When I lost Sam

[AwesomeSauce]

It has been a little over three weeks, and pretty much everyone is done with me talking about my baby...my loss. I am still so sad and now I feel even more alone. I went in for my routine checkup with my midwife and found to our horror that our baby boy had no heart beat. At first I didn't want to believe it, but after two scans, it was clear that there would be no miracle for us.

We have three beautiful children, and have been hoping to add to our family since our youngest was eighteen months old. She will be four in three weeks. For a long time I just couldn't get pregnant. I changed my lifestyle and lost fifty pounds, and we found ourselves pregnant and overwhelmed with excitement! At almost eleven weeks I started to bleed. The loss was intense, but it was spring time and I had three kids to make summer vacation a joy for. I seemed to heal ok, and we found ourselves expecting again at the end of July. I was nervous but excited. At 9.5 weeks I started to bleed, but ultrasound showed a healthy baby. At ten weeks I bled hard again and the scan again showed a healthy very active baby, and a subchorionic hematoma, but I was told to take heart because usually they resolve without complications. I bled off and on for a couple of weeks, but no more big bleeds. After baby sounded great at my 12 week appointment I began to relax and enjoy my pregnancy, but it all shattered when baby Sam was found to have no heartbeat at 16 weeks 2 days. I was told I could deliver him at home if I wanted. I went home and the next day I began to take the pills to induce labor. It didn't go how they said it would. I bled and bled and bled, but no baby was born. In the middle of the night, i was exhausted and tried to fo to sleep amd my dh layed down by the bathtub and tried to get some rest until our baby came out. I started to lose consciousness. Thankfully dh woke up at around 4 am and was able to bring be around. I was passing out over and over and dh called 911. After I passed out in the hospital bathroom I was examined and they said my cervix wasn't opened enough to allow for the baby to come out. They told me I had to have surgery to remove him or I would bleed to death. I cried and cried. I wanted nothing more than to hold my baby and say goodbye to more than his ultrasound scan pictures. At 16 weeks 4 days I was ultimately denied that opportunity.

After emergency surgery they sent me home that evening. I could barely stand up long enough to get to the bathroom. I was so faint and weak for two solid weeks, after which I was finally diagnosed anemic and started a routine of iron and vitamins. Today I am physically stronger, but I am still so emotionally broken. An 11 week loss earlier this year was one horrible thing, but this is so different. This is so much more painful. At first it felt like there was a huge hole that took up my entire chest and I wasn't sure how I could breath around a hole that big. Now I just feel empty and sad.

So many people were so kind and wonderful to me at first, but now they are pretty much done with me. My mom is wonderful, but she keeps asking me if I feel better yet. I get the feeling she wants me to be fine, so I lie to her. Mil is a whole other story. She said some really awful things to me, and she doesn't count Sam as a real baby or her grandchild. I don't even want to talk to her or see her, but somehow I have to be ready by thanksgiving to spend the entire day there with our entire family, including a new baby and a five month old baby. I don't know how to do it, but I can't let my dh and kid's down. They have cousins coming from out of town that they love and rarely see. I just feel so stuck and I needed to get this out if me so I don't explode. My dh is wonderful, but even he is sick of me talking this over and over. He heals by shelving the hurt and moving on. I heal by talking and talking, so we are at an impass. Neither one of us can heal in our own way leaning on each other.

I just need someone who understands me.

 

[taygen]

I am so sorry for your loss. I lost my son at 19 weeks, 5 days on October 29th. I hear similar things. I actually haven't talked to my MIL about it at all. Not because I don't think she'll be supportive, but because I feel like she'll say things the "wrong" way, ya know? Some of those stupid things, like, you're young, you can try again.. etc. I don't really have anyone around who is willing to listen to me talk about the same things over and over. I have a journal, and I've been writing in there, I find it helps. Maybe that's something you could do, if you aren't already? I am very much a talker, when it comes to my baby. This was my first loss, but boy has it been hard. I have three girls at home, who I have to be strong for. Some days are so much harder than others. I don't want to think about holidays coming up, and having to see people who I haven't seen since before my loss. And all of the inevitable "are you feeling better?" comments, as if I am recovering from a cold or something...

I'm not sure if my rambling helped at all, but know that you are not alone in your feelings. Big hugs.

 

[3xscharmer]

I am so sorry for your loss and all the horrible things being said. I lost my son at 17 weeks about 9 weeks ago and it still hurts, I still cry often and wish like hell things were different. I have also had 6 early losses and most of the time I just feel very hopeless when it comes to giving DD a sibling. My MIL lost triplet girls in the 3rd tri about 26 years ago, so she kinda gets what I'm going through and I made sure I told everyone who would listen that you NEVER GET OVER the death of a child. It doesn't matter how far along you are, it hurts. I still bring my sons name into any conversation I can, he is a part of my life and he made a huge impact on me, I am forever changed because of him. Hope you are able to find the peace and comfort you deserve and I am so sorry again for the loss of Sam.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

I have some amazing friends who have been through similar experiences in years past, and they are amazing. They are supportive and willing to talk, and I do on occassion, but I fear overburdening them with my pain kwim. Thank you for your kind words. I have done a lot of journal writing, and when I just can't take it anymore I write there and it helps a little. I lie, what Taygen said about people asking if I am feeling better like I had a cold rather than that my baby died. That is how some of my family seem to view this. Maybe someday in the distant future I will feel better...and I suppose that I already do feel a little better. I mean, I didn't wake up crying this morning, and I don't stay in bed all day long like I did the first week...but I will never feel "better" in the way some of my family want me to. They just don't understand..and I am glad that they don't. I wouldn't wish this pain on anyone.

