Rachel Hope, April 14th.

Over the month and a half, my hormones, expectations and emotions have been on a roller coaster. I wish I could go back two months, to when I was pregnant, working full time, and running around with three beautiful children. My life was a routine, it was predictable, but it was great. We were rich in love, love for our God, our family and had wonderful plans of adding our fourth child in June. June 22nd, was going to change our family forever. I was going to go to part-time, I was planning on spending the summer at the pool or local swimming pit. I was growing with anticipation, just as my stomach was growing with the baby inside of me. Oh, how I wish to go back. I would give anything to go back to April 12th, 2016. Maybe if I go back, I could hold my little girl again.

April 12th, was a great day. Paul had been sick the day before so I stayed home with him. We played outside, it was a beautiful warm day for April. The sun was shining and we were enjoying the new swing set we got. After lunch, Paul went down for a nap like normal, and I sat on the couch to catch up on some work e-mails. The baby inside of me was kicking and moving like crazy. It was a wonderful feeling to be laying on the couch feeling her move and kick. It was so relaxing I decided to take a little nap. After my nap, I got some house work done before the older kids came home from school. We had a normal Tuesday night, dinner as a family then work outside (since the weather was so nice), we read books, and then kids went to bed. While cooking dinner, after dinner and putting the kids to bed, I noticed that baby wasn’t moving as much. At first I brushed it off, as she was tired from all her moving earlier on in the day. After the kids went to bed, I tried to do the water test where you drink a cold glass of water and count kicks, I only got baby to move twice, which is low. The recommendation from my doctor was 10 kicks every 20 min, this instantly worried me even more. I have this tendency to over worry, I worry about losing Josh, losing a child, anything that could possibly go wrong, I usually imagine. I know this, and have been trying very hard to give my worry to the Lord. I am not perfect at all in this, but it’s something I have been trying to improve on daily. Josh came inside from working in the garage and I told him how I was worried. He told me to just take it easy, and relax, he reminded me that i’m a worry wort, and that I have had this worry with every single pregnancy before and everything was always fine. We went to bed, I tried to sleep and I did some off and on but I kept my hand on my tummy to feel kicks, but never felt one again. At some point in the middle of the night with my in and out of sleep this song came into my head. “I Will Carry You” by Selah. At that point, I knew then that something was wrong. Something was not right with my baby. My thought was I’m going to have an emergency c-section and the baby will be in the NICU. This still scared the daylights out of me, but it was my plan, that’s the worst it could be. I couldn’t handle anything else. Tyring to sleep was difficult to say the least.

Wednesday April 13th, 2016, I remember thinking to my self. Be happy, get the kids off to school, don’t cry, be strong so they won’t ask questions. As soon as Wyatt and Karlee were on the bus I cried and cried. I tried the water trick again, but couldn’t get anything, not one movement, I prayed and begged God to give me something but nothing, the baby wasn’t moving. My heart sank even more when I got a text from my midwife saying she was out at a home birth so my appointment was cancelled. Now what… I NEED my appointment, what was I going to do. There were so many emotions going through my head. Telling my self not to worry, yet I knew deep down something was wrong and I was scared. I texted back, and told her what was going on, and asked if I should go into the clinic or go to the hospital. She assured me going into the clinic would be fine and they could test for “heart tones”. Heart tones sounded so sterile, so medical that those words, just stuck in my throat as I drove to Sioux Center. During the drive I debated back and forth if I should listen in going to the clinic or go directly to the Emergency Room. Finally I told myself, just listen it will be ok. God has blessed you with this baby, just go to the clinic. And so I did. “The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away. Blessed be the name of the LORD” Job 1:21. This was the verse in the back of my head, heartbreaking and humbling all in the same verse. Oh how I didn’t know then how true and peaceful this verse would become for me, and how much it already had.

