I am the statistic!!!

I truly do not want this blog to be sad all the time, but as I mentioned before, I want to document everything that I remember before I forget.

It seemed like people came out of the woodwork. JJ, Bug, Ky and Mr. JJ all were in my triage room within minutes of Foster and I finding out we had lost our baby girl. My mom and Dad were there within 45 minutes of finding out. Nurses were coming and going in a steady stream and I don't even know what they were doing, because it all was a blur. My sister, Bug, stood over me with a helpless look on her face. She is a Neo-natal intensive care unit(NICU) nurse, so all she deals with is little sick babies. She put her hands on my belly, and said "I want them to take her out now! I feel like we could still save her! I feel so helpless." She didn't understand why babies of 27 weeks gestation can survive, but her niece who was a healthy 34.5 weeks gestation didn't make it. Everyone cried with me. Everyone felt my pain, because each and every one of them had hopes and dreams for this baby. Rosie was the first child amongst this family we had created. She was going to be, and is, the loved niece and the spoiled granddaughter.

One of the nurses needed to ask some questions and draw blood, so we asked everyone to leave. I saw Foster sitting in the chair across from my bed and asked him how he was doing. "I feel like I need to go for a run," he replied. Foster loves to run. He has participated in 3 marathons, a few half marathons, and more 5Ks than you can shake a stick at. It is his escape.

"Well," I replied, "you are dressed for it. You can take a run around the medical campus." When we left the house for the hospital, we did not expect to be there for more than an hour or two, so he was wearing basketball shorts, a t-shirt and tennis shoes.


"No, I can't leave you," he said.

'I can't leave you.' Those four little words meant so much to me at that moment. Foster is not known for his emotions. If you were to ask any of his fellow soldiers to describe his personality, they would probably say that he is level headed. It is very hard to tell when he is angry, sad, happy, excited, etc. He keeps his emotions indistinguishable and his face as uniformed as his clothes. So when these four little words were uttered from his mouth while tears welled in his eyes, I knew at that moment I was not alone in my pain. His first instinct was to run the pain away. In a way I think it represents what he emotionally wanted to do also. If he ran away, pushed his emotions down, then he would not hurt and life would be easier. I know he felt this way, because I felt this way too. But instead, he knew how much I needed him there physically and emotionally.

My doctor entered the room and wanted to discuss our options. Unfortunately, being in the medical field, I was very aware of what the next step was. I had to deliver this baby. I had to deliver a baby that I knew would not be crying when it came out, A baby that I would not be able to take home with me. The idea scared me to death. How is that for cruel and unusual punishment? First your baby dies, and now you have to go through the pain of labor just to bury your silent baby when it enters the world.

"Your baby is breached, so that poses a few problems," my doctor said. OF COURSE!!!! Nothing could be easy for me. It turns out that there is a good chance of a breached baby, who has already died, to get stuck in the pelvis because it has lost some of it's elasticity. I had to make a decision. If I wanted to be induced, it could possibly take up to 2 days to actually give birth, AND it could still end in a C-section. However, if a C-section was the route I chose, it poses other risks. A C-section is major surgery, I could potentially die from it, and potentially it could make it harder to have children naturally in the future.

I looked at Foster for guidance. I didn't know what I wanted to do. "I don't think I can motivate myself to push this child out of me," I cried, "I don't think I can wait around for two days to deliver her," I wanted him to make the decision. Actually, I wanted him to make everything all better, but I knew he couldn't. He didn't know how to respond. The thought of major surgery and the possibility of losing his child and his wife in the same night terrified him. However, he didn't want to see me go through anymore pain than I already had.

"There is a one percent chance of maternal death with a natural birth, a two percent chance with C-section, and a 25 percent chance of the baby getting stuck in your pelvis," the doctor explained. Great! More statistics! Less than .1% of women get pregnant on birth control; when I was bleeding in the second trimester I was told that a sub chronic hemorrhage only happens in one percent of pregnancies; 3 plus pitting edema only appears in ten percent of pregnant woman; and fetal deaths only happen in less than one percent of pregnancies after thirty weeks gestation. I WAS THE STATISTIC!!!! MY WHOLE PREGNANCY WAS THE STATISTIC!!! We are the people that everyone bases their chances off of. If you bet ONE dollar on me in Vegas, you would have won close to one million dollars!

........ shall we place our bets and roll the dice?