Today is not what I thought it would be.  Today was the best and probably worst day of my life.  It still seems unreal but today I became a mom.  I also lost my child today.  

When we decided to start our journey into parenthood, I liked to call it ‘experimental’.  I didn’t know if we’d be able to conceive easily, I didn’t know if we’d start the process and change our minds and I didn’t know if I was ready to get excited about something that was so foreign and life-altering.  We tried anyway and we got pregnant!  I was anxious the first twelve weeks, still in a state of somewhat disbelief but baby grew, and then my belly grew and finally my excitement grew.  

On Wednesday night, I happily walked around the apartment patting my belly and telling Nick how surprised I was that I actually liked being pregnant.  I had a bunch of cute dresses to wear and stretchy pants that looked like jeans! I liked my body and we could feel the baby moving.  It was amazing!  However, early the next morning, I woke up to intense abdominal pain.  It’s what I would consider a contraction but at 21 weeks, wasn’t it too soon?  Why did they hurt so badly seemingly out of nowhere?  I tried to sleep but woke every 10-15 minutes with terrible cramping and no way to get comfortable.

It didn’t stop but I was able to sleep a little bit, I think.  I woke up around 7:30 am Thursday, September 24, still with pains but after Nick and I read about Braxton Hicks contractions, we thought this was part of the process and since resting didn’t ease the pain, I got up and went to work.  At work, I was cramping every 2-3 minutes.  I thought that there is no way I can do this for the next 4 months, THIS is normal cramping?

I asked a cousin of mine and she said, it’s most definitely not normal so I called the Drs. office.  They were able to get me in at 11:00am.  I talked with my mom as I walked to the appointment, half in tears and mostly in pain for the 20 minute commute.  I practiced deep breathing and that’s the only thing that eased the tough minutes.  
I was still in tears as the nurse called me back.  I tried to be tough, I breathed through the pain and I answered the NP’s questions.  She thought I was dehydrated or perhaps had a UTI and that’s what was causing my cramping.  She sent me home on “pelvic rest”.  I thought great, maybe I can go home and get a nap in.  HA!

Nick had to come pick me up from the doctor’s, it was too painful to walk at this point and I was supposed to be resting.  So we got home and I rested, for about 2 minutes at a time then I’d be up with another contraction or cramp.  I was still trying to drink hoping they would just go away.  They didn’t, they intensified.  Nick was so kind and so helpful.  He turned on the fan, then turned off the fan, he helped me into bed, then helped me jump out of bed, he turned on the fan and brought me ice chips because “isn’t that what they do for pregnant women?”.  Sweetheart.  He listened to me lose my lunch and politely asked what he could do to help.  Poor man, half the time I couldn’t even talk to him because I was concentrating on pain management.

Somewhere around 1:15pm, probably, I decided to get in the shower, because I heard it helped with pain.  It was around this time, I was beginning to wonder if I was in labor but no way… I was only 21 weeks.  If baby comes now, he can’t survive.  I guess he didn’t know that.  He was ready to meet us.  After a few minutes in the shower, I jumped out with the urge to have to go to the bathroom, Nick slammed off the water, put a towel down and got out of my way.  As soon as I was on the toilet, I knew something was different.  It was like my whole bottom was about to explode.  Explode it did and out popped our baby.  I said, “Nick, there is a baby in our toilet” as I looked down and saw his red little body, such a tiny tiny human.

I picked him up as Nick called for help, we saw that he was indeed a little boy AND he was breathing on his own and kicking his legs. He looked totally perfect.  He was just so little.  

The paramedics came and sprang into action, I let myself believe that maybe he was the Wonder Boy, maybe he was a bit tougher than all the other 21 week olds making up the stats I read.  Maybe he’d be the boy to pull through. Baby and I each took our own ambulance to the ER and Nick had to drive to meet us there.  When I got there, after baby boy, there was a huge team of 30+ doctors and nurses in the trauma unit waiting to work on us.  I was fine but baby couldn’t breathe on his own and Nick didn’t know where to meet us.  The doctors kept introducing themselves and asking me what I wanted to do… I wanted to see my husband and then poof! He appeared.  We went to see the baby, just on the other side of the curtain. His little self had 5 doctors crowded around him, one helping him breathe others doing who knows what.  Nick and I knew he wouldn’t make it and if his lungs somehow developed quickly he’d have other complications from his too early entrance.

We asked them to stop breathing for him and I got to hold him on my chest for about two minutes as he took his last breaths by himself.  He was alive from 1:30 pm until 2:49 pm.  

They wheeled me through the tunnels of the hospital as I clutched his little body to my chest.  As we passed, conversations stopped and gazes lingered.  No one wants to see a new mom with tears running down her face as dad hesitantly trails the stretcher probably wanting to collapse instead.  

We made it to the room and examined his precious, perfect little body.  At only 21 weeks, he already had so much hair, eyelashes, Nick’s chin, my weird thumbs and the cutest boniest ankles I’d ever seen.  Besides a few bruises from his traumatic entrance, we could find nothing wrong with him.  Maybe we were just too excited to meet each other.  

The day we met is the day we said goodbye.  I’m not sure why his story ended like that, and we’ll most likely never know why he came so soon but he changed us indefinitely.  So here I sit, at 4:30 in the morning with a baby blanket wrapped around my shoulder.  I should be feeding a baby but instead we celebrate and mourn his short life.  I hope my sister Annie is singing to him in Heaven.

Dean Lukas Ward, September 24, 2020.  

1 lb 2 oz, 11 inches long