I wasn’t sure how it would feel to be pregnant again. I imagined it would be scary and strange, but I also felt like I would have some motherly instinct that would just reassure me that everything was ok. I figured I had that bad feeling my entire pregnancy with Ava, so surely if things were going well in a future pregnancy I could expect to just know it was all ok. It didn’t exactly happen that way.
It’s been over a year and I still don’t go more than a few hours without thinking about Ava. Some days I feel OK, “normal,” like myself again. Then there’s days that I still feel like I can’t function. Like the other day at work. I completely lost it. I got triggered by a patient and I couldn’t recover. As soon as I would feel like I was close to being able to get through the day a different patient…
I’m about to write my daughter’s entire life story in a single post. It seems too difficult, but writing this is an important part of my acceptance of her death. Until now I have managed to keep her alive through my stories and writing about my pregnancy. Once I finish this part of her story, that’s it. Her life will be over on this blog and the remainder of my posts, the remainder of my life, will be spent in the…
When I checked in to the hospital I thought we would be stuck there for weeks, maybe months. The baby had been stable during my monitoring and I was feeling more movement everyday. I was looking forward to having another ultrasound because I was certain it would show marked improvement. I was caught completely off-guard when things deteriorated so quickly.
After finally getting a solid night of sleep I woke up on Sunday morning feeling refreshed and full of hope. We ordered breakfast and I got dressed before my nurse came in to start the day.We hadn’t met before but she was just the kind of nurse I needed. She was smart and experienced but she was also funny and laughed at our dark humor. She updated the whiteboard: 26+3.
I was completely exhausted after our NICU class and it was only noon. We ordered lunch and then waited anxiously for my parents to arrive with Logan. We had spent our first night apart and we missed our little guy. We wanted to see our happy, healthy, perfect son and squeeze him until he begged us to stop. My parents had been texting me updates throughout the morning and it sounded like Logan was having a wonderful time and a good…
When I woke up in the morning I felt ready to face another day. It was Saturday the 14th. We had made it past Friday the 13th so maybe our luck was changing. Today was the NICU class that was going to prepare us for the long road ahead. I was looking forward to it and feeling like I was actually doing something besides sitting around and worrying.
It was the evening of 26+1. We had made it through our first full day and things were looking up. We had amazing staff and teams of specialists that had given us more hope and made us feel like we made the right decision coming to the hospital.
I didn’t get much sleep the first night in the hospital. I stayed up writing e-mails and texting back and forth with my mom who was en-route to Denver. We called my parents as soon as we found out we were headed to Denver and they immediately jumped in the car and started driving from Minnesota. They left their house before we left ours and drove through the night. This is not unusual behavior for my parents, they are always there when…
The first night in the hospital is somewhat of a blur to me. We arrived around 11 PM after a three hour drive from home. I was tired and scared. Logan was finally asleep so I left him and Travis in the car while I figured out where we needed to go. I had to check in at the Emergency Department because the front doors of the hospital were locked and no one seemed to understand why I was there. I…