I found out I was pregnant in February of 2017. It was a beautiful feeling, pregnant for the first time. The pregnancy was smooth and didn’t give me any trouble. The ultrasounds were all fine and tests came back normal.
My due date came and she didn’t come. We waited and waited. On November 8th, I had my last doctor’s appointment. We listened to her heartbeat that day, without knowing that that it was going to be the last time.
That night, I didn’t feel her move much but I didn’t think much of it. The next morning I was worried. I hadn’t felt her move at all. I knew something was off. We called the hospital and they told us to go in right away. Once at the hospital, the nurse tried to find her heartbeat using the Doppler but she wasn’t successful. I started to cry but I still had hope that the nurse might have made a mistake. They brought the ultrasound machine and they saw no heartbeat. My baby was gone.
I was in disbelief, crying and thinking how is this even possible? I didn’t think stillbirths happened anymore. I was healthy and I followed all the dos and don’ts of pregnancy to make sure I had a healthy baby. I had no issues with blood pressure or sugar or anything like that. The doctor came to talk to me about how I was going to deliver my baby. The thought of delivering her was horrifying to me. I didn’t want to go through the process knowing that my baby was going to be born still. They convinced me that C-sections are not recommended after a baby has already passed. I agreed to get induced and to deliver my baby naturally.
We went back home to get our bags minus the baby bag. The whole process was impossible to bear. I started to feel contractions back at the hospital and it took a while for the anesthesiologist to come and administer the epidural. Every contraction was agonizing pain that just reminded me of my baby that was gone.
It finally happened. At 2:47 in the morning, my baby girl was born still. I was scared to look at her at first. I remember I looked over and saw the nurse cleaning her legs and she was just a normal baby but quiet. I finally decided to hold her. She looked like she was sleeping. My little angel. I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted her to stay in my arms. Later that morning I had to let her go.
We went back home with a pink bag containing a lock of her hair, her foot and hand-prints, some pictures and the clothes they dressed her in. That’s everything I have of my little baby girl.
We named her Lily Christina. She’s our angel, always in our hearts.
