At my six-week check up, I was scheduled to not only make sure my body was healing correctly, but also to make an appointment to get my blood drawn.
"Fifty percent of the time we know what happened, and the other fifty percent we'll just never know or understand why," the doctor told Jayze and me at the hospital when he advised that our baby get an autopsy.
"There's a chance we'll find out the reason why when he's born. But if there's no visible reason, then it would be good to get the body, placenta, and blood checked out."
When Alma was born, there was no visible sign of something gone wrong. There wasn't a knot in the cord, the placenta looked normal, and Alma's body was perfect. So, hard as it was, Jayze and I opted for the autopsy.
As we awaited the results, Jayze and I went back into the doctor's office the morning after my six-week check-up and had my blood drawn. This time, they weren't just looking for any abnormalties in the placenta or in Alma, they were also looking for anything wrong with me - with my blood.
Later, as I was on campus soaking up the warm sun in the late afternoon waiting for Jayze to get off work, I received a call from the doctor himself. Usually it was a nurse who called me, but this time it was the doctor. I answered, and he let me know that the autopsy results had come back and there was nothing wrong. The blood work was normal, Alma's body was normal, the placenta was normal - something just went...wrong. "Again, it's a 50/50 chance we know what happens, and this is just one more case where we won't ever know what went wrong."
I said thank you and hung up the phone, not enjoying the sunshine as much as I had been before. It seemed odd that I was getting phone calls from the clinic, from the doctor personally, about my non-living baby. Hardly anyone I was in contact with on campus (except those from work and from my Church ward) knew about Alma anymore, and there I was on campus getting a phone call about him. It didn't seem normal. What used to be my normal was cheerily walking on campus, people taking second glances at my bulging belly, and me feeling excited about expecting a baby boy in September.
Now my new normal was that there was no baby with me. He was in Snowflake, and I was in Rexburg taking a full load of classes again. I had the stretch marks to prove I had had a baby, but like my broken heart, that evidence was hidden.
My new normal was walking around with a weight on my shoulders, constantly blinking tears from my eyes, and knowing that going to work and full-time school should be my old normal.
When the doctor told me the results of the autopsy, the weight on my shoulders got heavier, the tears behind my eyes weren't as easy to blink away, and the reality that I wasn't living the "expected" normal - raising a baby after giving birth to him - set in once again.
I wish I knew why. Why, if everything was normal and my baby should have come out perfect AND breathing, he had died. Later, my blood results came back normal too. There was no explanation, and I was going to have to live with the fear of "I don't know how to prevent it because I don't know
what to prevent."
With this second pregnancy, I have found myself longing even more to know the reason why. Was it because I craved and ate only corn dogs during my first trimester with Alma - because it was the ONLY thing I could eat without throwing up? If it was, well, then I won't eat any corn dogs this time. Was it because I missed taking my prenatals once in a while...then no matter how sick or tired I feel, no matter how much I hate swallowing pills, I'm going to take them
every. single. day.
But I can't do that. I can't hard-core avoid anything. I can only guess, which makes it harder. I feel like doing so many things, and then I think, "But what if that's the reason why it happened last time?" Then I find myself doing nothing and then I think again, "But what if I do nothing and it still happens?" I have no control.
At the beginning of this pregnancy I got my blood drawn again so they could test me and my second baby for anything wrong. Panic would set in every time I saw the clinic's number on my caller ID. Was something wrong this time?
And every time they said, "The results came back normal..."
But they were normal last time....
I feel like there is a trigger inside of me waiting to go off and take this baby's life too. And sometimes I feel like other people are watching me, other pregnant women, waiting for something to go wrong. Waiting to see what they can do to prevent their baby from dying too.
And I find myself wondering, "Is there something wrong with me?"
I was looking at this one girl's
blog who went through a similar thing, and one of her posts really stood out to me about how she can't relate to other pregnant people. First she quotes another angel mom who said:
“Around other pregnant people I felt, ‘Well I’m not really pregnant the
way you are. I’m sort of pregnant. I might be having a baby.'"
And then the girl followed up with:
"Then I laughed out loud at how absurd the comment
sounded, a full belly laugh, while my brain screamed, 'THAT’S IT!'
That’s what if feels like this pregnancy, like I
might be having a baby or that I’m only a
little
pregnant. This whole time while pregnant with baby No. 2, I have felt
distant from the child growing inside me, almost in denial that I am
actually pregnant. This denial stemming from fear that this baby, too,
might not come home. The quote I found put my denial into words
perfectly.'"
And that's exactly how I feel! Like I'm not
really pregnant. I look down at my belly sometimes and think, "It's not going to last long." Sometimes it surprises me when people give my swollen belly a second look, or when someone congratulates me on my pregnancy. I think, "Oh yeah, I guess I am pregnant. But don't they know I'm not
really pregnant?"
Can't they see that I'm broken?
Can't they see the big, gaping hole left in my heart that no earthly doctor can ever heal?
Can't they see that one simple question they may ask might set me over the edge?
Can't they see there is something wrong with me?
Insecurities talk loud and clear. They fill my mind and days with darkness. They give me the desire to feel no connection towards the baby.
I was having a particularly rough day a few weeks ago. Jayze and I like reading books out loud together, and that night, he was in the mood to read one of our books and asked me to pick one. I wasn't really in the mood, but I looked over our books and picked the shortest one, "You Are Special."
Even though the book is mostly about not caring what other people think about you and not judging other people, one quote in particular ended up being the perfect source of comfort for all of my pent-up feelings of hurt, anger, frustration, loneliness, insecurity, panic, depression, worry, and exhaustion.
"'Remember," Eli [the woodcarver] said as the Wemmick [one of the wooden people he had made] walked out the door, "you are special because I made you. And I don't make mistakes.'"
I don't know the outcome to this pregnancy. I don't know why Alma died. But I do know that I am trying my hardest to be okay. To be happy. To find hope. To cherish every moment I have with this second baby. That same girl who wrote about only being a little pregnant was reminded by her therapist that she would only be pregnant with her second baby once. The same thing applies to me: I'll only be pregnant with my second baby once too. He is his own person with his own personality and character traits, and he deserves to be celebrated.
Dark days still come. Disconnection from the baby is still there from time to time. Panic, worry, exhaustion, and sleepness nights never quite go away.
But it's so nice to know that I am special to my Savior. That I am not a mistake because He doesn't make mistakes. That Alma is not a mistake. We were supposed to have him, and we are supposed to have this baby too.
That, despite Satan trying to make me feel otherwise, there is nothing wrong with me. My Savior loves me no matter what.
As I keep trying to grasp ahold of my Savior's love and support, I know it's still going to be hard. It still
is hard. There are days when I still can't look at a baby. There are still moments where grief hits me hard and leaves me feeling even more discouraged than ever before. There are still flashbacks of when we had Alma, of how hard that was, and how hard it would be if it happened again.
But, again, like that one girl reiterated, all Jayze and I have are moments with this baby - and I want to hold onto those moments for as long as I can.
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