At the clinic I wait for what seems like forever, then my name gets called. The nurse is happy, and I just cry. I cry all the way back to the room, and she assures me that it will be fine, and that I’ll hear the heartbeat and all will be well. “Ok, good. Great I think, yup it’s all in your head. Everything will be fine”. If I keep telling myself that it will be ok. I lay down and she searches for the heartbeat for ever, and silence is all I hear, I’m still crying. The nurse searches for about five minutes before she asks where it’s usually found so I point to my lower right side of my abdomen. She finds a heartbeat. Relief, instant relief with lots of tears! Then she says it’s at 178 beats per min. WHAT! This is my fourth pregnancy and that would be high for any of them. “Why is it so high” I think, again fear overwhelms me as to what is wrong. The nurse keeps searching for a stronger (louder) beat on the dopler, but we mainly sit in silence. More silence. She says “I can see it’s there, the baby is just in a weird position that it’s not making the sound”. For those of you who know me personally, I like to be in control and if I don’t like what I see or hear, no matter what you say I don’t believe it, and I don’t like this lady’s reasoning, and I think she can tell. She offers to take me next door to the stress test room, that has a more powerful machine. Again, she assures me it will pick up the babies heartbeat right away. So we move, I put on the strap around my belly and NOTHING. She turns up the sensitivity of the machine and gets a heartbeat. Pffffew instant relief again. I turn my head to see the heart rate on the machine myself, and I can see it jumps from 96 to 130 back and forth, and steadies around 111. II’m not a nurse, but when it’s your fourth child and you know something is wrong that number had reassurance and pain all at the same time. Reassurance that the baby was alive, pain because something was defiantly wrong. The babies heart rate in the womb should not be that low. Expressing my concern to the nurse did not give me the satisfaction or assurance I really needed. The nurse tells me that the baby is sleeping and that I should drink some orange juice and rest. In my head I scoff and roll my eyes “it’s been sleeping for awhile” I thought. Her next words I will never forget- “There is no reason you won’t carry this baby to full term”. “No reason”. I was grateful to hear the heart beat, but so angry at the same time. How could she possibly say that. How could she possibly know that. There are plenty of reasons why babies don’t make it to full term, there is no guarantee, and even if there was, how was she suppose to know.

Next, I took her advice and got some OJ from McDonalds and drove to work. My sister was helping at work that day and I expressed to her my feelings, more like I cried and cried and cried some more. She told me I had to go back in, if I felt something was wrong I needed to go to the ER. I knew she was right. So at lunch time, I headed to the ER at the hospital. They sent me directly back to labor and delivery, to be put on a non-stress test. The nurse there hooked me up to the machine, up’d the sensitivity again and found a heartbeat. It was 95. Well that’s low but it’s there. Relief again. I could tell by the urgency to get Dr. Rens in the room something was wrong. The nurses wouldn’t leave my side, and once Dr. Rens got there he didn’t either. They brought in a portable ultrasound machine and he started to take a look at baby. It was silent in the room, no one said  peep. I tried to make conversation with Dr Rens, but he was busy looking at the baby, I could see the ultrasound machine and he just stared at the picture. Then he left, not saying a word. I called Josh and said, somethings wrong the heart rate is low, but they haven’t said anything yet. Josh said he was on his way immediately, I told him not to rush the baby was alive, and that I would call when we knew what was going on.

Dr. Rens comes back into the room with Dr. Anderson, he explains that she is more experienced with the portable machine than he is, so he wants her to take a look. Again, it is silent while she takes a look. It dosen’t take her as long to look at the baby, and when she stands up, she starts talking about what she should see at this Gestation. At this point I should see four chambers of the heart, and blood flow in the umbilical cord,  and she couldn’t see any of that. I just stared at her. “Are you telling me my baby is gone??” Her response will forever be in my mind- “I’m sorry”.

How is my baby gone? Why is my baby gone? I need to call Josh.. Josh didn’t answer his phone. How was I going to tell him? Our baby, our precious gift was gone. He finally called me back (I say finally because time stood still, what was only 5 min seemed like eternity).

I answer the phone, just crying, uncontrollably crying.

Me:”The baby is gone”…

Josh:”We lost the baby”?

Me:”Yes”

Josh:”I’m in Le Mars, I’ll be right there”

How could I lose the baby? What did I do? Josh said “we” lost the baby, but I did. I didn’t protect her. She’s gone inside me, my baby is gone. This can’t be, I’m 30 weeks pregnant we have to be able to save the baby. Why aren’t they going to try and save the baby? I knew deep down there wasn’t a way, but I still wanted to try.

I had to get an official ultrasound done to confirm what Dr. Anderson saw on the portable machine. During that ultrasound, I asked if they could tell what the baby was. We were planning on finding out that day at my normal appointment. We had always said we were going to be surprised, but with the renovation we started I wanted to paint before baby arrived so we decided to find out. “It looks like a girl” said the ultrasound tech. A girl. Oh my heart. Karlee got her baby sister, but she won’t get to play with her. Ever.

When Josh got to the hospital we called our family, and we received transfer papers to go to Sanford Medical in Sioux Falls to deliver. Dr. Rens said that going to Sioux Falls would be better, as I am at a higher risk for infection, as well as they are more advanced to run test to possibly find out what killed my little girl. The thought of delivering my baby’s lifeless body was overwhelming. After going home to talk with the kids, and grab a few clothes and stuff, we get ready to leave for Sioux Falls.