I don't want to bear this.

Some of this post was written in May, shortly after our baby received a fatal fetal diagnosis. I chose not to publish anything about the diagnosis on Facebook or my blog until I gave birth because I didn't have many medical details to provide readers (I still don't). Mainly, though, I was desperately hoping that the whole thing was a mistake and that I'd receive a perfectly healthy baby in the end. 

I was 19 weeks and 5 days pregnant when I was first told our baby was measuring small. The technician said I was measuring 16 weeks and 6 days and told me I must have been wrong about my due date. My OB didn't think the technician was correct, but he didn't seem concerned and told me to get another ultrasound two weeks later. 

Here is part one of my story as a mother who has only memories and a scar to show for it.

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On Wednesday, April 24th (22 weeks and 3 days), I had another ultrasound. Everything looked fine to us. Our baby was waving his or her sweet little hand at us (we didn't discover the gender until John was delivered), and the technician didn't linger over anything for a long period of time. Then, at the very end of the procedure, a bomb was dropped. We were told my amniotic fluid was very low and that our baby was measuring a little over 17 weeks—meaning that our baby was not only small but also had hardly grown at all in two and a half weeks. The technician went from smiley and relaxed to very agitated. She told me she would contact my OB immediately and that they would probably want to see me later that day. In the meantime, we had to go home and wait for the call from the OB.

I held in my tears until we got through the lobby and then cried out in anguish, filling the huge glass entryway of the women's center with the sounds of grief. Andy guided me to the car and we sat there together, blinking at the unrelenting sun and trying to make sense of the news we had just received. After what seemed like hours but was only minutes, I opened my mouth.

"We need hummus."

So we drove to Costco. I gratefully inhaled free samples and focused on what we needed: black beans, tomato sauce, chicken stock, hummus, pita chips and a rice cooker. What we didn't need: bad news.

My friend Erin arrived at our house not longer after we arrived home from the store. Erin had delivered a beautiful stillborn son just months earlier, and I had texted her right after appointment. She sat with me while I picked at my lunch, and then she prayed with me and cried with me.

"God doesn't give us more than we can bear," she said. "I don't want to bear this," I said back.

(quick note: I do not agree with the idea that God does not give us more than we can bear. Erin is a dear friend and I knew her intention was to try to comfort me.)

The OB finally called to confirm that my low fluid was a big problem and they set me up to see a perinatal specialist two days later (Friday, April 26th). Andy and I sat in our living room and stared at our phones, dreading the calls we had to make to our parents. I'll never forget watching my husband's face crumple when his mom picked up her phone.

I received an email that night from my brother. His words of advice and encouragement continue to bring me comfort today.

"I don't feel you guys need to pray or strive a lot, but instead watch some funny shows or listen to Bill Cosby. You guys have a lot of people supporting you in prayer."

This is what I took away from those words:

It's okay to let other people communicate to the Lord on your behalf. Rest. It's okay to laugh. In fact, go out of your way to laugh."

That night we watched episode after episode of "Parks and Recreation," and after hours of crying, we laughed.

Thursday was a blur. We both worked from home and took lots of breaks to hug each other and try to make each other giggle. Andy kept telling me to not let my mind wander to "what ifs" and reminded me that we would soon know more from the specialist.

Friday afternoon we met with a perinatal specialist for the first time. We listened to worship music on the way over, the words of "Come to Me" by Bethel and "Oceans" by Hillsong United piercing a part of me that I hadn't known existed until that week. I now see how God used many of these songs to prepare my heart to both bear and battle the hurt and fear and desperation that would come.

The green ultrasound gel on my abdomen seeped into my pants while the doctor checked on the baby, but for once I didn't care. I was too busy trying to discern what he was saying from the lyrics that kept running through my head. Your baby is way too small and doesn't have room to grow.  Come to Me, I'm all you need. You don't have enough amniotic fluid. I am your steadfast, so don't be afraid. Your baby isn't getting enough blood. I am with you. The limbs and organs are not growing properly. The baby has clubfoot. There is a potential hole in the baby's heart. STOP! I thought. Stop telling me all of the things that are wrong with my baby! Your baby will likely not survive in the womb and has a very unlikely chance of surviving outside the womb without life support. Let me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me. Your baby could die tomorrow, or in a few weeks, or it could even be born. But then it would die. You've never failed, and you won't start now. This could all be caused by a chromosomal disorder, or it could be genetic. We don't know what to tell you...

