Finally, sharing my story from pregnancy to losing my baby and the healing process.
I believe it was April 2023 when I found out I was pregnant. I was ecstatic! Jason and I had been trying for a while, so a positive pregnancy test was finally here. Do we tell people, or do we not tell people? You are never in the clear from the moment you find out you’re pregnant. If I had it my way, I would have gone into hiding for 9 months and not told anyone. There are so many emotions that come with carrying a child, I would have preferred to handle those emotions privately. My pregnancy went smoothly, mostly; there was not much nausea or sickness, I didn’t even feel pregnant. The first 4-5 months of pregnancy, all my testing, including blood work, came back normal, a baby boy due December 19. We started preparing to get the nursery ready.
After having an abnormal anatomy scan, we were referred to have a fetal echocardiogram. That day we found out our baby boy had a congenital heart defect. Our baby was diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF), a congenital heart defect that would require heart surgery a few months after birth. I was advised to transfer to Children’s Mercy Hospital to give birth, which I didn’t know was possible. The happiness of being pregnant completely faded while anguish, sadness, anxiety, and far too many emotions ran through my body even to feel one of them. My mind was racing, overthinking about anything and everything. I honestly just bottled everything up and put on a brave face. There was one feeling I do remember: embarrassment. I didn’t want to tell anyone, you feel like your body did something wrong. If I choose not to tell anyone, then maybe it wasn’t true, and I wouldn’t accept the results. We would never know the full extent of how bad the heart defect was until after birth.
By October, we were having ultrasounds every 2 weeks at Children’s Mercy Hospital, which, by the way, is a great hospital but a very heavy hospital. I couldn’t tell you if I was in a state of depression or if I just wasn’t all there; I put on a front and faked my happiness. The doctors told me I was at risk of stillbirth because of the heart defect, so I never wanted to get my hopes up. At every appointment, every ultrasound, I was prepared for the worst. On November 9th, I gave birth to my baby boy at Children’s Mercy Hospital, born 6 weeks premature. We named him Isaac. Everything seemed good. He was breathing on his own, acting like a normal premature baby. After further testing, the doctors stated his TOF was not as bad as they’d thought but would still need heart surgery in a few months. We didn’t get to hold him a lot because he was jaundiced, which required all day light therapy, but he was perfect. Having a baby in the NICU was rough, but I’m glad we only live 30 minutes from the hospital, so we could visit every day. The doctors reassured us daily that everything was good with Isaac, besides being premature, just needing to take the bottle, and gain weight. We knew he would face challenges from being premature and also with a heart defect, but it was a waiting period to find out those challenges in time.
The survival rate of a premature baby born at 34 weeks is high, so that gave me a sense of relief. The moment I decided to get my hopes up was the moment everything came crashing down. After 8 days in the NICU, Isaac took a turn for the worse. Breathing on his own to being put on a ventilator. The diagnosis necrotizing enterocolitis, something I’d never heard of before or knew existed. On November 17th our precious baby boy passed away in our arms. We got 8 days, 8 days with him. That day felt like a nightmare, I was trying to wake up from and it is still a blur. I was angry with the world, I wanted to crawl into a shell and never come out. I knew the only way to heal was to go through each stage of grief one by one at a time. The only way out is through.\