how that baby was going to get out of my body! That seemed impossible at the time! The instructor of the breastfeeding class shocked us all with some very graphic, very private pictures of her most recent delivery. That didn't help my disbelief! We went through a "mock labor" in childbirth prep class, practicing breathing techniques with an ice cube in hand. I am not sure how much preparation that ice cube provided, but it sure gave us a lot of good laughs! The instructor did deliver an amazing lesson during those classes. She had us list our priorities in childbirth...all the things that were important to us...epidural, completely natural, vaginal, c-section, water delivery, music, nurse, doc, birthing ball, etc....and we crossed so many off the list over time, leaving only the ones that really mattered most. That exercise showed each of us where our priorities were for our upcoming deliveries. By the end of the lesson, everyone had the same two answers as to what mattered most of all--a healthy Mom & a healthy baby!
I had plenty of Braxton Hicks contractions in the last trimester, but none of those "practice" contractions did anything to progress my body into labor. I was checked at my 39 week prenatal appointment, and learned that my cervix was not dilating or effacing at all. My coworkers had made guesses as to when Mackenzie would be born. That Friday we all commented that I would surely deliver her that weekend, so they didn't expect to see me at work on Monday. I went to bed Friday night, feeling her move and kick as usual.
We were being lazy Saturday morning, lounging around the house and moving slowly into our day. I sat down at the computer to email my Mom & sisters and give them the daily report that I was not in labor yet. I decided to take a break and get something to drink. As I was walking across the living room toward the kitchen, I was overcome with a horrible, paralyzing feeling of panic.....I had not felt Mackenzie move all morning long! That was one of my four criteria from the doctor for labor & delivery....1) bleeding, 2) water breaking, 3) contractions getting closer/stronger, & 4) no movement. I emailed my Mom about it and she replied that babies often slow down in activity before labor. She asked if I was worried. Yes I was. I decided to take a shower, drink some juice, and call the hospital. The nurse told me to drink some juice (because the sugar can boost the baby into action), and come on in to be evaluated. As we drove to the hospital, I secretly hoped I would be going into labor, but I was certain they would tell me all was well, no labor, and send me back home.
The nurses later told me that they just knew something was wrong from the tone of my voice on the phone, and the look on my face. I thought this was odd, because I thought I was doing a good job of keeping calm. I really had no thoughts of impending doom. I was too innocently-minded to even consider the possibilities. I was a little embarrassed to be there and not be in labor. The nurse put me in a triage room and took all my vitals. She could not find the baby's heartbeat with the Doppler. We joked with her that that was common, because Mackenzie ran from the Doppler most of the time. The nurse tried a second Doppler, with no luck. She told us that if the baby would not cooperate with the Doppler, she would just wheel in the ultrasound machine. I laid on that exam table completely unsuspecting anything to be wrong. A medical student came in with her head resident, to do the ultrasound. The resident walked her through the process, being real careful to not divulge any concerns. They complained about the old equipment that was hard to read. The resident then informed us she was going to get her attending to see if she could read it better. The attending came in and the resident performed the ultrasound for her. I only remember them talking about going up the spine to get a clear look at the heart. I continued to lay there in innocence, waiting for the time when they would turn the screen so I could see it too. The attending physician placed her hand on my wrist and softly said, "I am sorry, but your baby's heart has stopped beating." WHAT? My first thought was, "Ok, then fix it." My next thought was the full-blown realization of what she was saying. I sat upright and said, "Are you trying to tell me that my baby is DEAD?" Yes. I immediately started crying. I cried so hard, yet I had no tears. I was in immediate shock. They tried to comfort me...hugs, a box of tissue....they explained that they called Dr. S and he was on his way over.....they were going to move me to a room so he could assess me more and we would have privacy to phone our families. They could not (or would not) offer any explanation as to what happened that my baby was dead in the womb 3 days before her due date. Another Family Practice doctor arrived to offer condolences, comfort, but no ideas as to what went wrong. We managed to go out into the hallway and call our Moms and let them know Mackenzie was dead. My parents jumped in their truck and immediately started the 4-hour drive to come be with us.
Dr. S arrived soon. He walked through the door with the look of sadness and grief that only comes from someone who has walked in our shoes. He understood our pain, unfortunately, as he & his wife had also lost a baby. The first thing I said to him was, "I had no idea this could happen." It was true. I was in complete denial that anything would ever go wrong. You get pregnant and have a baby. It is as simple as that. Right? There is even a section about fetal demise in the womb, in the What to Expect When You're Expecting book, but I skipped that part. He comforted me with a hug, and then the tears poured out in buckets. The nightmare was true. Dr. S confirmed it. Our daughter was dead. He explained that at this late stage of the pregnancy, the problem is usually caused by an umbilical cord accident. He might find more answers at her birth, and also with an autopsy, but sometimes there are no answers at all. I asked him how we were going to get her out. I was immediately creeped out by the fact that I was carrying a dead baby inside my body. The options are to have labor induced, or to wait for labor to start on its own (most women will go into labor naturally within 3 days of the baby's death). I didn't wait for all the options, as soon as he said he could admit me to the hospital and induce me that night, I said Ok.