We listened and nodded and wiped our eyes and shuffled to the genetic counselor's office, where we avoided looking at each other. The counselor talked with us about chromosomal disorders and blood tests and what our options were in moving forward. I felt like I was detached from my body and watching the whole scene as if it was a movie and the woman playing me was reading off of a script. "What are we supposed to do with ourselves?" we asked. "What are we supposed to say to people?"

We still don't have the answers.

getting through

The other night Andy came into our room to find me singing along to this video in the dark.


Before that, I had sung along to these:






And laughed through this:


The next day I popped "Center Stage" into the DVD player and moved my shoulders and hips along to the music, remembering the times I stood in front of the TV in my parent's bedroom as a teenager, mimicking as many moves in this scene as I was physically able:



Let me tell you a theory I have: watching "Band of Brothers" will make you want to watch at least one other movie or show (if not five), because you'll recognize an actor and then think of something else they've been in. It is truly impossible for someone like me, who has a rolodex of actors in her mind, to watch "Band of Brothers" without shouting "ah! that's so and so from such and such" every five minutes. (I couldn't believe Andy put up with this, but he did.) The first time I saw "Band of Brothers" was in 2009, and I could hardly pay attention to anyone else because I was freaked out that I recognized Lieutenant Speirs as Rufus from Gossip Girl. Come on! That is upsetting (for several reasons... including the simple fact that I know who is on Gossip Girl). This time around I was able to focus on recognizing everyone else, including the actor who plays Private Webster (and Jim in "Center Stage"), James McAvoy and a verrrrry skinny Tom Hardy.

In between watching clips from musicals and blowing Andy's mind with actor references, I've been reading "Wild" for book club and eating fruit snacks and talking to the dog. I water flower arrangements and move them around to different tables and rooms. I read cards with heartbreakingly sweet messages and occasionally rip open a package (one of which held an entire pound cake). I look at pictures of John. I accuse of Andy of making me laugh too hard. I get through each day, hour by hour... sometimes laughing, sometimes singing, sometimes arguing, sometimes crying.

Sometimes writing silly, jumbled up blog posts.

the bad and the ugly

I've really struggled these last few months with being honest about everything—the good, the bad and the ugly. It was easier for me to skim over the bad parts ("we're devastated," "I cry a lot," etc.) and focus on the good parts. There's this need we all feel to keep conversation lighthearted... as if people won't want to be around us if we're honest with them. No one wants to be a downer. Plus, it was important to me to speak of the good that was coming out of our situation: God's faithfulness and compassion, the outpouring of support from family and friends, the increased intimacy in our marriage... we may have been facing terrible, unimaginable news about our precious firstborn, but we were still SO blessed.

Still, the bad parts were still there. Ugly parts. Parts that were really hard to share with people because voicing them made them real. I kept most things inside. People would say, "I don't know how you're doing it... I would be crying all the time." I hated hearing that. I did cry. I cried in the shower every day for weeks as I held my stomach and sung "Soon," changing all of the "my's" and "I's" to "you." (You will be with the One you love, with unveiled face you'll see Him. There your soul will be satisfied, soon and very soon.) I cried when the lights were out and my face was smushed against my pillow. I cried against Andy's chest. I cried in front of my friends. I cried in front of strangers at the pool. But I couldn't cry ALL the time. I hated all the crying! I hated being sad, because I hated the reason why I was sad. I wanted to smile and laugh and not lose sight of joy. It was a huge relief to me when I could be at a party or out for coffee or wherever and not cry!

I was extra irritable, extra impatient, extra prone to thinking (and sometimes saying) cuss words. I filled my social calendar so that I would be distracted, and then when that got too exhausting I practically fell of the face off the earth and became a hermit for a while. I stopped going to church. Public worship was too hard—I wanted my sob-interrupted praises to be kept private. I couldn't follow sermons because I'd hear a baby cry or a toddler babble and all I could think about was how much I wanted my home to be filled with that noise.

Andy and I had to have conversations about what we were going to name the baby. Those conversations are supposed to be fun and filled with anticipation. They weren't fun. We had to talk about if we were going to hold the baby, if we were going to have testing done, what we were going to do with the remains... all totally crappy conversations to have.

Then, on top of all that, I bled, puked and peed for three days in a hospital room in front of the guy that I have a huge crush on. We held our stillborn son. My body started producing milk not long after I left the hospital. My chest hurt so much I thought I was going to scream. It especially hurt whenever I cried, which was (and continues to be) multiple times a day.

