Missing Someone Gone While Raising Someone New

Read Caitlin’s previous writing on her first and second pregnancies here!

I have learned, already, that it takes about six weeks to come up for air. Well, to be fair, we’ve been on several outings; my internet presence has taken more of a hit because these are the nicest months in Chicago and therefore spending my now extremely limited free time in front of a computer seems sacrilegious. But let me start at the beginning, or his beginning anyway.

I slept remarkably well the night before the scheduled c-section — better even than my wife. We had to be at the hospital to check in at 6 a.m. for an 8:45 surgery, and that’s when the waiting became pretty unbearable. They took me to the prep area, I was hooked up to monitors, got asked lots of questions, talked to the anesthesiologists, nurses, doctor, and the surgeon. I was really anxious for the surgery and in retrospect, in some ways being under general anesthesia (as I was last time) was preferable to the waiting and the expectations.

Sleeping on Mama C

I was most apprehensive for the epidural/spinal block as I’ve heard some nightmare stories of reactions, and I must admit, it wasn’t pleasant and I would have liked to avoid it if it were possible. One, the initial numbing shot was painful, despite the two kind nurses holding my hands (my wife wasn’t allowed in until the last moment). A student placed the catheter, which was fine, he did perfectly (according to his supervising doctor, who was very reassuring for me as she kept saying things like “wonderful placement, excellent job.”) Despite the attempts to ward off nausea prior, I did have to turn my head and puke into a cup the student held for me, but it all worked as it should, and I was numb soon enough and the show began.

My friend described the sensation like “rummaging around in a purse,” and it totally felt like that. No pain, but you can feel where they are in your body. I kept thinking they were taking the baby out, but it was just my organs (talk about disconcerting). The surgeon was going to do a transverse incision this time, but he discovered that my previous classical scar was thinning dangerously, so decided to repeat that cut so that when they closed me up they could add sutures and try to make it stronger so that subsequent pregnancies would be possible. It’s still hard for me to reconcile the thought that one freak condition in my first pregnancy has threatened all subsequent chances at having children. Some things aren’t fair.

But then – he was born! And crying! I had asked for very few things in my birth plan — delayed cord clamping, and skin-to-skin and breastfeeding as soon as possible. Now, our hospital is wonderfully militant about the latter two things anyway, so I wasn’t surprised when the nurse first opened my gown, then laid him on my chest for a bit, then held him upside down over my shoulder as that was the easiest position for him to nurse in with me so covered up. It wasn’t quite what I envisioned, but I can’t complain at all — I had my baby nursing while I was in the OR getting sewn up. Not for long, but enough for me to feel like I got everything I could possibly get considering the circumstances. Then my wife got to hold him as they stitched me up and we rolled into recovery.

All the mother-baby rooms were full; a lot of people were checking out at and then the rooms needed cleaning, so we were in recovery for a while (ironically, when I checked out not even half the rooms were occupied — I guess “feast or famine” is typical in an L&D unit). I wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere anyway, since my body temperature was hovering around 95.0 and I wasn’t allowed to leave until it was 97. So I was piled with warming blankets (I didn’t feel cold at all, but I guess being in a cold OR and having your innards exposed tends to cool you down). Our chaplain friend from Ander’s stay in the NICU stopped by because she knew we were going to be there, and we just relaxed and cuddled the baby. The good part about being in recovery so long was that by the time I left, I was feeling really well — all the epidural effects had worn off.

We named him Graeson Robert (the “son” is a nod to his older brother Anderson). He was in the average range for head circumference and length, but was considered small for gestational age, so he had to undergo a battery of tests, including sitting for 90 minutes in a car seat strapped up to sensors to ensure he could maintain an open airway and circulate oxygenated blood. They had to do that test while he was sleeping, so they started at midnight on our second night, which was traumatic for me — it was the same oxygen saturation monitor that Ander was on that kept plummeting for him. Graeson passed with flying colors, but that beeping machine had me on edge for the whole time, despite our attempts to distract ourselves by watching HGTV. He passed all his tests, actually, including GAINING weight even in the hospital, which our pediatrician called “unprecedented.”

So here we are! Settling into life with a newborn, which is still rather surreal. I can’t believe I can just pick him up and cuddle him whenever I want. I’m so accustomed to asking permission to hold other peoples’ babies. I’m glad I over prepared to be incapacitated, because now that I’m actually pretty functional it feels remarkable. The only bummer at first was his smallness on outings – he was too small for all the carriers to be safe, so we could just do stroller outings. We were a little surprised that our pediatrician said we could take him out whenever we wanted, as long as we avoided crowds and made anyone holding him wash their hands. For some reason I think we both thought newborns were more fragile and needed to be inside for the first few weeks, but apparently not, which is also good for our own sanity.

So far, we’ve made it to the Chicago Botanic Gardens (including the butterfly exhibit and our first nursing-in-public in a gazebo in the English walled garden), to three different beaches, for several walks in the neighborhood (including lunch and dinner in the park), to the Art Institute and to the Arboretum. I’m just as surprised as anyone that we have managed all these things, though we did have ample help from both my parents and in-laws. Having them here really forced me out of my comfort zone, which was probably good for me, since I was really crippled by anxiety at first.

I’ll never know if my anxiety is normal new-mom jitters or a consequence of having already lost a child and knowing from my doctors that I shouldn’t try to get pregnant again for another two years at a minimum. The exhaustion set in around week three, and that’s when I had a few grief meltdowns too. You see, we wanted another boy, and Graeson looks just the right amount like Ander — basically identical except Ander had distinctive golden blond hair, while Graeson’s is a red-brown like mine. I think in a lot of ways it’s better that way. There are already too many moments where I’m startled by how much he looks like Ander — and unfortunately, the moments all bring me back to Ander dying, because that’s the only time we saw him without any tubes or tape on his face. So Graeson living sometimes reminds me of Ander dying, which is a bit of a jolt. Mostly, I am taken back there when I have G asleep cradled in my arms, head thrown back and mouth open. Once, my wife sang a song to Graeson to get him to sleep that happens to be one that we sang to Ander as he was dying (“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”) and that made me cry and just felt really sad for a while.

There were some happy “Ander moments” too. On Ander’s last night, our wonderful NICU nurse brought in her Nikon and took hundreds of photos of his last day, many of which we have hanging in our house and which we will cherish forever. The same nurse excitedly came to our house after Graeson was born to take a photoshoot of him, too. We haven’t seen the final photos yet, but her compassion, love and talent ensure they will be just as cherished as those of his brother.

To end on a lighter note, here are the top six things I have learned in the first six weeks of parenting a child. Hopefully, some of this will help someone else!

1. You can’t really have too many swaddles or burp cloths. You will never use either more than once, or twice if you’re lucky, before it’s covered in breastmilk/poo/pee/spit up. Same goes with your own bed sheets.

