My water broke at 36 weeks, Sunday, September 26, 2010.
The Monday before my water broke I had to go to labor and delivery for what turned out to be a UTI I didn’t know I had. They monitored me for like 4 hours, and her heartbeat was steady, but because it wasn’t “reactive” they decided to do an ultrasound. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary on the ultrasound, but the doctor called me afterward and told me I needed to go to the university for another ultrasound, she thought they saw was a cyst on Abbie’s ovary, but she wanted a second opinion.
That Friday I went in and the perinatalogist told me it looked like a cyst on her ovary, and worst case scenario, Abbie would lose an ovary. *Doctors should never say worst case scenario to anyone.* They told me I’d have to deliver there at the Children’s hospital and set me up for weekly ultrasounds to watch development. Little did we know she’d be here and gone before the first appointment was scheduled. Two days later, my water broke.
I was nervous but not freaking out. We went to the hospital, and they hooked me up to the usual monitors. 3 ½ hours after my water broke and before I even really started to feel much discomfort, Abbie’s heart rate started dropping more and more with each contraction. When her heart rate dropped to 70, I started yelling, “I don’t care if I have to have a c-section, do what you have to do to save my baby.” They gave me the shot to stop my contractions, took me in for the c-section, and about an hour later, at 1:22 pm, I had my little Abigail Marie, 5 lbs 11 oz, 18 inches. The sound of her cry was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.
They had forewarned us that she’d have to have surgery pretty soon after she was born and that she’d be in the NICU, so we were prepared for that. When she was born she was surrounded by doctors, and she was wrapped in a blanket when they showed her to me. I didn’t see what her belly looked like until I was in my room and someone brought pictures of her down to me from the NICU. Her belly was very distended, like the malnourished kids on the late night commercials, but they hadn’t told me different yet, so we still thought it was an ovarian cyst. An hour or so later a doctor came down and told us Abbie had free air in her belly which meant probably some kind of bowel perforation, but, again, worst case scenario, she’d have an ostemy bag for a few days. They would have to operate to see exactly what was going on.
Because I’d had an epidural, they didn’t want me up and around, so I had to throw a fit to get to go upstairs and hold her before they took her into surgery. At this point, I still wasn’t that worried. I’d trusted the doctors with their “worst case scenario” talk, and thought everything was going to turn out okay. It wasn’t until I talked to the surgeons who operated on her that I realized just how dire the situation was. The first thing they said to me was, “Your little girl is very sick.” What they told me next made me go numb. When they opened her up, they discovered that her intestines were “mush.” She had what was called a midgut volvulus or shortgut. They had to remove, they said, 85% of her intestines.
That was the point I knew my baby wasn’t going to survive.
The next day, Monday, we met with the neonatologist. At this point Abbie was still on the ventilator from surgery. The neonatologist explained Abbie only had about an inch of duodenum left, and the only way for Abbie to get nutrients would be with something called TPN, which would eventually lead to liver failure. She told us some other stuff too, but it all came back to there was nothing else they could do and Abbie would suffer.
They gave us the choice to do what we thought was best. I asked if waiting would mean when we had to let her go that she would starve to death. The doctor told me yes. Abbie’s father looked at me and said, “We need to talk privately” at the same time I looked at him and said, “We have to let her go.”
They told us after removing the ventilator, she could live for 5 minutes or 5 days, they just didn’t know. The doctor explained to us that Toby Keith had donated a 2 room comfort suite on the terminal floor and that we’d be able to spend the end of Abbie’s time up there with her in a more “homelike” environment. They also contacted Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, an organization that takes free professional photos of infant loss families. (Google them, they’re a great organization). We were going to remove the ventilator on Tuesday morning, but my dad lives in California, and my sister told me he was planning on driving out, so we wanted to wait until he got here. My grandma ended up getting him a plane ticket and he was here Tuesday afternoon.
Wednesday morning we had a baptism service in the NICU. They took all the tubes out except the ventilator and the central line and we got to bathe and dress her. The nurse, who I will be eternally grateful for, helped us get her hand and foot prints in her baby book and they let me cut a lock of her hair. Around 11 am, they removed the ventilator and took us upstairs.
The first couple hours were great. My sister-in-law took a lot of pictures; the NILMDTS guy also arrived and took some really good pictures.
At 1 pm, she stopped breathing for the first time. She went for probably 2 minutes, which felt like forever, without taking a breath, and her heart rate dropped to 60. Then, she just started right back up and her heart rate went back up to 120. At this point I kicked everyone but out of the room we were in and we just sat and held her and watched her for probably 3 hours straight. Her breathing was real spotty after that, and every breath I thought, “Is this going to be the last? Is this going to be the last?” She was heavily medicated, and infants sleep a lot anyway, which I didn’t think about until afterward. Until later in the evening when she started to stir and become alert again, I thought she was basically gone and we were just waiting for her heart to give up.
Other than the stress of that, we had some moments that we’ll cherish forever. The couches folded out and we got to lay down with her in between us, she was alert during this time, and I don’t care what they say about babies not really smiling, it’s gas That is not true. My baby couldn’t have possibly had gas, she’d never eaten, and she smiled at me.
It was just me and my mom there when Abbie died. Mom was holding her and I was laying down trying to get a little rest, I hadn’t slept at all since Sunday morning and it was time for shift change, Thursday morning. The nurse woke me to tell me she had to go down for report and the next nurse would be up at 7. My mom said, “She hasn’t taken a breath in a minute.” I took her and the nurse checked her heart rate: it was 34, then 12 bpm, and then she was gone.
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