It continues to hurt to laugh, cry, turn over, sit up, sit down, get out of bed, use the stairs, ride in the car... it just hurts. My incision looks horrifying and huge (to me, at least) and all of the severed nerve endings feel like flashes of lightning inside my lower abdomen. My legs ache because they hardly get any exercise.

Oh, and our fridge broke the day before we left for the hospital and it has still not been repaired.

I don't really feel better after typing all the bad and the ugly. I much prefer to share the good. The good is what is important. The good is the moral of our story. The good is what will endure... and what I hope we will choose to remember.

God is gracious

I haven't written in so long. In mid-April we had a confusing ultrasound, but my OB didn't seem concerned, so we didn't let ourselves worry either. Then, at the end of April, another ultrasound confirmed that not only was the baby measuring small but also that the baby simply wasn't growing. We began seeing a group of perinatal specialists and each one told us the same diagnosis: our baby would most likely die in the womb within days or weeks. They had zero idea of what was causing the IUGR. It was horrible and devastating and confusing and sad. I wanted to curl up in a ball and never leave my room, but I fought that temptation as hard as I could and tried to smile and laugh and hang on to my personality. As the days passed I chose to adopt an attitude of thankfulness and focused on being grateful for the time left that I had being my baby's mother. Then June came, and my grief hit full force. I didn't feel grateful anymore. I was angry. If God wasn't going to give us a baby, then why couldn't He make it easier on us and just take the baby already? I hated myself for wanting it to all be over, but it was so hard to feel the baby move and know that all of my baby dreams were being dashed. I was terrified by the idea of delivering a dead baby. I didn't think I wanted to hold a dead baby. I didn't think I wanted to know the gender. I wanted this horrible chapter of my life to be closed shut and for a new chapter to begin.

Living in a state of pre-grief was unimaginable and I know we only survived it by the grace of God and the encouragement of our friends and family. I have more to say about the last few months, but I'll save those stories for another time.

By the beginning of July I was resigned to the idea of making it all the way to my due date (the doctors said if that happened then the baby would only live for seconds or minutes). I couldn't believe our baby was still hanging on! I had no amount of extra amniotic fluid for the baby to move around and grow in, but our little one seemed content to chill out all scrunched up in my uterus. I couldn't help but fall in love with our baby with every passing day, even though a part of me tried to put walls up to keep me from getting too attached. I began fervently asking God to surprise us all and give us a perfectly healthy baby. I had visions of us needing to run to Target after my delivery to buy a crib and diapers and all of the things that we registered for but never received.

This time last week I was being prepped for an emergency c-section to deliver our stillborn baby. I had arrived at the hospital at 11:30 p.m. the night before due to excessive bleeding, and in the early hours of Saturday morning I heard my baby's heartbeat slow down until it didn't exist anymore. I was 34 weeks pregnant carrying a baby who was only measuring around 20 weeks.

We had a boy, and we named him John Andrew. John means "God is gracious/generous." Andrew means "man" and "strong."

It's been one week since we lost our son and his name seems more fitting than ever. God is gracious, and we are being carried by Him right now as we learn to live without the presence of our precious baby.

More to come when I am able.

Psalm 13

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

breakfast on the brain

I've been on a major breakfast-foods kick lately. A few weeks ago I had a dream that I was eating a bagel with bacon, egg and cheese, and as soon as I woke up I went to the kitchen to make that dream a reality. It was VERY satisfying.

Then last Saturday I made blueberry muffins to surprise Andy. He only ate ONE (they were delish — he's just crazy). Clearly I had to eat the remaining five muffins. I had just made myself a huge pot of decaf coffee and those muffins were the perfect accompaniment. Don't judge me!!!

Then I got a hankering for pancakes. What is going on here?! I knew my friend was going to join me for dinner before we watched "Sense and Sensibility" together, and when she mentioned simply having eggs or cereal I was allllll over that. We had pancakes, eggs and bacon and topped our pancakes with maple syrup that she had brought as a hostess gift. Sally ate one pancake, one egg and one slice of bacon. I had four pancakes, two eggs and three slices of bacon. I dominated that meal.

I've been wanting to try one (or all) of Beth's baked oatmeal recipes since I stumbled upon Budget Bytes last year. The other two treats look pretty tempting, too! Hopefully if I make any of these I'll show better restraint than I did with the muffins and pancakes...

Blueberry banana baked oatmeal from Budget Bytes

Apple pie muffins from The White Ramekins

French toast bread pudding from Beantown Baker