5 Babies – Forever in my heart.

My husband, Cole, and I were both born and raised in the same town. We both dreamed of having a big family, which we even talked about it freely when dating as teenagers, but neither of us had any idea just how difficult a journey that could be. Soon after getting married in 2002 we became pregnant and our first daughter Macie was born. She was healthy, she was perfect. The process of pregnancy and birth seemed joyfully automatic (despite all-day sickness for 7 of the 9 months). However, Cole and I soon came to understand that while growing a human life is an amazing miracle, the success of pregnancy is not a given. We wanted to have our children close in age and were so excited to find out we were pregnant again just about when Macie was 9 months old. Loss #1: 2nd Trimester It seemed like a normal pregnancy and we had already had a great ultrasound and heard the heartbeat. But in late July 2004 I woke up one day not feeling well and having cramps. I called my doctor and he said to take it easy and call if there was any bleeding. I was now 14 weeks along and the worst happened - my water broke as I was sitting on the toilet. It was a burst of fluid and I knew this couldn’t be normal. I started to bleed within a few minutes. I was a frantic emotional mess with my toddler at my feet. Cole wasn’t home, cell phones weren’t really a thing, so I had no way to get a hold of him and we were poor college students with only one car. I called a neighbor down the street to help me. I don’t even know how she understood what I was saying because I was bawling, but she came to my rescue with her teenage son. He babysat our toddler and she took me to the doctor. We were thrown into a flood of unexpected grief as we learned there was nothing that could be done to save our growing baby that no longer had a functioning gestational sac to grow in. The baby was still alive but there was nothing that could be done to save him at only 14 weeks (We found out later I had an infection in the sac that caused it to break). Cole made it to the doctor's office a little while later and we just cried. Our hearts were broken. I was in so much pain. Cramping so much and emotionally numb at this point. We got settled at the hospital and I gave birth naturally to our baby that night. Cole saw the baby (a boy), but I didn’t. I don’t think I even wanted to (something I would regret later). I was just too sad. I had a D&C procedure later that night to remove all the extra tissues etc. At the hospital Cole and I barely talked. I only have few surreal memories of that time, almost like it was a dream - a horrible nightmare. We were both so numb from the shock and heartache. My womb was empty and we had no baby in our arms to rock and cuddle. We went home from the hospital completely heartbroken that our baby had died. Once we had a bit of time to process all that had happened we shed more tears in the next days and months than we ever thought possible. We wanted this baby in our family so badly! I thought I was good person, living a good life and deserved this blessing of a new baby. People were so kind with the meals they brought, the care they took of Macie (our daughter), and help around the house while I healed physically. Although the grief was so encompassing at times I held on to my faith that my Heavenly Father loved me and my family and had a plan for us. I didn’t have any idea what that plan was but I sure hoped it included more children. The doctor said we didn’t have to wait too long to try to get pregnant again. As each month passed and I wasn’t pregnant again I was sad. Sad to not be pregnant and sad that if we had another baby our kids would be farther apart in age than I had wanted. I would have dream after dream about getting pregnant with twins. Getting pregnant again was always on my mind! Loss #2: 1st Trimester We found out I was pregnant again at the end of Oct 2004! So excited!! I took 3 pregnancy tests just to be sure! However, in week 7 I had some bleeding and that really scared me. That to me meant that something was wrong. The following is from my journal dated November 17, 2004: “I had a miscarriage today. I started passing some blood clots so I went to the doctors. There wasn’t a heartbeat. We were so sad and so disappointed! I never really had any pain this time, just the bleeding. I was told to collect any fetal tissues from the toilet and bring it into the office for testing. Not something a hopeful mom with a broken heart wants to do at all! We came back to the doctor’s office again the next day so my doctor could clean out the rest of the tissue (no hospitalized D&C this time). He took care of me and then sent us home heartbroken yet hopeful. He said the two miscarriages were so different that we shouldn’t worry. He said that they were just two unfortunate events in a row.” “This time I dealt with our loss differently. I didn’t cry as much. I was just more disappointed and frustrated, mad even. All of 2004 was spent trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, having miscarriages, grieving and then trying again. Overall it was a very hard and disappointing year.” Loss #3 - 2nd Trimester A few months later morning sickness was starting again! We were pregnant again and I was elated and horribly sick, but this seemed like a good sign for this pregnancy! We had our first ultrasound and found out that I was actually 12 weeks along. We weren’t expecting that! This far along and we could see it’s arms, legs and even got a glimpse at the gender. My doctor said he was 70% sure it was a BOY, but obviously we’d check that again in a few weeks once the baby was bigger. We were so