Steph's Story - Brady

In the middle of May 2007 I started feeling really sick to my stomach.  I didn’t know what was going on, I felt like I might be pregnant but I was still nursing my nine month old daughter and taking the mini pill so I thought that there was no way that I could be pregnant.  I finally decided to take a pregnancy test and it showed up positive very quickly.  I couldn’t believe it.  My baby was still a baby, could I handle another one so soon?

I made an appointment to see my Dr. so we could find out how far along I was.  He scheduled an ultrasound so we could find out.  At the ultrasound we were able to see the little baby.  You could see the arms and legs.  The baby was moving around.  We heard that wonderful sound of the baby’s heartbeating.  We found out that I was ten weeks pregnant and that I was due on January 2^nd.  I continued to be very sick and threw up quite a bit more than my other pregnancies.

I had an appointment four weeks later.  My Dr. couldn’t find a heartbeat.  I was scared and nervous.  My Dr. said that it was still on the early side and since we saw the baby on the ultrasound and heard the heartbeat then, he wasn’t as concerned.  But I was.

We were building a house at the time and the day my oldest daughter was baptized we took my cousins to go and look at it.  We didn’t have back stairs yet and as I jumped out the back door I felt something gush out.  I knew something was wrong.  I told my husband that we needed to go home.  When we got home I called the hospital and they had my Dr. call me.  He told me to lay in bed and to call him if things got worse.  My dad and husband gave me a priesthood blessing which made me feel comforted and at peace with what was going on.  I had a feeling that my baby was gone, but I still had hope.

The bleeding got worse so my Dr. had me go in for another ultrasound.  There we found out that we had lost the baby.  My Dr. told me the best thing to do was to go home and let my body do what it needed to do but if there was too much bleeding than I needed to go to the hospital.

On July 3^rd the bleeding and the pain got significantly worse.  I couldn’t get up from the toilet.  About 3am I told my husband that we needed to go to the hospital.  He called his brother who lived next door and he came over right away.  We grabbed a bunch of towels for me to sit on and we headed to the hospital.  I was in so much pain.  We got to the emergency room, my husband drove into where the ambulances go and he got me a wheelchair.  They got me into a room, there was blood everywhere.  They had the doctor on call helping me, trying to stop the bleeding.  I felt a lot of pressure and then a pop.  The baby came out.  The nurse got it from the doctor and put it in a cup.  She asked me if I wanted to see the baby.  I told her I did.

My baby looked perfect.  There were arms, legs, a little nose, eyes beginning to form and a sweet little mouth.  My baby was about 2 ½ inches long.   They let us take our time with our baby.  When we were ready to let go I gave the baby to the nurse.  She took the baby to the lab so they could run tests and see if they could tell why the baby had passed away.  When she got back she told me that there was something in between the baby’s legs that she believed that it was a boy.

All of my kids had a really hard time with it.  For a long time every time my oldest looked at me she would start crying.  We all wanted to name him.  We named him Brady.  All the labs came back and everything was normal.  Heaven just needed him more than we did.  My heart will never heal completely, there will always be a spot saved for him, but I know that I will be able to see my baby again and that makes the pain bearable.

April's Story

I had moved to Alaska with my year old daughter in November of 1999, to rejoin my military husband. It didn't take long for me to get pregnant. I had a positive pregnancy test in January 2000. In the military, they don't let you have your first ob-gyn appointment until you're 12 weeks along. I was ecstatic. Told EVERYONE. The day of the appointment, I was feeling anxious. Could I really do this? Was I ready to be a mom of 2, when my first child wasn't even potty trained yet? I laid down on the table, my one-year-old in her car seat, on the floor. Lifted up my shirt. That cool spooge of gel, the wand. I'm anxiously expecting to hear that quick thump-thump of the baby's heart. Nothing. He keeps moving the wand around to every possible spot on my abdomen. Still, no thump-thump. We'll try an internal ultrasound, the doc told me. I strip down, get into a hospital gown. He gets the wand ready. Still nothing. No heartbeat. No baby. Only emptiness and guilt. I had felt I wasn't ready. And I guess I was right, because the baby had stopped growing about two weeks previously. I was heartbroken. Now not only was I not going to have another baby, but I had to tell everyone that I had lost my baby. Reliving that heartbreak and pain over and over. The doctor said the baby would "pass" soon, when my body is ready. If it didn't happen within the week, I'd need to go back in and seek other options. A few days later, the pain started. I was going into the worst labor ever, the one where there is no happy ending. It was late at night. A friend watched our daughter and let us borrow her car (ours wasn't in AK yet). I go to the ER. They stuck me in a room, seemingly away from everyone. I was left to suffer in the dark. After they confirmed I was, indeed, miscarrying, they finally gave me some painkillers to dull the physical pain. There's nothing to dull the emotional and psychological pain of what was happening. I passed what I thought was the baby. A nurse came in, took it away. Never was told if my baby was a boy or a girl. No one really there to comfort me. In retrospect, I should have gone up to labor and delivery. But I didn't know what to do. I lost my baby and didn't know any better. It was difficult to recover from this. But day by day, I recovered physically. I was able to revel in the love and life of my one-year-old daughter. Two years later, I gave birth to another beautiful, healthy daughter.