2. Relatedly, it is true that you will do laundry every day. I didn’t actually believe that one, but then we had to change our sheets nearly every night for a week due to baby vomit. (Note: he doesn’t even sleep in our bed, and yet this managed to happen.).

3. Navigating “helpful” parents and in-laws is harder than parenting your newborn. Example: when you are strapping your child in his car seat (perfectly competently) and suddenly have two extra pairs of hands trying to “help” you, which really just makes the baby irritated and makes it impossible for you to actually buckle the straps.

4. I would love to “sleep when the baby sleeps.” Could someone please get my child to sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time? He’s one of those babies who needs help falling asleep on his own, which means we must either strap on the Boba (a Moby-like wrap) and go for a walk, or practice the Karp method of soothing (swaddle, sway, shush, side/stomach, suck) or some other active thing to get him to take a nap, particularly from 8-11 a.m. and 8-11 p.m. Usually we manage to get him to sleep right about the time he is ready to wake up to feed again.

5. I get why people would have baby wipe warmers, particularly at night. I have solved this problem but just letting him stew in his dirty diaper for most of the night. I know. Not ideal, but you try getting a screaming baby to nurse happily and fall back asleep at 3 a.m. and let me know if you’d do anything differently!

6. Despite being somewhat constrained in my daily activities, this parenting thing in the first few weeks isn’t a bad gig. In fact, I watch so much daytime TV that maternity leave feels like a bit of a racket. But don’t tell my boss!

The End, The Beginning: Notes from the Last Weeks of Pregnancy

Read Caitlin’s previous writing on her first pregnancy and current one here!

Week Twenty-seven: My wife sets up the bassinet we bought in week one. I feel victorious, and terrified. The cats love it and have claimed it as their own, so we find ways to deter them (tin foil, double stick tape). The reason it’s up so early is that we are hosting friends whose son was born on Anderson’s intended due date. I prepare for an emotionally difficult weekend, with this child who is the exact age our son should be, a weekend of “this should be our life” head games.

Because we need the nursery for a guest room, all the other baby stuff is hidden in the closet, which is probably better for my sanity. We are still doing a lot of other pre-baby necessary things, though. For example, this past weekend we got haircuts, installed the car seat (for said visiting baby), bought fabric so the wife could make a sheet for the co-sleeper, detailed the car, weeded the garden, wrote thank-you notes to those who had already sent us baby gifts, and perhaps most importantly, took our c-section birthing class.

Photo Copyright: Caitlin Zinsser

Week Twenty-eight: I have a cold wherein there is a lot of phlegm sitting in my throat and chest. So much so that the overnight post-nasal drip causes me to vomit around 3:30 a.m. and again when I wake up around 7; so much so that I’m coughing and it hurts. I know the coughing and vomiting won’t hurt the baby, but oh gracious, it seems like it will when your abdomen contracts so violently. I’m exhausted from several nights of very little sleep due to problems breathing. I HATE COUGHING (but I keep reminding myself it’s still better to have this cold now than when I’m recovering from the c-section. There is very little in my life that has hurt more than sneezing the day after my c-section). I see my doctor for a regular visit, and he isn’t that concerned – apparently this cold is going around, so I just need to deal with it. It is my first time meeting the final Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist in the office — he is new to this practice (though not to being an MFM). The other three I know well from my time in the hospital before, and I have definitive opinions about them. I love this new guy, though; he has by far the best bedside manner of the group, and he takes the time to listen to my concerns and put my mind at rest, which seems to be his top priority.

I’m slowing down a lot, but I attribute a good portion to this cold. I can no longer walk to and from work on boxing days — the four miles plus an hour of class is too much, so I’m compromising and taking the bus to work on days I go to boxing, and only walking home. It seems so silly to care about this — I’m in my third trimester, I’m still healthy and active — but to me it feels like failure.

Week Twenty-nine: I think we thought redoing the baby registry would be therapeutic, but right now it’s annoying, although seeing the original and all the stuff that was supposed to be for Ander could have hurt too, I suppose. We choose more of a color scheme than a theme, per se. My mother-in-law made us gorgeous curtains from fabric we picked out after painting the walls. The walls are porpoise gray with white trim, and the curtains are gray, yellow and blue, big flowers and geometric patterns. We’re planning on white furniture and yellow and gray bedding. We have some wall decor from our original plan that is a big tree with owls and a koala night light. We also have a koala painting from my own childhood bedroom and an actual stuffed koala from our grief group. Most of the stuff we’re picking out sticks to this basic color scheme, with a variety of animals (yellow ducks, gray hippos, etc.) – though there will be some dinosaurs in there for an Ander touch, and the baby will have some of “his” things.

Photo Copyright: K. Zinsser

I am invited to speak on a panel at my hospital on caring for patients experiencing perinatal loss. It is great, as it always is, to tell Anderson’s story. I am glad too because I am the only panelist to have such a comprehensive experience of the care at the hosptal — MFM, L&D, NICU. I get to say everything I want to say, and the very, very best part is that I know some of the workshop participants and panelists and it is so good to see them, such as our favorite chaplain, and my favorite Labor & Delivery nurse. The best was one of the NICU nurses, who came up to me afterwards and said, “You don’t know me, but I was one of Anderson’s night nurses. I had him after his PDA ligation surgery, and I remember him. We talk about him frequently. He made a big impact, and he isn’t forgotten.” Definitely the best part of my day!

Week Thirty: Seeing the number “3” at the beginning of the week is crazy exciting for me. I think (hope, hope, hope) that I’ve finally turned a corner on this cold and cough; I still have coughing fits morning and evening (my stomach muscles are so sore!!) but I have slept well for three whole nights now!

My doctor isn’t thrilled about me traveling, given my history of preterm labor, so my sister and her fiancé Skype me into my dad’s retirement party so I can hear all the speeches. I’m also missing the memorial service for my grandma, but I’m again able to Skype in to the after-picnic for that. She had nine children, 13 grandchildren, and 21 great-grandkids and counting, and only six of us total were not there. It’s been ages since that many of us were all in one place, so I’m disappointed to miss it but glad to have had such a productive weekend. We are now 75% done with the nursery; all we are missing is the glider (on its way), the boxes we left with our parents to bring out post-baby from our showers back East, and whatever we might get from the shower the wife’s work is throwing us next weekend. I am drained from 89 degrees and a day at Ikea, but I do enjoy the nesting. Now I just hope I have a living, healthy baby to take home to it!

Week Thirty-one: I am getting more of those “is this your first? Are you excited?” questions from strangers. I am unwilling to pretend Ander didn’t exist, so usually answer that it’s my second and my son would be one right now, but he died last year. I follow that up with “we will be very excited when this new baby arrives and is healthy!”