dang excited to be pregnant again! And with the strong possibility of it being a boy made us feel over the moon! We were now just waiting until I was past 14 weeks along (since that is how far we made it with one of our miscarriages) to tell people we were pregnant! It was a Sunday night and we were babysitting the neighbors kids for a few days/nights so we were sleeping in their basement. I had had some back ache and abdomen pain during the day and was a tad worried but just tried to dismiss it as gas pains. I remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling all wet. Everytime I would roll over it would run more. I got out of bed with a giant pit in my stomach knowing that my water had broken yet again at the 14 week mark. I woke up Cole and then he came with me to the bathroom and I started to have some bleeding. I could tell right away that he wasn’t well. He looked ghostly white and was almost swaying. He walked back to bed and I heard a crash. He had fainted on the way back to bed (he later told me he felt like he had gone into shock from the heartbreak of losing another one of our children). I sat on the toilet for a while, truly numb and my mind exhausted and racing knowing we were going to lose another baby. I called my neighbor, Linda, who goes to our church and was also the nurse of the OBYN I see. She had Dr. Lovell call me and he instructed me to go to the ER if the pain got bad. Within in a hour I was cramping and in so much pain! It was unbearable. Cole wasn’t doing well and we were also babysitting someone else’s children and our own daughter as sleeping so I called Linda again to take me to the hospital. They were able to give me something to dull the pain and during the exam the ER doctor told me he could see my baby’s feet. He asked me if I wanted a mirror so I could see. I remember just closing my eyes as tears rolled down my face and telling him no. I kind of thought that the doctor was being insensitive to the situation and I just didn’t think I could look. Yet again, I’m sad that I didn’t take that opportunity to see my little baby’s feet. It was just too much to handle at the time. Holding your deceased teeny tiny infant wasn’t really a thing back 14 years ago so that was my only chance to see him and I let the grief and despair keep me from that. I had another D&C this time. Cole was feeling ripped apart emotionally, sick and went to school to take a test. We talked only a few short words on the phone that day, but I stayed the rest of the day at the hospital. It was gut wrenching to hear babies crying in the hallway when I had just lost mine. It just didn’t seem fair to be in this situation again. The recovery this time was fine, but the emotional recovery was horribly difficult. So many thoughts of why this happened 3 times in a row, would I ever be able to have more children, would my husband recover from the heartache, is there something wrong with my body that I can’t keep a pregnancy etc . . . The questions just swirled in my head and I felt so emotionally fragile. I remember one day seeing the ultrasound photo on the fridge and ripping it down because I was so mad. It just seemed to mock me up there on the fridge. Having recurrent miscarriages was really, really hard. The sorrow for the loss of our children was so taxing on our marriage at first. I sobbed and talked to my sisters in law who had had miscarriages often but my husband was so heartbroken that he barely talked. Cole just couldn’t even talk or think about it. He needed more time to process all the emotions individually first. It was hard to wait for him to be ready to talk but I learned that I didn’t need to understand why he wasn’t ready to talk and that I just that I needed to be patient with him and the way he grieved and give him time. My love for him grew in that period of waiting. With time we had great discussions, held each other long and often in tears, prayed together and fought for the courage together to try to get pregnant again after having so many losses. It was really so hard to think we could try again and then still have another loss. I hated having to tell people the news that we had lost another baby. I had to be strong even when I didn’t want to be and frankly sometimes I wasn’t strong and would cry when telling them. It was a lonely hard time trying to grow our family. We learned there was no infection in the sac this time so we didn’t have any clear answers or a recurring reason for the losses. That news was disappointing and I was so discouraged. I wasn’t going to wait to try and figure this out so I was very proactive in advocating for myself. I read lots of books to try to figure out why we had all these losses and knew I needed to figure this out soon. I was determined to have more babies in our family! Cole was about to graduate from undergrad and we were going to be moving back to Oregon for him to go to dental school. With financial help from Cole’s mom I made an appointment to see a Perinatologist at OHSU the day after we moved to Oregon. Macie was almost 2 and I so desperately wanted to have another baby!! I met with the perinatologist and we discussed my history and he thought maybe I had an incompetent cervix so we agreed that I would call him as soon as I got pregnant again and they would keep a very close eye on me through the pregnancy. I did get pregnant again soon and while we were excited a lot of that excitement was masked by the fear of losing another baby. Every little ache would give me major anxiety that something was wrong. Being in the care of a specialist did boost my confidence a bit though and he also had me doing progesterone suppositories for the