Good Morning, Dad!
A Story of Reproductive Grief and Loss
That Mother's Day was one of the happiest days of my
life. My husband woke me just
after midnight with a surprise Mother’s Day gift: a baby jogger with thick
wheels that were perfect for the trails and paths near our home. I was about 14 weeks pregnant and we’d been
joyfully telling people about it for about six weeks. We’d had a scare at about six weeks, when I
stood up after a luncheon meeting to feel blood gushing down my legs in such
quantities that it quickly soaked through my skirt. I’d rushed to the bathroom and then to the
doctor, where she shared my certainty that I had lost the pregnancy. A sonogram to confirm the loss brought
astonishingly good news; though the cause of the sudden blood loss would never
be known, our child showed a healthy heart beat. I called Charles, who was to pick me up,
saying only, “we’re ready to go!” He
quickly caught on to the use of “we” and we celebrated with great joy, certain
then and in the weeks ahead that we’d been spared the loss of our first born
child. This scare, and our subsequent
relief, made our Mother’s Day celebration especially wonderful.
Unfortunately, by Father’s Day, we would experience great
loss. Just before my pregnancy reached
15 weeks, I started to feel cramping, which I mentioned to my doctor. She suggested that it could be indigestion,
which seemed reasonable as I expected some discomfort as our child grew. Two days later I called her back, however,
because the pain had increased and felt a lot more clearly like the uterine
pain I associate with menstrual cramping, which intuitively seemed of
concern. She scheduled me for an
ultrasound and I got to see our child – clearly our son! – moving quickly
around and around within my uterus. I
was very excited, but also concerned, as the ultrasound physician indicated that the cervical length was
surprisingly short. “What about the
placenta?” I asked, for I’d read that the placenta can get torn and the
symptoms in such cases seem to reflect those that I was having. But the concern of the doctor and the
technician was focused on the cervical length; the fact that I’d begun to bleed
and was cramping was remarked upon, but with no conclusion or explanation.
Three days later, the pain became very difficult to bear. I called the on-call physician and he was
very nice, but told me that there was little that he could do. “Call again if you start bleeding so much
that you soak through a maxi-pad an hour for more than three hours.” Up until the point that our son was born I
never did, but I did call back two days later, reporting to my primary ob-gyn
that the pain had gotten agonizing. She
did not call back. For one eight hour
period, from 8AM until 4AM, I had excruciating contractions every two to three
minutes and I could do nothing except lay and watch the clock, timing each
one. This continued for three more days,
with several hours of pain followed by hours where I had no contractions. In the meantime, I continued to bleed
heavily, though not as heavily as the doctor had described as being the point
of concern. I blindly hung onto the hope
that it would stop and our baby would be okay since the bleeding didn’t reach
the stage that the doctor indicated was most worrisome.
Sunday came and with it, a celebration at our house for a
friend’s birthday. During the party, I
remained reclined on a couch until the pain became unbearable, at which point I
went to our bedroom. Not long after, I
moved into the bathroom, now doubled over in pain and with an urge to push. With that push came gushes of blood… and our
son, Xavier Peter. I was sobbing now and
reached for him, as he was still connected to me through the umbilical cord. His eyes couldn’t open yet, but his mouth
moved, as did his left arm as he felt my hands on his body. I started screaming, “What do I do, what do I
do” through my tears, but no one heard me.
Still holding our child, who was still connected to me, I staggered to
the bathroom door and shouted for my husband.
Amazingly, he – and no one else – heard me and he came quickly
upstairs. As soon as he saw me, he
called emergency services, who arrived almost immediately. I cradled our baby, who was still moving, in
my hands as they wrapped me in sheets, put me on a gurney, and carried me into
an ambulance. In the ambulance, they cut
the umbilical cord and I no longer felt movement from Xavier, who had died
lying against me.
At the hospital, it occurred to me that nothing in my life
or my imagination had prepared me for this; I had simply never imagined losing
a child in this way. However, my horror
and grief were met with the care of angels, who took the form of hospital staff
at Marin General Hospital. This designation may appear to be an
exaggeration, but I have found no more appropriate way to describe care that
went so far beyond what I would expect from the best staff imaginable. Nearly everyone we met hugged us and
expressed their condolences and in addition, the staff took pictures of our
son, made a plaster cast of his feet, and gave us a treasure box to hold these
and other mementos they had created for us.
The on-call ob-gyn likewise spent hours with us, eventually bringing us
the body of our baby to hold. We were
touched by how much he cared, especially when he began crying himself and had to leave the room.
Xavier was a perfect baby, a near exact replica of his
father though just shy of 16 weeks from conception. His hands and feet were huge, with long
fingers and toes that looked exactly like smaller versions of his
father’s. Every detail of his tiny body was perfect,
including tiny collarbones and achilles tendons. We were awed by his perfection and even
amidst our grief felt enormously blessed for the gift of his short life.
We also felt very blessed by the support we received
from family and friends, who sent cards and flowers, called, and, most
importantly, dropped by to spend time with us.
Inevitably, there were also callous and stupid comments, such as a colleague who told me that the office debated “whether
you had actually lost a child. We know you are pro-life and think you did. But not
everyone agrees with you.” I spent the
day wondering
angrily at the insensitivity of anyone who would conflate the debate about whether it was legal to kill an unborn child with the reality of the loss of my son. His right to life might be debated in the political realm, but his loss was indisputable and his existence and stage of development was scientific fact.
A few months after losing Xavier, I got up early to exercise and get ready for work. Instead of leaving, I returned instead to my husband’s side of the bed. I’d taken a pregnancy test and I woke him to tell him the results, saying simply, “Good morning, Dad.” His eyes shot open with a question that I silently answered with tears of joy.
