"I'm glad my baby boy still lives through me sharing him with others. Grieving is healthy." -Says Shanna, after I told her I cried when I went home and thought about the loss of my own at 4 weeks pregnant.
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As I stood talking with Andy, the ex husband/father of a still born baby boy, I heard about a story that was every family's worst nightmare. I wasn't sure how to react because the enormity of this story was so great, I wasn't registering it.
But after a family fun photoshoot, I noticed a tattoo on Shanna's arm and asked her what it was. She started to tell me of a baby boy she lost at 8 months pregnant and I began to understand the pain she had gone through, which still resurfaces when talking about it.
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We tried for 14 months to get pregnant and said that we would be seeing a fertility specialist after our wedding on 3/7/09. On March 25th, I realized that I was 3 days late. I didn't think much of it, because I had been up to a week late before and just knew that I was pregnant, then started my period. I took out what seemed like the 400th pregnancy test over those months from the cabinet, applied the sample, and walked away to run a bath. A few minutes later, I came back and picked it up to throw it in the trash like I had done every other time, and there it was: "Pregnant." WHAT? It has to be a mistake. So of course, I went on every other one that I had in the house and all 5 of them: "Pregnant."
Andy was working an extremely demanding over the road trucking job at the time and went days without sleep; we went weeks without seeing each other. I called him and was talking so fast that he couldn't understand me. He finally got what I was trying to say, and all I got was, "Ok..." because he hadn't slept in 36 hours. Poor thing. When he got home and realized that we FINALLY had gotten our wish, he was elated.
Our first doctor appointment was at 8 weeks. Little heart ticking away on the ultrasound, we asked the doctor when the estimated date of conception was and she said, "Most likely the 7th or 8th of March." How exciting. A honeymoon baby. His due date was 12/2/09. At about 15 weeks, I started having some spotting. I went to the doctor, and she did an ultrasound and found nothing abnormal. At 20 weeks, we found out he was a boy. We named him after his daddy: Jaymin Andrew Perkins. At 27 weeks we moved back to Texas from Kansas City, MO. I saw my new doctor at Baylor All Saints, and due to some health history, he sent me to see Dr. Rebecca Reyes at Fort Worth Perinatal Associates. He wasn't capable of cervical length measurements and level 2 ultrasounds in his office, and he wanted to rule out a risk for preterm labor. The pregnancy was going completely as planned and healthy.
On October 14, we had a perinatal appointment and level 2 ultrasound, complete with cord doppler and the whole bit. Nothing abnormal. On October 18, I went to the grocery store and ran some errands, went home and cooked dinner while little man kicked away. I went to bed very late that night, about 3am. Nothing seemed awry. I woke up at about 11 the next morning, a Monday. I got up and went to the bathroom, then I noticed that the baby wasn't squirming as usual. I prodded and talked to him trying to get a response, but nothing. I drank orange juice and laid down on my left side for about 5 minutes, nothing. I called my OBGYN, who was at lunch. He personally called me back immediately and said, "Put on your flashers, call for a police escort, whatever. Just get to L&D as fast as you can." I threw my stuff in the car (the car seat was already installed), and headed there. On my way to the hospital, I remember thinking that either it was a false alarm or we would be having our little boy a lot earlier than we thought we would! I got to the hospital and walked into triage. I got into my gown and they asked my 100 questions, including whether I was breast or bottle feeding. At that point they started to try to find the baby's heartbeat with the monitor. The triage nurse wasn't able to. She called another nurse to help her, and each time they would hear a heartbeat they would say to each other, "Nope. That one is maternal." The minute my life changed was when the original nurse, a tall German woman in a black scrub jacket with hearts on it, said to me, "I'm going to go call your doctor, because I can't find him." She had such a look on her face that it was clear she was trying to be strong and hide her fear. I knew that she didn't want to be telling me this.
My doctor walked in shortly after with a little ultrasound that looked like a 13 inch TV on the carts that we used to watch movies on in elementary school. He felt for the position of the baby, and he put the ultrasound directly on the baby's chest. I saw immediately what I was looking at.
His heart was still. He was still. He was gone.
My doctor said that he was going to call my specialist to come in and do a better ultrasound, and said that he was sorry that we had lost the baby. Dr. Reyes got there and did the ultrasound, and she explained to me that there was nothing abnormal on the ultrasound and no indication of reasoning at the moment. She said that we may never know what happened. She said that it had been within 12 hours, most likely while I was sleeping. They gave me the option of going home and waiting on nature to take its course, since most likely labor would start on its own within a couple of days, or they could induce labor then. I thought to myself, "How am I supposed to go home still pregnant knowing that my baby is dead?" I opted for induction without going home.
