A Child After a Loss of a Child

When I was 21 I found out that I was pregnant. It was the end of October of 2005. I remember the night that I got pregnant. I remember thinking "oh no... what did I just do?". Having a baby was the last thing on my mind. I made that mistake that's often made, I wasn't being very careful or safe. As matter of fact I was so wasted I don't remember how we got back to his house or much of that night. I do remember that though, clear as day.

From that day on I tested to see if I was pregnant. I knew that you couldn't tell that early I just didn't want to believe I could be pregnant. I must have spent two hundred dollars or more on pregnancy tests. My room mate at the time kept telling me I was nuts and to stop taking tests. I had one test left. I remember thinking okay they have all been negative, I have been working mad hours at work, sometimes only coming home to feed the pets and get my dog to bring back to work. It had to be stress, plus I wasn't talking to my mom and the bills never seemed to stop coming. It was around four am when I took that last pregnancy test hoping I would relax enough to get my period.

I hadn't even finished peeing on the test before it came up positive. I remember I was just finishing peeing and was like okay two minutes and all will be good. As I was putting the test down on the sink to wait my two minutes it already showed up that I was pregnant. I reread the directions in disbelief that I could really be pregnant since all the other tests had said negative. I took the test into my room mates room and showed her she laughed as I cried. I called the doctors office to make an appointment to get it rechecked by them.

By that time I had convinced myself that that it was a false positive and that everything was going to be fine. I mean my breasts hurt and I was cramping it just had to be stress as to why I wasn't getting my period. I waited for the nurse to come get me. I told her it had to be a false positive and wrong and that I just wanted them to check so I could finally know I wasn't pregnant. The nurse must have thought I was insane after I got done telling her about all the tests and how I knew I just couldn't be pregnant.

I went home to wait for the phone call on my results. I got home and paced in my living room trying to ignore everyone that was in my home. The phone rang and my room mate answered and said it was the hospital and that they wanted to talk to me. I got on the phone said this was Sarah, she said my results were in and she wanted to be the first to say congratulations. I just said oh okay as I hung up the phone and threw up all over the kitchen floor.

I started crying my room mate had to call into work for me and tell my boss what was going on she gave me three days off. After hours of crying I called my mom, and cried for 3 days straight. From that day till the week before Thanksgiving I don't remember much. I was at work finishing a double. I started cramping and when I went pee there was some discharge that was tinted pink.

I called the hospital right away and went in for an ultrasound. They said they thought it was too early to hear the heart beat but the sack looked good. The doctor told me to go home and put my feet up and don't do much. As I started to walk out of the hospital there was a gush and my pants were soaked In blood. That was was the day I started to miscarry.

My body couldn't miscarry by itself so I ended up with severe pain and lots of bleeding. I was taken to the ER where the doctor performed a partial DNC. It was the worst two weeks of my life or so I thought.

It was strange to me that I didn't want to be pregnant, that I was so scared to have a baby, that all of the sudden I wanted my baby back! That this wasn't fair. I never planned to abort my pregnancy or to give my baby up. I just never knew what to do or if I was going to be a good mother. I never had any experience with a baby. I had all of this ache in my heart, I felt bad for not wanting the baby right away, I felt loss, and lost. The doctor told me that if I wanted to try again for another baby I should wait three months before becoming sexually active again for my body to heal.

I started working more and when that didn't work I went out and got two more jobs. So I was working three jobs. I was never sleeping and all the working I was doing wasn't helping fill the void and emptiness I felt inside of me so I started drinking. I was drinking all the time like a fish. That helped for a little while but then the emptiness came back.

I started seeing this guy who was ten years older than me. Once again I wasn't safe. This time I didn't care I just wanted to fill this awful pain inside of me. I never thought I would get pregnant. I didn't think about babies or anything dealing with babies I only thought of how I could get rid of this ache inside that never let me rest.

I was at work and this girl that I just met was going off about the stars and all this other stuff, I just thought she was a hippie and didn't really listen to much of what she was saying 'till I heard her say that she was sorry about my loss. That she could feel the pain I was radiating from across the room. I laughed and said I had no idea what she was going on about.

She told me to listen to what she was saying to feel her words. I thought she was nuts and all I wanted to do was work and get done so I could go home change and go to the bar. She told me that I shouldn't go out and drink tonight cause I was pregnant, and that if I took a test that day it wouldn't show up right because there was something with the moon and another planet being in the way. She said I had the prettiest aura she had ever seen. I just laughed at her and said okay.

After work I called my friend to tell her about my strange day at work with this crazy lady. She told me to pick up a pregnancy test and that she had the beer to swing on over. My friend also thought that story was pretty far fetched and that I wasn't pregnant. So we were just screwing around so I could tell her the next time that I worked that I wasn't pregnant. I bought the test and went over to her house. She handed me a beer and said she was just about to watch a movie. I said okay and went into the bathroom to take the test.

It never showed up positive like the last time. I went back in to check it and still no positive sign so I stuck it back in the box. My friend asked me how long the wait time was I said I would look on the instructions because I couldn't remember. The test fell out of the box and she picked it up while I looked for the time information. She told me to look at the test. It was positive. I went and took another one from the box it also came up positive. I dumped out the rest of my beer down the sink.