We are really flummoxed about the idea of circumcision and are thus taking all opinions. My mom thinks we’re crazy to even consider not circumcising, but then again her generation thought it was the norm. Most of my friends now aren’t circumcising, and it’s not popular globally. I think in the end we might not because “everyone else is doing it” doesn’t seem like the type of compelling argument that would sway us (plus, it’s not really true). But we’re asking our friends, our doctors, and two pediatricians as well — clearly this is a hot topic for me! I also feel like I shouldn’t be the one making this decision for my son, as it’s his body — but then if he wants a circumcision when he’s older, it’s a lot more work and a lengthier, more potentially complicated procedure. So…. hard call!

Week Thirty-two: So, with Ander I had nausea and fatigue, and of course the bleeding and such — but no other “typical” pregnancy symptoms. With this baby, I’ve had the gamut! Besides those I’ve already mentioned, now I’m getting bleeding gums (just a little, occasionally, when I floss) and hemorrhoids. Gross. But I’m truly not complaining — it’s nice to feel normal! I have another ultrasound. This time, they find a marginal cord insertion. It’s always something that could be nothing but could influence the pregnancy.

Week Thirty-three: It is 2015, right? I ask this because, in the world of trying to conceive and pregnancy, I have read a LOT of books and websites since we started trying to have a baby three (wow, three) years ago. And you know what they all have in common? They assume that mom has a partner. And that the partner is her husband and the baby’s father. It goes without saying that the partner is male. In fact, nearly every website has “tips for Dad” or “what Dad should expect when Mom is expecting” or “how to help your partner” or “tell Dad to do X so that he feels involved.” Of course, the things these sites and books recommend Dad do are also very sexist (“He’ll be excited to get out those power tools to set up the nursery furniture!”).

Now, I get that for most expectant mothers, there’s a Dad in the picture. But again: it is 2015, right? Can not one of these sites/books consistently use the word partner instead of husband? And can they sometimes acknowledge that maybe there IS no partner? Often they start out using partner, but then it’s like the author regresses to Dad when their attention drifts. (Note: when we went to our baby classes (birth, bringing baby home, etc.) it was also hard for the instructors to remember this. They addressed “Dads” a lot, even though I had introduced my wife and she was sitting right there. In one class they even segregated the Dads and Moms for certain sections, which was awkward). Ugh.

Week Thirty-four: We have now taken all our classes except for breastfeeding, which is in a few weeks. I have to say, “Bringing Baby Home” was underwhelming. I think it’s just that I’ve read so much that I’ve reached saturation — in theory, I know what needs to be known, but until I actually practice, it’s all just theory. I did love the tour of Labor & Delivery though, as it was so reassuring to be able to see everything. I also found out that if the baby is doing well, I’ll get skin-to-skin right in the OR as they stitch me up, which is so wonderful to know. And wow the new postpartum rooms at our hospital are huge and luxuriant! Double the size of before, with new futons and two bathrooms — one for mom and one for guests! I feel so very lucky to be having this baby in a major metropolitan area and at a top-notch hospital.

As we get closer I’m getting more irritable, which is due to both the lack of sleep and the ever-present anxiety that this baby will just, at some point, stop moving. I am so deathly terrified of stillbirth. Even typing that word seems superstitious to me. It doesn’t help that after a day of SO much movement like Sunday at the Pride parade, I come to expect that level of activity (which isn’t fair to baby!) to keep me sane (especially as I’m pretty sure he was just reacting to the marching bands!). I have fallen head over heels with this baby already and now that I have seen the OR I can actually imagine the c-section happening and him coming out and being shown to me. But every daydream of joy brings an equal one of terror. It’s so frustrating to feel that I’ve made it this far doing so well with my fears and now in the last few weeks I’m just unraveling. Last night we got a call from friends who will be in town unexpectedly in a few days, and we’re very excited to see and host them. My wife went into the nursery to move the crib and everything (again — this is our third stint of visitors after having set up the nursery as we wanted) and I just lost it in a festival of waterworks. Since we will have both of our parents staying with us in August/September (not at the same time), she had figured we’d just leave the nursery a jumbled mess (everything baby shoved into a corner) so we could fit the air mattress, bedside tables, etc. that we usually haul out for guests. Rationally, this made sense — our folks deserve a moderately comfortable space, and the baby will be with us in our room. But emotionally, not having full access to this perfect nursery we had set up made me ridiculously upset. We spent a lot of time and love on that room, and the idea that I’ll barely be able to go in there for a month, the first month of this baby’s life, just had me bawling. I think I’m really hung up on wanting everything to be so perfect for this little guy. I keep rearranging and washing things — I know that’s partly nesting, but I think it’s also partly me thinking “I didn’t get to do this last time, I want it to be perfect this time.”

Week Thirty-five: Two weeks to go and two weeks left of work! I’m planning on working right up until my c-section so that I can maximize my maternity leave — and honestly, as I can work from home and I’ll “only” be 37 weeks, there’s no real reason I can’t/shouldn’t. I most definitely have senioritis though. I keep telling my wife that I feel like a teacher with only two weeks left in the school year. And 35 weeks! My doctor rejoiced that “we made it!” because we’re past the mandatory special care/NICU window. It does feel like a pretty big milestone! We finished all of our baby classes — breastfeeding was this past weekend. I was glad to learn that our pediatrician’s office (we had our meet-and-greet) has two board-certified lactation consultants on staff to meet with new moms and help with breastfeeding issues. That makes me feel a lot better as to be honest, I know of way more people with breastfeeding troubles than those who have it easy.

It was in the ’90s this weekend and I guess I didn’t drink enough water, because I was in triage this Monday with dehydration. It ended up being good that I went in, but it was a lot of pain and anxiety, and I think I’m more nervous now because of all the times I was told to “keep a very careful eye on fetal movement.” Baby’s amniotic fluid is a little low, but I’m not leaking, so dehydration is to blame. Still scary, though, but isn’t everything? I have to keep reminding myself that if I didn’t have my history, and wasn’t considered high risk, I wouldn’t even know about borderline low fluid or a marginal cord insertion — both things that shouldn’t make a difference to the baby’s development.

Week Thirty-six: We spend the weekend shopping and cooking big batches of meals to freeze that are conducive to throwing in the slow cooker. I usually hate cooking, but I blame the nesting bug – I lead this charge and have a lot of fun choosing recipes and taking pictures of our stocked fridge and freezer. Then we have a thunderstorm and a brownout, leading to momentary panic – what if we lose power? The crisis is averted.