first three months and then move on to progesterone injections for the remainder of the pregnancy. We never did see any sign of an shortened cervix so that was a relief. We went on to have a successful pregnancy and had a little boy in Feb 2006, a girl in Oct 2007, a girl in August 2009, and yet another girl in May 2011. The boys were clearly outnumbered at this point but we were so incredibly grateful that despite some little scares we had 4 healthy pregnancies and births in a row! We felt so blessed! We were finally getting the large family that we had always dreamed of! Loss #4 - Losing a twin and our miracle baby. My next pregnancy I was so sick! The morning sickness was certainly not just in the morning, ha! I felt like my belly was growing a little more quickly this time and the thought of twins did cross my mind but I was quick to dismiss it. At my 12 week appointment they finally did the first ultrasound for the pregnancy. I had told my doctor that I was feeling extra large this pregnancy. He said that it was probably due to the fact that this was my 6th baby (9th pregnancy). A few seconds into the ultrasound the doctor tilted his head and said "Umm, I think I have some news for you" which I could clearly see on the screen and I just blurted out "It's TWINS!" I wasn't expecting anything but a normal ultrasound so Cole wasn't even there. On my way home I stopped by his office and had to wait around for a bit to tell him. I took him into his office and pulled out the ultrasound pics and tried to say "We're having twins" but the tears were coming and I barely said it in a whisper. We are both so excited and amazed! We didn’t know quite yet if they were identical or fraternal (twins do not run in our family), but a couple days later they did another ultrasound, blood work and we met with a Perinatologist. She told me that we were having Mono-Di twins which means they were identical and each had their own amniotic sac but shared the same placenta. They were BOYS!! That felt so redemptive and like an amazing 2 for 1 prize since we had already lost other sons to miscarriage. With the news of identical twins came a more serious but hopeful conversation of what could go wrong since they were sharing the same placenta- their blood, food and life source. I remember the words so clearly, “If one baby dies the other is almost guaranteed to die too.” It was plain and simple a high risk pregnancy. They would monitor me more frequently for sure and they did. There was so many feelings associated with this twin pregnancy - pure joy, shock, excitement, gratitude and mingled with bits of worry. I didn't have any worries about having 2 more kids in the family (we know it will just add to the craziness and fun we already had), but worry about getting through the pregnancy with health and strength for the babies and me. We had a lot of faith and hope and coupled that with lots of prayers from us and our families that all could be well. I went to my 16 week appointment so excited to hear our twin’s heartbeats. Found baby A and heard a solid woosh, woosh, woosh- the sound that is music to every expectant mother’s ears. The doctor took a while as he tried to find Baby B and then went to get the ultrasound machine. Too much time had passed as he looked and listened. My heart dropped in worry as we had already lost three other babies. This just couldn’t be happening again! Then he said the words no mother or father should have to hear. “Oh, sweetie. I am so sorry. But one of your baby’s has passed away.” I was crushed. Devastated. Alone. Literally alone. Cole wasn’t there that day as there had been no sign of an impending miscarriage and it should have been a routine check-up. As I drove home sobbing, and barely able to see through tears, I had a moment of peace and clarity come to mind that this baby was and still is a part of us and our family. The words of the Hymn, Be Still My Soul, rang through my ears and I knew that all these babies that had passed before we could know them, hold them, kiss them and love them were ours forever. It was something I had already known and felt with our other losses but I was so grateful to have that confirmed again and knew that Heavenly Father was watching over our family at this difficult time. This tender experience carried me through the darkest of days. Those dark days would be many and frequent! I knew Cole would be absolutely devastated to know we had lost another baby so I waited all afternoon and evening to tell him once he was done coaching our daughter’s practice. I took him to the far corner of the house to tell him the crushing news hoping the kids wouldn’t hear us. It feels like a weight on your chest to have to speak the words that your son who has died. We held each other and just sobbed and sobbed. Our oldest was 9 years old at the time and she heard us both sobbing in the other room and it terrified her. We had to tell her that I was actually pregnant with twins (the kids only knew that we were pregnant not about the twins at this point) and she just sobbed with us. I hated to break her heart too! (I sit here typing our story almost 6 years later and I have tears flowing down my cheeks reliving these experiences). While our hearts were broken and we were grieving our dead son we were also fighting for the life of the other twin. The twins suffered from TTTS (Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome) which led to the death of the baby. They were identical twins so there was no tissues passed, no baby to be delivered as that would kill our other baby. He would get smaller and smaller on each ultrasound and just absorbed into his surrounds in the uterus. It