Time passed as the administrative process progressed to get me admitted and induced. My parents, my middle sister, and my mother-in-law all arrived. There was lots of uncontrollable crying. By the time the first dose of induction medication was given, I was in a puffy-eyed, cried-myself-silly state of calmness....and shock. My mind was fuzzy and I could barely process the reality I was dealing with. The nurse gave me some Tylenol for my headache, and I felt no pain. The plan was for our family to go to our house and get some rest. Induction (when I was showing no signs of labor) could take days, so there was no reason for them to wait around and stay up all night. Dr. S suggested that as soon as we were sure I was tolerating the induction medicine, and contractions were started, that they drug me heavily and give me an epidural so that I might sleep through labor. There were no concerns about medications affecting the baby, as she was already dead. There was a delay in getting the epidural due to some emergency c-sections that night, but it didn't matter to me. My nurse did a fine job of keeping me drugged. I am not entirely sure if it was all the IV meds, or the grief that kept me from feeling the full effects of labor. In hindsight, that labor experience was very mild. Even the anesthesiologist commented that I was managing my contractions well, and asked if I was sure I even wanted the epidural...I didn't care if I was doing well or not, there was no prize at the end, I was going to be empty-handed...the nurse pulled him aside and in no time he changed his approach and cheerfully gave me an epidural and his condolences. My husband collapsed in a nearby pull-out chair. We slept through the rest of labor. Dr. S came in to check on me around 8am, and we were all surprised to learn that I was fully dilated, and starting to feel some pressure to push. That induction only took 12 hours. We called our Moms to come to the hospital for the birth, and started trying to find a rhythm for pushing.
Since Mackenzie was my first baby, I had no idea what to expect for labor and delivery. Clearly, my experience was not normal. It is more difficult to push out a dead baby. I've heard it explained that live babies can "help" in their delivery. I do not know if that is true. I do know from my own experiences that mental strength plays a large role in delivery. I was mentally weak for Mackenzie's delivery. I was doped up so heavily that it took me 3 days to get out of the IV-medication fog. All the things that I had learned in childbirth preparation went right out the window. Those classes could not prepare me for this. It was not a "normal" delivery. I focused on the wisdom of my doctor and found comfort in the support of my husband & Mom. Dr. S gave us the plan for breathing, pushing, and positioning. I listened and obeyed. My legs were still numb, so I had help holding them in place. Pushing was work. I was in such a fog that I didn't care. As soon as her head emerged, we had all the answers. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck twice. It was so tight, that Dr. S had to cut it just so I could finish pushing her out. The nurse handled baby Mackenzie so gently, as if she were a living baby. I cherish that level of respect she gave our little girl. She put on a diaper, wrapped her in a blanket, put a little hat on her head, and brought her over for us to hold. She was beautiful. She had blonde hair, her Daddy's eyes, and my mouth. Her legs, fingers, and toes were so long. Her bottom was dense and heavy. At first her skin was warm and extremely pale. Her lips were crimson red.
Soon after, her body cooled off. Blood pooled to the surface of her skin, giving her more of that bruised, dead look of a corpse. Her eyes were dark and cloudy, from the absence of life. Her skull bones moved around and scraped against each other, as there was no fluid to provide cushion and structure. We agreed to an autopsy, hoping for more answers. We held her in our arms, cherished our very brief time together as a family, and took pictures to help keep our memories alive.
Our state does not provide a birth certificate for a stillborn baby. There is a death certificate. I struggle with the concept that her birth is not acknowledged, but we are required to dispose of her body through proper burial means. Our society will acknowledge that she is a dead human being, but they refuse to acknowledge that she was ever an alive human being. The ache of empty arms was so great. It was so hard to hand her body over to the proper authorities and go home with a broken heart.
Grieving is very hard. I tried "actively grieving" thinking I could take matters into my own hands. I read a bunch of books, pamphlets, and internet sites about the stages of grief, and losing a baby. I cried constantly. I opened up and shared her story and my feelings to anyone who would listen. We found a support group for grieving parents to be very helpful. We met others who were walking in our shoes. It was hard for me to be a mother who did not have any living children. I felt robbed of my joy.
My husband and I threw ourselves into our jobs, to help us manage one day at a time. I was drawn back to God because I knew I could not handle that level of pain and emotion on my own...I knew His love would sustain me. I prayed constantly for strength. I did not understand why Mackenzie had to die like that. But, I did understand who was in control. Her short life already had great purpose--She came to raise our hearts to heaven... When it game to grieving, the saying "It takes one to know one" proved true. People who had buried a child were able to bring us the most comfort. They understood that level of pain. I would not wish that experience and knowledge on anyone.
My broken heart began to heal later, after I was able to deliver living children. Living children reminded me that Life is for the Living. Mackenzie's death certainly re-structured my priorities. Our living children have given me a sense of purpose again. It seems that there will always be a hole in my heart where my firstborn daughter belongs. Nothing can take her place. As each year passes, we consider what might have been. I say to my husband, "Can you believe we would have been the parents of a 9-year-old?" He replies, "Has it been 9 years already? Wow!" It feels as if it were just yesterday.
Some people only dream of angels.....we held one in our arms!
Her tiny feet left large footprints on our hearts!
You pay for a ticket to ride a train that is pulled by Thomas the Tank Train Engine. It is a 30-minute ride, that moves slow and safe. The train ride in Durango is beautiful, because it runs along the Animas river.