Except for the triage incident, I’ve been VERY lucky regarding the heat — in that it’s pretty much nonexistent. It’s been in the ’70s or low ’80s pretty consistently, which is nice for pregnancy but pretty crappy otherwise, in that I really like hot weather and it makes it feel like it jumped from spring to fall. We went to see a movie at the park and were freezing in sweatshirts and jeans. In JULY. The one thing I dislike about Chicago… though apparently in 1995 they had a heat wave that killed over 700 people. So, I’ll stick it out.

Week Thirty-seven: We meet our son this week. We meet our son this week. We meet our son this week… and you will meet him, too, as soon as we come up for air!

Where Hope and Grief Can Co-Exist

You see, when you have lost a baby for no explainable reason, you have bad days and good days in the months between your baby’s death and the process of trying to conceive, again. One summer Saturday was the worst, bringing tears and despair, revealing my darkest fears to my wife while we lay on our backs in a tent during a rainstorm, waiting for the clouds to blow past before making dinner of orzo and vegetables over our Jetboil. “I just can’t shake this feeling that it’ll take years to have a baby, and by then I’ll be sick or otherwise unable to enjoy it,” I told her. “I can’t break out of this fatalistic funk in which I’m too decrepit to teach my child to throw a baseball.”

Now that we have conceived our rainbow baby, I indulge in the good days of wild hope more regularly. On good days, I feel peaceful, believing that I will carry this pregnancy to term without complications and get to take home a living, smiling baby who can breastfeed on their own. On good days, I can worry about whether I’ll seem overprotective if we get a video baby monitor. I remember that a colleague just had twins at 47. Another adopted a baby at 45. No one will think less of me for being an older mom; I won’t be so old that I won’t be able to help my kid move into college, see my grandchild.

In the second trimester though, I found the grief and hope coexisting in my heart. My wife and I struggled to both continually honor or son Anderson’s memory while opening our hearts again to a new child, who is ours whether they make it to birth and beyond or not. We vacillate about telling others we are pregnant, torn between not wanting to get their hopes up and yet needing their support should something happen. As the second trimester began and progressed, we continued to try to celebrate this baby’s existence despite the fear and doubt.

Second Trimester Diary

Week Thirteen: We have another ultrasound to check for chromosomal anomalies, the nuchal fold test. It takes a while as we have to poke and prod him into the best position, but I love watching him squirm and salute us. There is a scary moment, though, when the tech says “don’t clean off your belly yet, I just want to check I have all the measurements” and leaves the room. She is probably only gone for ten minutes, but it feels like 20 to us as we wait anxiously, wondering if there is actually bad news and she needs a second opinion. When she returns she seems surprised when we fire off “is anything wrong?” (There isn’t.) I don’t want to be a crazy patient, and I don’t want to overreact. But I don’t want to underreact either.

Ander’s butterfly garden.
Photo Copyright: Jane MacAlpine

Week Fourteen: The wife and I continue to struggle about whom to tell and when. I’m terrified to tell people. I don’t even love having told my mom, because she can’t hide her excitement (she sends us name suggestions every day), and it just makes me terrified if I ever have to tell her bad news.

Week Fifteen: I think my boxing instructors are starting to notice that I’m appearing “lazier” than usual — the fatigue really hits me this week! I figure I’ll tell them soon, but mostly due to vanity; I don’t want to be perceived as lazy or cutting corners. I’ve started to modify some of the core activities for my own comfort, as I’m getting the first bits of obvious pudginess. I wear maternity pants once, but mostly because they are cute corduroys and make me feel good. I feel the baby fluttering for the first time.

Week Sixteen: All the results from genetic screening show that I’m low-risk for having a baby with a chromosomal issue. I had no reason to suspect otherwise, but it’s still good to hear. Because things are going so well, I’ve just been seeing the physician’s assistant. She’s very sweet, but I think part of the problem is that *I’m* too cheery when I see her. “Things are going great!” I’ll say. “I feel really good!” So the visits are short and positive and normal, which means I’m only seen every month, like a “normal” person. Since this is my second pregnancy, too, and I’m not at the centering-based, midwifery practice I was at last time, everything seems to have a different feel. While on one hand, I have no physical reason for the handholding, on the other, I think I need to be a better advocate. As this pregnancy progresses I’m getting more and more anxious that something will go wrong and it’ll be missed. I crave the extra reassurance.

Week Seventeen: I discover I have gained as much in this pregnancy so far as I lost in the last one. I feel like I’m in limbo. Most of my symptoms are gone, but I can’t feel the baby really move yet. It’s a very disconcerting place to be. I still check obsessively every time I use the bathroom to make sure I’m not bleeding, and vaginal discharge still freaks me out (even though I know it’s the normal type and completely okay — it’s just the sensation that freaks me out, especially if I can’t get to a bathroom quickly).

Week Eighteen: We try to file our taxes and realize we need a Social Security number for Anderson. I’m convinced I applied for one, and tear apart my files looking for it. I never lose anything, but it just isn’t there. I go to the Social Security office with birth and death certificate in hand, but they can’t even tell me if I had previously applied, let alone give me a number for him, which causes me to cry in front of the agent. I know I can file my taxes via paper with copies of the two certificates, but it feels like just one more thing he doesn’t get.

Week Nineteen: This is when the bleeding started again last time, marking the start of the abruption. The mood swings this week are intense. I have a breakdown when my mother starts enthusiastically suggesting things to do for my sister’s bachelorette party. I have to miss the wedding, and the “real” bachelorette, and my mother is planning the bridal shower, so I have been planning the “family” bachelorette party in May (which is the end of when I can really travel). I have everything planned, but when my mother starts suggesting activities and offering to buy the tickets, I start sobbing and trying to explain that this is the only thing I can do for my sister and I had all these great plans and she was taking over my special day. My mother is horrified to have upset me — of course, she had just been trying to help, thinking I was stressed from the pregnancy — darn pregnancy hormones!

Week Twenty: The tech at our Level Two ultrasound knows our history and is clearly very experienced and very calm and sweet. She keeps pointing out things reassuringly (look, there’s his brain, it looks perfect; look, nice long legs and big feet, etc.). A maternal/fetal medicine specialist meets with us, and the only potential complication he mentions is that my placenta is lying a little low. He said normally he wouldn’t even mention it, but there is a 50/50 chance I could have some spotting or bleeding and he wants to assure me that if it were to happen, it would most likely be the placenta’s location near the cervix and not indication of a threatening abruption, as otherwise there are no visible clots or any other indication that the placenta is compromised. However, then he mentions that they found an echogenic intracadiac focus during the ultrasound, which doubles my risk of having a baby with Down Syndrome. But, since I tested low-risk on my earlier scans (less than 1 in 5,000 chance) and since the ultrasound showed no other fetal abnormalities that may signal a chromosomal issue, my risk is still around 1 in 2,000 so still so insignificant that he didn’t think it initially even worth mentioning. I’m not sure I’m glad he did or not.