When I was eight weeks pregnant, I landed back in the hospital getting another ultrasound. I feared that I was heading for another miscarriage. This ultrasound was so different where the sac was black before this one blinked white to show a good heartbeat. I also got to hear the heart beat. It was so strong. The doctor put me on light duty at work and then at three months I was placed on light bed rest. I was scared out of my mind that something was going to happen with this baby as well.

When I was six months pregnant I was standing in alltel looking for a new cell phone. All of the sudden there was a gush and my pants were wet. I called the hospital and they told me to come in right away they were going to do a test to see if my water broke. I went and they did the test they came back and said that the test was negative and that I probably peed my pants from the baby putting weight on my bladder. This happened two more times and each time they ran the test and each time it came back negative.

I went into labor on October 31^st 2006 at 39 weeks. My labor was different from most. I was asleep and then I woke up and I had a sever headache and then I vomited, which was followed by the runs, lots of bleeding and then extremely dizzy. I hadn't felt my son move and I became scared again. When I called labor and delivery they told me to come down and they would check me. I walked in an because I was walking and didn't have the type of contractions they were talking about it just felt like I had done a bunch of sit-ups and my stomach was sore. They thought I was a false labor. They checked me and I was three cm. They hooked me up to see if they could see if I was having any contractions and I was they just didn't have any pain to them. They said I was in progressive labor.

I was admitted for labor at 10:35 am and at 12:48pm my water broke. Thats when everything changed. I started having my one and only contraction. Thats also when they figured out that my amniotic fluid was infected. I remember me screaming for them to fix it, to help my baby. The nurse and my mom thought I had a bowel movement until the nurse noticed that the sheet was soaked. She ran to the door and turned on an alarm and started screaming down the hall for help. I remember saying hes coming and her being like "no theres still time" and my mom saying he was crowning. From there I only remember bits and pieces of what happened. I remember pushing and them telling me to stop, she couldn't catch him. I remember her only having one glove on and none of the other stuff shes to wear on. I remember them saying "wheres the doctor"? I remember the nurse pushing him back in and screaming for help and my mother saying she will catch him. Then I remember this burning feeling. The next thing I remember is at 12:55pm my son coming out but not crying and then a panic. I remember the look on my doctors face when she saw him and when he came up I saw his face, it was this gray color and his eyes were closed and the rest of his body was black. Then I remember looking over trying to see him to see if he was alive.

I heard the doctor say I was going to bleed out, my mother screaming at me, I remember responding with I want to see my baby. He was alive he just never cried. I got to hold him while the doctor sewed me up. I was not prepared for the next event. I didn't get to see or touch my son for the next nine hours. He was taken to the NICU. My son's doctor came down and said that he had a lung infection and a blood infection. I asked how this could happen he said that they think that when I came in at six months I was leaking water in a small amount and thats why they couldn't pick it up on the test. They also thought thats how the infection got up inside. We spent the next three weeks in the NICU. It felt like five years and that we were never going to get out of there. I remember that my son didn't feel like a day or two old he felt months old. Endless nights of being in that hospital wore pretty hard on me and the rest of my family.

My mom and dad would come sit with me when they were done with work and try to help and comfort me as much as possible. But nothing seemed to make that time any easier. I don't remember anything but plain fear. I was scared to hold him with all the needles they had in him. I was afraid that I might hold him wrong and one would break. I don't remember any of my friends coming to see my son or me in the hospital because none did. Even though my mom and dad were there I still felt so very alone.

When I finally got to bring my son home I didn't want to put him down. I couldn't sleep I was so scared that something would happen he might stop breathing or he might not be eating enough and die because he was starving. I took him back to the hospital, I told them I was so scared I was doing something wrong and that I didn't know what to do. I told them I loved my son so much that I was scared that I wasn't good enough because I didn't know what to do. They told me that he was fine and that it was normal to feel this way after the experience I had gone through but that I was going to be and make a good mother because I cared enough to say I didn't know what I was doing or if he was getting enough food. They helped me find ways to make sure I knew how much food he was getting and to check on him through the night it was okay if I went to sleep.

It took a couple of months for me to finally calm down enough to relax and find my motherly ways. But once I did it was like this knowledge that just came out of nowhere, like I had always known how to do it. We were finally safe and I felt safe. My son seemed to get sick very easy the first year of life but hes a strong healthy toddler now.

My husband and I have been talking about having another baby. This excites me because I'm married now and I won't be alone through it again. My husband is a Marine and will be going on his first deployment around the time we are trying to get pregnant. We are still planning to get pregnant and to try to do it so he will be home for the birth of his child. To me I feel I am repeating this part of my life . This scares me because I believe that no parent should have to live through this twice. Its hard enough the first time around. I'm scared something something will go wrong and we will be living this all over again. I'm lucky though because my mom and dad (who is my step-dad) helped me a lot the first time by accepting the fact I got pregnant and that I needed help and letting me move back home. They helped me the first year of my sons life until I got married and moved out. They once again are planning to help me and my husband by moving to where we live to be here to help again in case if an issue should come up.

I hope that this article of my story of losing a child and then having a baby that was sick will help other people as well cope with what is going on with them. I hope that if you are a single mother and scared and don't know what to do you at least try turning to your parents because they could surprise you and help you and be kind about it. You don't need to go through a pregnancy by yourself there are people out there who will go through it with you and help you along the way there are options. I was scared to tell my mom that I was pregnant I thought she would yell and be mad and tell me its my problem I need to fix it by myself. Instead she told me to come home to let them help. It was the best thing, not that it was easy living at home again but it was the best thing for us and my son.