It started with a dream- a blood test taken from the center of my ankle revealed that my blood volume was too low to still be pregnant, two nurses told me that the baby had died, Donna and Ellie rushed in at that very moment, red in the face from crying, they held me as I wept, I broke out of their embrace to pace the room, shouting no, no, no, flashing back to loosing Ari, hysterical tears, devastation.
I woke up. Startled. Afraid. Nightmare. Brian in his sleep, told me, “Its okay, try to think of something else- think of flowers.”
For the next week the dream haunted me. I begged the baby to stay, told her how much I loved her and wanted her. My prenatal visit was coming up. I thought in my head about what would happen if we couldn’t hear the heart this time- I played it through in my head. Both this and the dream came true.
At the beginning of our prenatal visit with Donna, Ellie, and Anna, I told them about the dream. We talked for almost an hour about cooping with the worry of this pregnancy after having lost Ari. Feeling reassured, I lay down for the midwives to measure my belly, feel my uterus, and find the heartbeat. Anna tried with the Doppler. Nothing. Ellie tried. Nothing. Still nothing. Donna tried. Nothing. Familiar nothing. A missing heartbeat- a surprise that felt familiar and reminiscent.
Ellie called PenBay Medical Center to schedule an ultrasound. I called Brian at work, now crying, wishing I could just not tell him. We met in Camden with two hours to wait before our appointment. We practiced the wonderful skill of denial, more thoughtfully known as “worry when it comes.” We had lunch, Brian got a haircut, looked in a bookstore.
Soon we met Donna at the hospital waiting room. We talked about how the placenta could have been blocking the baby. We talked about maybe my pulse was high and the baby’s was low, making it hard to tell the two apart. We had hope.
Ultrasound room- the technician rolled the instrument over my belly. The baby’s image came up on the screen. I saw that there was no movement inside the body. There was no sound. I knew. The technician said, “this is the hardest part of my job- there is no heartbeat.” I curled up on my side in a heaving cry- gasping for air between weeps. My whole body ached in a hollow pain-a physical pain that folded me in half.
Soon enough, an obvious decision was made to go home and wait for labor to begin. The first birth I attended as a doula informed this decision, as just a year before I helped a now dear friend through her stillbirth where she went home to wait.
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