Week Twenty-one: I’ve started to realize that I just might have a full-term baby. With Ander, we knew he’d be at least a bit early. I had been reading preemie and micropreemie blogs, preparing for RSV lockdowns, occupational therapy, learning disabilities, accommodations, worrying about every little cough and sniffle. Now I’m starting to realize I might have a baby without the stress and strain of the constant worry of a micropreemie. It’s almost too much to think about!

Week Twenty-two: We talk names. I struggle with the fact that we named our son Anderson, as that was the only name we both loved and agreed on. This child feels like they will get a “second best” name, and yet this is the name we’ll hopefully get to use for years. We do the March of Dimes walk in Anderson’s memory.

Week Twenty-three: My grandmother dies at 87. She will never meet my children. This is the week I went into labor with Ander and was placed on hospital bed rest. Despite these two triggers, we decided that we will stop going to our monthly bereavement group now that I’ve started to show. We are the furthest ahead in our grief journey in the group, and the others are just starting to maybe thinking about talking about trying to conceive, and we get new people all the time. I can only imagine how I would feel if I had just lost a baby and went to this group for the first time and there was a pregnant lady there. Horrible.

Week Twenty-four: The legal limit of viability in Illinois, the gestational age where the doctors will take heroic measures to save your baby. The week Anderson was born. I made it. From here on, I’m in uncharted territory.

Week Twenty-five: To give you a sense of my recent paranoia, here is what I Googled just this weekend: Can my maternity support belt be too tight? (Verdict: no.) Am I leaking amniotic fluid? (Verdict: no.) Am I having Braxton Hicks contractions, or is it the baby balling up? (Verdict: probably the former, but it’s totally normal). Should I be concerned that my fundal height didn’t change from 20 to 22 weeks? (Verdict: no. It’s still within the realm of normal and even a full bladder could affect the measurement).

Week Twenty-six: My hips, thighs and back are sore. I’ve definitely popped and I LOVE looking pregnant. Most times and most days, I love everything about being pregnant, especially the movement. My wife is so excited. She hosts an end-of-year BBQ at our house for her grad students, and they decorate onesies for the baby. Part of me is a bit hesitant, as it still feels too soon to be “celebrating,” but the other part of me is ecstatic and embracing all the fun parts that I didn’t get last time. I am scared a lot, but I’m also excited and hopeful a lot. We started getting gifts, and it’s a little frightening at the same time that it’s thrilling. One part of me can’t wait to rip into the box, while the other part of me is wondering how we’d go about returning all these gifts if we had to. I have moments when I panic and just ask Ander over and over to take care of his sibling. Some days I don’t think the fear and anxiety will ever end!

Pregnant Beginnings. Literally.

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher had us bury the word nice. She wrote “nice” on an index card and made a coffin out of a tissue box covered in black construction paper. She played the traditional funeral march (you know, dum dum da dum, dum da dum da dum da dum) and slipped that index card into its Kleenex grave. At the time, I thought it was a clever way to remind us 10-year-olds that there were more descriptive adjectives. Now, I recognize this was slightly morbid and potentially insensitive to some students in the class. However, the analogy remains: When we started trying to conceive again, I had to bury a word of my own: If.

I have always been superstitious, the kind of person who believed that if something went wrong, it’s because I didn’t worry hard enough. Yet the rational part of my brain knows that science and religion have both shown that positive thoughts lead to more positive outcomes. I had to let go, deliberately and with difficulty, to my negativity. I decided to “poked fate in the eye until fate gives up,” to quote another mama who lost her first baby. I’m being a rebel. I will no longer say “if” this new, rainbow baby makes it to life, but “when.” At least, I’m trying.

Each week of this new pregnancy has been a battle between hope and doubt. This was our journey the first trimester.

Week One: A colleague is selling a hand-me-down bassinet. My IUI is two weeks away. With reckless optimism, I buy it. I bring half the pieces home; the other half remains at the office to be picked up at some nebulous future time. My wife gets me a card that says how proud she is of me of making this leap of faith. She put a “Joy” card in the offering at church “for the beginning of a new life.”

Ander’s Foot
Photo Copyright Joyce Kilpatrick

Week Two: We tentatively schedule our IUI. I have very few pictures of me pregnant with Ander; I thought there would be time; I thought it was silly. This time, we start early, taking pictures on our way to the IUI: our hands on the doorknob to go outside; a silly shot of me acting like a swimming sperm.

Week Three: The two week wait overlaps with the Advent season, in which Christians wait for the birth of a baby. The irony is not lost on me as I struggle to decide how and if we include our lost son on our Christmas cards. To avoid awkwardness, we choose to sign them “The Zinssers.”

Week Four: On Friday, I see Anderson’s name five times, and it seems to occur just as I begin to wonder if I’m pregnant. On Saturday night, both my wife and I dream I am pregnant. Therefore, I decide to test on Sunday morning. There is a second line. It is faint, but not so faint. Definitely there. We spend Sunday in bursts of giddy excitement. We know, of course, that one pregnancy test means very little, but one day of bliss is better than one day of anxiety. I have learned that my disappointment is not greater if I start from a place of happy rather than sad.

Week Five: We head to the East Coast for Christmas, and tell our parents we are pregnant just a few days after we find out ourselves. They are thrilled. I contemplate the challenge of surviving the holiday season without any alcohol. I feel guilty about not doing anything really special for Anderson, but we hang a stocking for him, and give a ceramic ornament of a touched-up picture of him to the grandparents.

Week Six: This is the week I started bleeding with Ander. This is the week I started bleeding with Ander. This is the week… I get superstitious about which bathroom stall to use at work. I have flashbacks anyway. I check to make sure I’m not bleeding yet at least once an hour. I take a flight to DC for work and opt out of the full-body scanner at the airport. The lady doing my patdown runs her hands over my stomach and says “Oh! Are you pregnant?!” I’m like: (a) I can’t seriously be showing yet, and (b) what would you have done if I said NO? Secretly, though, I am glad. Granted, probably 90% of the women she pats down are opting out due to pregnancy, but still. When she asks how far along I am, I lie and say “oh, the end of the first trimester” because I am ashamed of saying only six weeks.

Week Seven: It is Ander’s first birthday. We are supposed to be feeding him his first cake. Instead, we keep gazing up at the sky, hoping to see a sign of him. We do: it snows, which is perfect. It should always snow on our polar vortex baby’s birthday; it was snowing the day he was born and as we left the hospital after he died, 26 days later. We build him a snowman and thank him for picking out his little sibling for us. We ask him to keep this baby safe and to watch over them. It is odd, being pregnant on your baby’s birthday. Unfair, somehow.

