7 weeks - Maddie's Birth Story

Seven weeks ago today, at 11:30 a.m., I held my precious baby girl for the second and last time.  I got to hold her an hour and a half - 90 of the most precious moments of my life.  But how did we get here?

On Monday morning (7/6/09) at about 3:30 a.m., I woke up nauseous.  I'd had an incredible amount of morning sickness, and it had NOT stopped with the end of the first trimester, whatever What to Expect When You're Expecting might say.  I took a Zofran and hoped it would stay down (it didn't).  My back ached a little bit, but I was 21w3d - since I'm only 5'2", I was already getting huge, and sleeping usually made me a little sore.  I tossed around until it was time to get up and go to work - I was feeling too sick to do so, so I stayed home and lounged on the couch.

At about 11:00 a.m., I felt incredible cramping.  It would start in my back and radiate forward.  After a few times, I noticed that it was happening every five minutes or so.  Could this be contractions??  I called and left a message for the nurse at my OB's office to call me back.  By about 12:30, I hadn't heard anything, so my husband and I started the 10-minute drive to town; I had decided to go to the ER.  The nurse called on our way in and said that I was probably just cramping from the flu, or maybe had an infection, but to come in.  I knew something was wrong - horribly wrong - but at this point I still had hope that they could put me on something to stop the contractions, to save our little girl.

As we were walking into the OB's office, I felt something (for lack of a better word) gush.  We checked in, and they sat me in the waiting room.  By this time, I was in incredible pain - I was sweating and shaking, and needed to go to the bathroom.  They finally gave me a cup to go to the bathroom, and I found that the gush was not that my water had broken - it was blood.  Tons of it.  I was terrified, because I sensed what that meant.  I went back to the receptionist and told her I needed to get in immediately.  She sent me back to my husband in the chairs, and I told him what was going on.  After a few more minutes of sitting there in agony, he went up and told the receptionist that we either needed to be seen or I was going to the ER across the street. 

My favorite nurse took me into the exam room, her concern written across her face, and Dr. L came in shortly.  He examined me and then looked at JTD and I.  With sincere compassion and sadness, he broke the news that I was 5 cm dilated, that the water bag was descending, and that I would be delivering any minute.  I had an incompetent cervix, and a resulting infection that was making me so sick.  I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach, but I was still in shock.  I looked at JTD, and saw the agony on his face, as well.  I watched him ask if we could save Maddie - and heard the words that it was just too early, that we may have been able to save her if we'd had a few more weeks.  Dr. L gave me some morphine, put me in a wheelchair, and took me across the street to the hospital all by himself.

When we got to the room (around 1:30 p.m.), he popped my water bag and said that he expected me to deliver in the next 20 minutes to 2 hours.  An ultrasound showed that Maddie was breech - at this age, that wasn't something that required C-section.  We waited and waited - I was dilated less because the pressure from the water bag wasn't on my cervix anymore, so I was in less pain, but she also wasn't coming.  I was torn between wanting my baby in me as long as I could have her, and wanting to get this horrifying event over with as quickly as possible.  At 7:00 I still hadn't delivered, so they gave me an insert that was supposed to move along the process.  At around 8:30, my baby kicked me for the last time - I think it was her way of saying goodbye.  They had to give me another insert at around 10:00 because I still wasn't dilating (much to their surprise - they had expected me to deliver much sooner), and would give me one final one if I hadn't delivered at 1:00 a.m.  It was taking so long because she was breech and so very tiny that there just wasn't enough pressure to fully dilate me to the 5 or 6 cm that was required.  I was losing quite a bit of blood and my fever kept spiking, so they only had me on a very light morphine drip - no epidural or anything else.

The nurse told me that I would just feel some pressure when I delivered Maddie, and that she would pass.  (Our nurse had experienced her own stillbirth years before, at 29 weeks, and was so caring and nurturing - she cried with us several times.) That ended up not being the case at all.  After about 13 hours of labor, I finally felt that Maddie was coming.  She was still breech - I ended up having to push several times.  Then, at 12:08 a.m. on July 7, 2009, we saw our little miracle baby come into the world.  I looked down at her with the newfound love that was in my heart - I'd loved her so desparately before, when I was pregnant, but known nothing at the time of how much love I truly had for her.  At the same time, I was filled with such horror - how could this happen?  How could she be gone, without ever getting to take a breath? 

We held her close while we waited for the placenta to deliver.  She was so breathtakingly beautiful - and absolutely perfect.  She had JTD's cleft in her little chin - and he says that absolutely everything else looked like me.  He was right - she had my button nose, just as we'd seen in the 18-week ultrasound.  The difference was that she made it so achingly beautiful.  She didn't deserve this.  Dr. L commented on what beautiful long fingers she had - she had one hand over her heart from the moment she came out, as if she were telling us that she loved us.

I was still in shock, so I only cried a little as I held her that night.  I think my mind was protecting me while I had this job to do - and it wasn't done yet.  Since I had such an infection, and my fever kept spiking up over 102.5, they needed to make sure to get out all of the placenta.  The doctor had to dig out the placenta for quite a while to make sure it was all out, so I didn't hemorrhage - I was in such intense pain that I had to hand Maddie to JTD while it was happening. 

Then, it was over.  The delivery room that should have been filled with the cries of my little girl were only filled with the quiet tears of my husband and I as we held her.  My parents came in and held her for a while, and we had her blessed by the hospital chaplain.  My body started to shut down at that point - I had been awake for 24 hours.  Everyone went home (I made JTD go home to rest), and I laid in my hospital bed thinking about my baby, the baby I'd ached for for so long.  I did not sleep for another 24 hours.  However, during that long night, the enormity of what had just happened finally hit me.  I cried for hours - the nurse who had helped deliver our little Madeleine Rose came in and talked to me during that long night.

They brought her back in for me to hold at about 11:30 the next morning.  I got to rock her, to sing to her, to hold her and tell her I love her.  It wasn't enough, though.  It won't ever be enough.  This blog keeps talking about all of my pain - but it's my little Madeleine Rose who deserved better.