 

[Andypanda6570]

I am so sorry for your loss, your post broke my heart. My Ava Sofia died at 20 weeks, I gave birth to her and we buried her on 3-3-2011. My SIL just had a baby girl after having 3 boys herself and she named the baby after my Daughter she didn't even ask us, we are in shock. This has caused a huge family problem, i will never forgive them for putting me back on a journey of pain . I am so sorry you are going through this

 

[nicksi27]

Im so sorry for your losses ladies, the pain is undescribable but it does get better. I lost my first baby Jacob in february and although i will never 'get over it', time really is the best healer. I still cry and grieve for him but as time goes on i feel that i can smile about him because i know that one day ill be meeting him again will be able to be a proper mum to him then. This gets me through bad days. I hope you have a lot of support and I am sending you lots of love xx

andypanda i cant believe your SIL did that how insensitive. They should have asked you first surely they must have known that this would cause problems. They probably thought they were being nice by naming their baby after Ava Sofia but, like you, if my brother and SIL named their baby jacob i would think jacob was sort of being replaced. I would feel just like you do. I hope you feel better soon

 

[TatorMom]

I'm so sorry for your loss and very sorry your family isn't being supportive. Your MIL sounds like a bit of a nasty person. I really think me being able to move on so well has been because of the support we received from everyone. My husband works for the largest bank in the US and they had him take bereavement leave when we lost our girls at 22 weeks. His boss and co workers sent flowers with our girls names on them, etc. It was just nice to have them recognized as people, and that it was the loss of our children. This loss was WAY different than any we've had previously because I was so far along, and it was due to an infection. The pregnancy was perfect and the babies healthy other wise. I never had bleeding, no issues and BAM. We had our girls cremated, rather than buried alone in a cemetery with no other family and outside in the cold and elements. We had their ashes placed inside a teddy bear urn. You'd never know it was an urn, although we have to keep it out of our boys reach because it looks like a regular stuffed animal with our girls names on it. I've gone to therapy this time around and it's helped quite a bit. It's helped me to see things in a much more positive light and given me the hope and courage to try again. Some need to wait, but for myself and my husband part of healing is moving on and trying again. I spent several days angry at the world, then sad and depressed, etc, but therapy really really helped me. That and deciding to try again and not wait. It still does bother me when I see teenagers having babies or hear of a child being abused because they had a child they really didn't deserve, but we lost ours. Outside of that I'm not bothered by pregnant women or babies. They aren't our girls, so it doesn't really mean anything to me. I know we'll have our rainbow baby soon enough too.

Hugs and much healing.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

Thank you so much. Things are getting a little easier, and I don't feel like I am in that darkness. It was so deep and I felt so alone. I would lay huddled under my blankets half the day just staring at the walls or the underside of my blanket because I couldn't sleep. I didn't sleep until I finally broke down and called my family doctor and he prescribed some lovingly induced sleep for me. He was the first dr. That I felt any compassion from.

I had been seeing midwives, but they transferred me to an ob I had never met the moment we found Sam was dead. That ob told me to bury my baby in a shoe box in my back yard. He treated me like I had found my puppy was dead rather than my baby. When I called him to ask if we needed to drive the additional 20 minutes to the hospital he works at, he yelled at me and told me to go anywhere, then he hung up the phone on me. (Right after that I was passing out over and over and dh called 911 and we went to the closer hospital, but even still the ob was so horrible). The ob on call that did my d&c introduced himself right before surgery, then after I woke up he never again contacted me. To get any further information about healing or trying again I had to call my midwives...they didn't contact me. I felt so ignored by the medical community. My family dr. Helped me so much to see that not all dr's are horrible. It felt nice to have someone like that in my corner.

I had thought that my dh didn't want me to talk about this anymore, but last night we talked for hours about so many things, including our loss and our individual pain. He heals so differently than I do. It is easy to think that he doesn't care anymore, or that he doesn't want me to talk about it anymore, but he does. He is pretty incredible.

My fil, a man who for the five years dh and I were dating told dh over and over that he should break up with me...and in the fifteen years I have known the man has never made me feel like I would have been his choice for dh...reached out to me in the slightest of ways to let me know that he does care. I was left speechless. Maybe he just has no idea how to show me that he loves me and accepts me. At least I hope so.

Some amazing friends have come out of the woodwork for me. Women who have been through this, and understand that I lost a baby that is worth grieving over. I wonder if society's role in our lives plays a part in how people think we should grieve over these lost babies. I mean...society doesn't even think of our babies as worth basic human rights and I think it warps the way people view losses like this...even subconsciously. Without amazing women to hold me up while I was so deep down I would have drown in my sorrow for sure. I see a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. It feels so good to see light again.

Yesterday, one of my best friends gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Had I not miscarried in May we would have been besties preggers together...expecting babies a couple of weeks apart from one another. When I saw his picture, I cried. I lost two babies within six months. It is a loss that sometimes consumes me, but in my future I see a shining cherub cheeked rainbow.

Now...if could stop spotting and cycle again I could at last start to hope for my rainbow sooner than later. 27 days of on and off bleeding and spotting is LAME-O! I didn't spot this long after giving birth to live babies.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

Typo...I could at least hope for my rainbow.