Anderson’s birthday snowman
Photo Copyright K. Zinsser

Week Eight: We have our first ultrasound! There is a baby with a beating heart. My relief is overwhelming. I find out my due date is August 25, but my c-section is tentatively scheduled for August 4, the day I turn 37 weeks (due to the classical incision from my first c-section, if I go into active labor I’m at risk for uterine rupture). I suffer from a case of the should-have-beens: Ander should be toddling down the aisle at my sister’s August 8 wedding. Instead, I’ll be delivering my maid-of-honor speech in a hospital bed under the influence of painkillers.

Week Nine: We decide to go all out to enjoy and celebrate this pregnancy. However long it lasts, we will always have two children now. So: we paint the nursery. We talk with our moms about baby shower dates. We’re assuming this baby is going to stick around. Granted, it helps a LOT that this pregnancy is off to such a better start. It means I’m not obsessing and fretting over every little ache and pain (especially as I’ve felt them before and have a good sense now of what is normal and what is not). Plus, I can EAT with this pregnancy! I was so sick with Ander, and so averse to everything, that I lost weight and felt crummy all the time. This little one makes me ravenous and I only dry heave sometimes in the mornings. I also don’t seem to have the crazy aversions to everything like I did last time (yet) though I am craving black olives, cheddar cheese and chocolate soy milk like nobody’s business. With Ander, I loved pizza and any carbs with tomato sauce (lasagna, spaghetti), but this time pizza makes me feel bloated, so it’s out.

Week Ten: We start telling a few people who ask directly or who otherwise need to know (my physical therapist; one of my sister’s bridesmaids who really wanted to know why I couldn’t make it to NYC in late July for a bachelorette party). We have dinner with the friend whose son was born on what would have been Ander’s due date, and she asks because I’m not drinking.

Week Eleven: We begin to keep a journal for the baby, whom we call Poppyseed. Last time, I obsessively recorded my symptoms (which in retrospect did at least provide a handy comparison to this pregnancy). This time, however, we want to write about everything Poppyseed does in utero. To share with them later, and also… just in case. So that we at least have these memories preserved.

Week Twelve: In another pique of reckless optimism, we book a baby moon! Well, to be fair, I have to be in Ft. Lauderdale for work, and it happens to coincide with the wife’s spring break (she is a college professor), so we plan to stay for a long weekend to enjoy the beach and sun. I figure if I’m going to be pregnant through the summer, I can even justify a maternity bathing suit (even if I’m not really showing yet). I also treat myself to a new fancy dress because we have to go to a university ball in a few weeks and I figure I can re-wear that dress for a later baby shower. This, however, leads to an episode of Midnight Panic. All I can think of is: what if this baby is stillborn? What if lightning strikes twice? What if I manage to avoid the abruption, only to have something else horrible happen? What if it already has, and I won’t know for another three weeks? Every day that brings me closer to the 19 week mark – when I started to really bleed with Ander, what I think of as the beginning of the end – makes me both more confident and more nervous.

Taking a Chance on a Second Chance: Managing Fears, Anxiety and the Unknown When Getting Pregnant

Feature image by K. Zinsser

I’ve wanted a baby for years. Many of my friends have toddlers already, and I was anxious to get the “have 2.5 children” box ticked off on my life goals. I felt a desperate need to “catch up,” which I know is both ridiculous and insulting to those good friends of mine who aren’t even in a relationship yet and also want children (and don’t want to parent on their own). I get anxious about completing tasks at some nebulous time in the future, and can’t fully feel relaxed until they’re complete.

For me, the bad days are triggered by fear: that it’s too late, that I’m too old, that horrible things will happen again. I am a box checker. In fact, completing items is something about which I am rather obsessive. In my entire life, for example, there has only been one book that I didn’t finish (Catch 22, if you must know). Several of my bookshelves contain books that I haven’t yet read but plan to, and I will feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction until they are complete; the stack of four by my bed is arranged in the order in which I will read them next. A new book may come out and move an older one farther down the pile, but the old book will remain until it is read. I tell you this because I think that this obsession about completing items on my to-do list is what contributed to my panic about not yet having a living child.

On good days, I remember that the problem is that I am the one who makes the to-do list. And it’s an arbitrary to-do list. There is no rule that says I have to read those books next to my bed, or on my bookshelves. If I didn’t read a single one of them, no one would know or care but me. This translates to child-bearing, too. In the ten months between my son Anderson’s death and the new baby’s conception, I was constantly anxious about getting pregnant again. About how old I’d be when we could start trying again. About how long it would take me to get pregnant. About if I’d miscarry. About if I’d have another abruption. About if I’d be on bedrest. About if something goes wrong with the c-section. About if the baby has a disability or heart defect. About SIDS. About childhood cancers and diseases. When I see another friend get pregnant, have a baby, have a second baby before me. About a whole lot of other things I had to learn to let go because they cannot be controlled.

When we were first trying to conceive Ander, I was the killjoy, the “remember our odds are only 25% each time,” the “we’ll see.” For the first ten weeks, I was the “remember one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage,” the “let’s not tell anyone until at least 14 weeks, to be safe.”

Ironically, the wild hope came later, after the bleeding started at 19 weeks, after the doctors told us to prepare for the worst. It was then that I became the “c’mon baby, we can do this,” the “let’s buy some clothes and stuffed animals just in case,” the “we should start a registry.”

When my wife and I were preparing to start trying to conceive again, we had to balance a lot of bad days and good days, a lot of “what ifs” and statistics and medical advice. The simple fact is, no one knows why I had an abruption, so we were left guessing as to what adaptations to the TTC process might lessen our chances of a recurrence.

In meeting with our Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) specialist, we could definitively say the following. All of these carry their own risks, so we faced balancing how reckless we wanted to be versus other, more practical concerns. The fact of the matter is, we cannot control for everything. So, what can we control that will help us feel more at ease? What must we absolutely do, and what can we leave to the fates? How can we feel both in control of the process, but not obsess over being in control (when we know now that ultimately, control only gets you so far)? Here are the risks we were balancing:

• There is a risk of recurrence. Because I used IUI (which, along with IVF, carries a higher abruption risk) and because we cannot eliminate other risk factors (such as smoking, since I never was a smoker), my risk is approximately 20% for a repeat abruption. Risk: moderate to high, but nothing we can do about it.

• I am CMV negative. I hadn’t gotten tested for this before, but now know I’m in the minority who has not been exposed to this virus. Our donor is CMV igG positive but CMV igM negative, meaning he has been exposed to the virus, but was not actively infected when he donated. There is an extremely small chance the virus could pass to me through the semen, but we’re talking really low. There’s a greater chance — though still small — that I could contract CMV while pregnant. If I do, there’s a 20% chance the baby could end up with moderate to severe birth defects. Great. But ultimately, not much I can do about it. It didn’t happen last time, and the CMV status had nothing to do with my abruption. Risk: low.