was hard to see these two sweet boys in the ultrasound, one with a beating heart and one so still and lifeless. As a result of the TTTS and passing of his brother our surviving twin was so incredibly anemic and sick. It seemed as though we were given bad news after bad news those next following days and it was determined that the only chance of survival for our baby was to do a fetal blood transfusion up at OHSU. Our little guy was so incredibly small and they wanted to get the blood directly into his umbilical cord. It was an extremely stressful and risky procedure but we wanted to do ANYTHING we could to save our sons life. I remember the perinatologist and the anesthesiologist arguing right in front of us if Cole could be in the operating room during the procedure. The Perinatologist finally put his foot down and said, “He’s allowed to be in here. His son may die.” My heart about broke. I knew that there was a real chance of him not making it but to hear the words out loud in this setting was so hard. It was a long and very stressful procedure for the specialists and as I lay on surgical bed and heard their concern for our son’s heart rate dropping they finally injected the blood into the alternate location, his abdomen. I remembered the scripture that talks about faith proceeding the miracle and clung on to that hope as I lay there. Thankfully he lived through a scary pregnancy and our precious little miracle boy Anthony was born full term! “From a Facebook post dated October 2016 - This picture of Anthony, age three, was taken a few weeks ago but I keep looking back at it over and over again. I see his cute smile but my eyes are drawn to the large scars across his stomach. Those scars are real evidence that we have a perfect Heavenly Father who loves us, watches out for us, carries us, listens to us and provides amazing miracles in our lives. Those sweet scars are not imperfections, they are a continual reminder of the perfect body that Anthony has and that he has an identical twin in Heaven watching out for him. This boy was NOT supposed to live after his brother passed away at 16 weeks gestation. He had fluid around the brain, was severely anemic, was in heart failure and the Doctor even made multiple suggestions of termination as his chance of survival was so bleak. We told them we would do anything to save our baby's life! Anthony had a fetal blood transfusion at 17 weeks gestation and we nearly lost him, several times. We were told he would likely have brain damage if he made it to birth. Thankfully our many prayers were answered and Heavenly Father carried our little guy through and provided a miracle. He was born healthy and well - just missing skin on several areas of his body (a result of losing an identical twin and all the blood pressure issues and anemia that goes with it- called Aplasia Cutis Congenita type V). So grateful that we have this little guy in our life and for a loving God who left us with a daily reminder of his twin brother and of God's great miracles right there in those precious scars on his body.” It was so hard to go through the pregnancy and know I wouldn’t deliver twin boys as I had hoped. I had dreamed of the craziness and blessings of having twins for years and years. I had always wanted twins. I often imagined what it would feel like to hold, carry, hug and kiss two darling baby boys but I didn’t get a chance to. That was a hard pill to swallow at first but I loved that because they were identical I at least know what that sweet angel boy in Heaven looks like and for that I am forever grateful. These boys were no longer together physically, but were still together in spirit. Anthony now had a special personal guardian angel to help him through this mortal life and that is a pretty amazing and special bond too. Loss #5- 1st Trimester Getting pregnant again after a loss takes a lot of courage and can cause a lot of anxiety. The thought of another loss can be debilitating and you often wonder if you can endure all the physical and emotional pain if it happens again. Life was busy and even though we both knew that our family wasn’t complete I wasn’t ready to get pregnant again for a long time. Cole might have been ready, but I surely wasn’t, especially for the emotional risks. We waited until Anthony was 2 before trying again. It was easy to get pregnant, as it always has been for us, so I took an early pregnancy test as soon as I missed my period! We were pregnant, but the bleeding started at 5 weeks and I was trying to be hopeful but was scared. My doctor had me do blood work for a few days in a row and all indications showed that we were having another miscarriage. I even asked if I was really pregnant or if it was just a late period. Yes, we were really pregnant and now we had lost another baby. I wish I wouldn’t have even taken an early pregnancy test because then I would have thought it was just a late period. Made it easier to wish that and try not to feel the emotional pain of a loss but really I was grateful to know that a baby had begun it’s life inside me. I was sad and cried but almost felt foolish crying because it was so early on and we had been through so much more in previous losses. Cole was gentle and caring and reminded me that it was ok to cry even with an early loss. I was grieving for our baby, our child . . . gone too soon. September 2018 - We now have another daughter who is two and we are currently pregnant with another boy, due at Christmas time! Our home is filled with, soon to be, 8 darling children and so are our hearts with 5 angel babies in Heaven. All 13 of our children will forever and always be a part of our family. Families are forever.