The induction was started at 5:17pm on 10/19/09. Friends stopped by, and I had called my mom as soon as we found out, and she had hopped the first plane in from Memphis. She got there at 8pm that night, and I labored uneventfully through the night. At 7 the next morning, I started to feel a lot more pressure than I had been feeling. I sat up and was talking to my mom and Andy when my water broke. The nurse came in to check and I was fully dilated. She called the doctor, and he came in and said that I was almost ready but not quite and that he would be back in a minute. Just after he left, I knew he wouldn't make it back. The nurse was there and blowing up his phone because the baby was coming. She sat down and was ready to deliver the baby when he came back in. After the baby was delivered, the nurses were cleaning him up, and the doctor was finishing the delivery. He delivered the placenta and was feeling down the cord for knots, and all of a sudden he got a surprised look on his face. "OH! This. This is what happened." He held up the placenta and cord and showed me a golf ball sized clot at the baby's bellybutton and the cord twisted at the placenta like a wrung out towel. It took the pathology report to confirm, but the culprit was a 2 vessel cord (single umbilical artery or SUA) and velamentous cord insertion.
It's believed to happen when the embryo attempts to attach to the uterine wall, decides that isn't an optimal place, detaches, and reattaches elsewhere, disrupting normal formation of the sac, placenta, and cord. It happens in 1% of pregnancies, and I have read that only typically 1% are stillborn from it, and it is usually found after a healthy live birth. The other alternative is that the baby is growth restricted and scheduled to be delivered early before anything happens.
After Jaymin was born, we held him for hours. Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep came and took pictures for us, and they had to be developed in black and white because he started to turn very blueish purple soon after birth. One of the hardest things was to let him go when it was time. I knew that they wouldn't be taking my baby boy to the nursery to bathe him and bring him back to me, they would be taking him to the morgue downstairs and put him in a cold metal refrigerator alone, and I would never see him again. He had always been warm inside me. I saw a quote while I was in the hospital that made me grateful: "Stillborn babies have never felt cold, hunger, or pain. All they ever knew was their mothers warmth and love every minute of their short lives."
After I went home from the hospital, the next hardest task was upon me. I drove my baby boy to my hometown of Memphis, not in his carseat asleep, but in a casket in the trunk of my car. We buried him in a small ceremony in a family plot. I came back home to Texas, and all I could do was lay with his bear that had his recorded heartbeat from our 4D ultrasound session and cry. We decided we couldn't stay in the house. I needed to move to move forward. We packed up all of our things, including his. I sat in his room and cried and rubbed my belly. I wanted him to still be there. Every person who said he is with Jesus didn't make me feel better. He was MINE and I wanted him HERE. I came across a card from my cousin that she gave me at my baby shower. She said, "You're going to love being a mommy!" I felt like an elephant was sitting on me and I couldn't breathe. It hit me hardest when I was packing up his room. I was back at square one. We moved to Memphis and I started back school to finish the few prerequisites I had left for nursing school.
We got the go ahead to try again in December. I didn't have a cycle that month, but did in January. I was horrified at thinking of the possibility of trying again for years. My OBGYN in Memphis that I had seen since I was a teenager assured me that there was absolutely no way that I could lose another one in the same fashion. He said that he would ensure that I didn't have to try over and over, and that if I wasn't pregnant in a few months that he would discuss fertility treatments like Clomid. He also counseled me about the risk of multiples with that. Once again, not needed. I had my first cycle January 31, and got a positive pregnancy test on Valentine's Day. This time it was a girl. Keller Layne Perkins was born 10/12/10, 4 weeks early and with pneumonia. After an 8 day NICU stay, she came home on what would have been her brother's first birthday. She is now a super happy, smart, sweet, wonderful 3 year old. Jaymin also has a little brother, Jensen, who is almost 8 months. I think about him every day, but life is much easier. There are days when I feel that wave of sadness, but I look down at my arm and know that I carry him with me always. After Keller was born, I started a memorial sleeve tattoo for him: A teddy bear with a pacifier in a backdrop of stars, planets, and a spaceship. I speak of him often, especially when someone asks about my tattoo. That's what it is there for, so the topic of him will always come up and he will always touch someone. I also have a black lab that is 9 years old that didn't leave my side during those times, and he patrols in front of the babies' doors when they are sleeping. If I can't find him, he is usually sleeping in front of Jensen's crib keeping watch. I feel as though he knows.
As for Andy, he was completely devastated and I had to console him when we first found out. He was crying so hard when he called his mom, that she couldn't understand what he was saying. He was by my side every second of the labor. He waited on me hand and foot. Emotionally, it was the other way around. We will always be best friends.
-Shanna Perkins
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| In memory of Jaymin Andrew Perkins |
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| Keller |
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| Jensen |
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| Shanna & her adorable babies. |
We left on a bitter sweet note, thinking about our losses but grateful for babies we have. It changed my day and touched my heart so deeply.
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This blog written by Rebecca Blume. All rights are reserved to Rebecca Leigh Photography 2014