• Oh, the ever present donor question. Should we switch? On one hand, there is a small body of research that suggests some placental issues, such as preeclampsia, are tied to sperm, and that placental formation is likely driven by the male genes. Do we know this for sure? No. Are there any placental abruption studies that link it to sperm? No. Can we, in our doctor’s words, guarantee that we are selecting a “safe” donor if we choose to switch? No. So what we weigh is having a full sibling to Ander or not. Then, there’s the fact that we have only eight vials left, enough for four months of trying, and the donor is sold out. We thought eight would be enough for a sibling, and it will… but will it be enough for two, now that Ander has died? Unfortunately, we don’t know, on either count. Then there’s the cost; we already pre-purchased the sperm after we had made it 18 weeks into a “successful” pregnancy, so we’d be out a decent amount of money. Risk: moderate either way, unfortunately. My wife would like to use the same donor, so we decided to do so, and I’m letting go of the anxiety about that decision. There’s only so much we can do.

• What I could do, to eliminate or lessen another factor that makes me anxious: get tested for clotting factors. My MFM didn’t think it was necessary, though he left it up to me, basically saying that if I’m worried about it, I could get tested. He also said that if I did have a clotting factors issue, that might just make me more nervous, and that treatments such as Lovenox and baby aspirin carried other risks that could cause me additional anxiety. However, due to the fact that we decided to keep our donor, and due to a second opinion, I decided to get tested. This will at least allow me to manage my anxiety about this. If I test negative, great; I can let it go. If I test positive, at least I’ll have some weapons in my arsenal. Risk: low. I didn’t really have anything to lose, and didn’t think I had a clotting factors disorder anyway. (Note: I didn’t.)

So there’s that. We’re trying to balance being responsible and reasonable with being… not reckless, but rational? Are those all synonyms? It feels reckless, to keep the same donor, but on the other hand — if this were a male partner’s sperm, it’s not like I would trade him in for the hope of an improved model, knowing that the new version could also be a dud, so to speak. It feels like… a reasonable risk. As the wife points out, we did everything “right” the last time, and we know how that turned out, so maybe we should let go of some of the control this time and let things be. I vacillate between that and “must control or else I’ll blame myself if something happens again.”

Photo Copyright K. Zinsser

So in our reckless optimism, we decided – and were cleared – to start trying again. When we started TTC the first time, we went to a fabulous clinic that specializes in helping LGBT couples have babies (yes, we know how lucky we are. Thank you, major city!). They are therefore used to working with women who have no known fertility issues except the obvious lack of sperm, which means that they fully support drug-free attempts at IUI and ICI. It also means, however, that they’re sticklers about charting for at least three full months before any doctor-assisted process (we chose doctor-assisted IUI, as this sh*t’s expensive and this has shown the greatest probability of success within four months of trying). At our clinic, when you begin the process, you are required to attend a one-hour consultation in which you learn all about charting and exactly how to do it, and are given sheets on which to track everything, daily (no app. A literal chart on a literal sheet of white paper, which you then take to work and surreptitiously photocopy).

The first go-round, I took extensive notes on everything, from my level of cramps and pain to the exact look of my cervical mucus. It helped a bit; for example, I discovered that I get a low, dull backache when I ovulate. But now that I’m a veteran at this, I’ve learned that really, only three things mattered for me when taking a good chart: cervical mucus, ovulation predictor kits (OPK), and basal body temperature (BBT). The first tells you that you’ll likely ovulate in the next few days, the second that your ovulation is imminent, and the third that you’ve ovulated. These three things in combination helped paint a picture for me and my doctor of what my specific ovulation pattern looks like. A breakdown is below. A disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. This is what I have learned, and what works for me. Talk to your doctor about what tweaks would work best for you!

Cervical mucus – don’t bother Googling images. They’re gross. And what your cervical mucus looks like isn’t necessarily what someone else’s will. Pay attention to yours, though. It will likely — and I say likely — start out watery and then turn egg white when you’re about to ovulate. This is good — healthy cervical mucus is what helps lubricate and protect the sperm on its journey. For me, it means a few days of discomfort at the gym, when running feels like I’m peeing in my pants. Good times. Also, however, it is the most accurate way for me to determine when it’s the right time to use an…

Ovulation Predictor Kit – necessary for pinpointing your most fertile window. I’ve heard doctors with various theories on when you’re most likely to get pregnant. I will say that I got my first OPK positive on a Thursday evening, and my IUI was scheduled for noon on Friday and 8 a.m. on Saturday (two per cycle was recommended by my clinic, to increase the likelihood of success). And I got pregnant. My friend’s doctor would have scheduled her for Saturday and Sunday (she’s not pregnant). So make of that what you will. When you’re actively trying to get pregnant, it’s not uncommon to test first thing in the morning, mid-day, and in the evening starting around day ten of your cycle. With the second baby, I only tested in the morning (a positive should be visible for 24-48 hours), though I did start at day ten. I didn’t want to get too obsessed over charting, knowing that controlling my need for control was important. That said, I described to my wife how anxious I was that it was day 14 and I hadn’t gotten a positive OPK yet (usually I ovulate around day 12). “Could you have missed it?” she asked. “Unlikely,” I shrugged, “but possible. After all, I’m only testing in the morning. I don’t want to obsess about it too much.” “Tell me,” she laughed. “Would testing twice a day make you obsess about it more than you are right now?” I had to concede this was an excellent point. So, twice a day it was. Other notes on OPKs – we found it best to buy the sticks in bulk from Amazon. You’ll save tons of money, and they usually come with a handful of pregnancy test strips, too. No frills, but less than half the price you’ll find at the drugstore. The only other thing you need is disposable cups in which to pee. Once you get a positive OPK, time to check your…

Basal Body Temperature – granted, you start charting your BBT the first day of your period (day one for charting). This establishes a baseline, as all a BBT will tell you is if you actually ovulated — a BBT should spike several tenths of a degree post-ovulation. This is helpful information for fertility docs, since this helps them determine if further tests are needed and provides evidence that a medical intervention like Clomid might be necessary. Taking BBT sucked the first time around, but as I’ve mentioned, I’ve learned a few things. One, I bought a good, reliable basal thermometer, cotton balls, and alcohol (for cleaning said thermometer). If you’re lucky, you have an alarm clock with a flat top, like mine. I put the thermometer right on top of my snooze button. Five days a week, the alarm goes off at 6:50, I reach over, pop the thermometer in my mouth, wait until it beeps, turn it off, hit snooze, and go back to sleep until the alarm goes off again at 7:00 (then I lounge around until around 7:15, when I drag myself into the kitchen for coffee, but that’s neither here nor there). Actually, when I finally sit up in bed, I first turn back on my thermometer, which retains the last reading, put a dot on the chart I taped to the wall next to my bed (it’ll ultimately look like a line graph), go pee in a cup and dip in my OPK, and let it do its five-minutes thing while making coffee. I take the coffee back to the bedroom, check the OPK (“stupid bleeping negative!”), throw out the test strip, and pout while handing the wife her coffee (I do weekdays, she does weekends. Pretty fair deal). Oh, back to BBTs. It’s a pain, true. And most of the time, it seems completely unnecessary. But the post-ovulation spike can be quite reassuring. Now, most of the time I get up around the same time, and my temp is pretty steady. But as I’m just looking for a pattern, I actually don’t worry too much about it. I take my temp regardless, whether I went to bed late, got up late, drank too much alcohol the night before, was hot, was cold, was traveling, etc. If I miss a day, I just miss it and take my temp the next day. Patterns, after all. I do note on my chart the time I took my temp and if there was any other anomaly that could explain an errant reading (like last Saturday, when we went camping and I was restless most of the night due to a thunderstorm). The time matters, because body temperature rises with time, so if you’re, say, at 97.0 every morning at 7 a.m., then a reading of 97.6 at 8 a.m. would be perfectly normal and within your pattern. On the other hand, a 97.6 at 7 a.m. might indicate you have ovulated…. or that it was 95 degrees in your bedroom because your air conditioning was on the fritz. I write it down, look for the pattern… but don’t obsess too much. BBT is helpful for a doctor in determining if you’re ovulating, but waiting for a spike in BBT to have sex would likely be too late for pregnancy purposes. It’s used as confirmation, not a predictor.

There you have it. It’s a pain. But it’s also a way to feel like you’re doing something to pass the time. Really, they should have taught us this in school. How many pregnancies could be prevented if teenage girls knew that cervical mucus was a big “danger/congratulations, you’re fertile!” sign? Especially knowing that our hormones prime us to feel randier during these days. So, not IF, but WHEN your baby is conceived and arrives, let me know if any of this worked for you. And don’t let it take a tragedy for you to indulge in reckless hope.

My Pregnancy Was Perfect, and I Lost My Baby Anyway

First step – create a folder in your inbox labeled “Conception.”

Well, no. There are many, earlier, first steps, though this was the moment when the journey to have our first child began to materialize in a concrete way, changing from a future wish to a tantalizingly close prospect.

I am four years beyond the creation of that folder. Two months past the birth and death of my first child. Back then, 2010, lifetimes ago, I was anxious when I thought of how close I already was to that suddenly less-fertile age of 35, and how if I want to have a second child, I’d likely be in that nebulous, dangerous zone of 35-40.

I am a first born.

I tell you this because it was what my mother used to say to justify why I was such a perfectionist as a child, so anxious to “get it right.” I was the child always labelled “teacher’s pet,” even as a superlative in my high school yearbook. And I was the child proud of that label.

I am obedient to a fault. Jaywalking, even when the street is totally empty, makes me uncomfortable. I come to full stops at stop signs. When I have to swing my bike onto the sidewalk in places where it’s unsafe to ride in the street, I get off and walk so as not to inconvenience pedestrians, who have the right of way there. I follow rules. All. The. Time. And I’m proud of it; I call it integrity.

What this means, however, is that I also believe that I am entitled to certain things. I follow rules. Therefore, I am intelligently minimizing my risk of bad things happening to me. Therefore, good things are more likely to happen to me, and since I’ve been such a “good girl,” I deserve them. For the vast, vast majority of my life, this “rule” held true. I did well in school, attended and graduated from a good college, got a good job… you get the picture. I went to church every week and said my prayers every night.

Of course, I even followed the rules for getting pregnant: I got married, which also meant legal paperwork, since we lived in Virginia in 2011, and we wanted to ensure that our relationship would be protected. My wife, completing her PhD, applied for jobs in more gay-friendly states, and we chose Illinois. Before we even moved there, we visited a health clinic to begin the IUI process. We got a nice place to live with a room for a nursery. We saved money from our better-paying jobs for sperm and medical expenses. I started taking prenatal vitamins three months prior to conceiving. I cut out all caffeine and alcohol. I follow rules, so I never smoked or did drugs of any kind (I’ve never even been on any prescription drugs. I’ve never touched a cigarette.). I read all the baby books and followed the rules on what to eat, what not to eat, how not to lie on your back after your first trimester, how to exercise, why to see the dentist (I did, of course).

I did not get my reward.

I was determined to have a healthy, non-medicated, 100% exercise pregnancy, and a beautiful, natural birth. I was healthy and young and was going to give my baby the best possible start in life! (Exclamation added to represent the excitement I felt over having the opportunity to do this “perfectly.”) No one in my family had any history of pregnancy issues, so I expected a pregnancy similar to my mother’s – the standard morning sickness and other common pregnancy ailments, but nothing serious. I had a small bleeding incident at six weeks – just an hour of red blood – and we went to the ER, where we sat for eight hours (overnight) for them to tell us everything looked normal and the baby was doing great.

All proceeded then as normal until just after Thanksgiving (around 19 weeks). The baby was moving, all prenatal visits had gone swimmingly (A+, my midwife said; of course I expected nothing less), and we were designing our birth plan – vaginal birth, no epidural, waiting 90 seconds to cut the umbilical cord, midwife driven at the family birth center (not at the hospital), home visit 24 hours after the baby was born (they discharge you after only 12 hours so you can bond with the baby in a familiar setting). Of course, best laid plans and all that….

The day after Thanksgiving, I started feeling really bloated, like I had eaten too much and the really full feeling wouldn’t go away (I did eat a lot on Thanksgiving, but by the next day it should have subsided). I started having some brown spotting, and went to my midwife, who reassured me that it looked very minor and was “old blood,” maybe even leftover from the six week bleed. But a week later, as I was lying in bed reading around 9:30 p.m., I felt like I needed to pee very badly. I just made it to the toilet when the blood gush started, followed by a large blood clot the size of my hand. We headed to the hospital, shaking, terrified, where I was monitored overnight, given an IV, and first diagnosed with a placental abruption. Now, many times these are mild, and you only have one incident; the placenta doesn’t reattach to the uterine wall, but it doesn’t get any worse, either. I was having contractions, but I couldn’t even feel them, and they weren’t opening my cervix, so the doctors released me with the instructions that I was on pelvic rest and should go back to the hospital if I had any more bleeding, about a 50/50 chance.

Well. There are some things outside of the control of even the most controlling of control freaks. That next Friday night I started bleeding again, and we got a bit of a stern talking to by the doctor, who told me to go home and stay there – and “be prepared for the likelihood of a miscarriage.” By this time I was so close to the magic, viable 24 weeks, so we prepared to heed her advice. Over the next two weeks, I was in the hospital four additional times for heavy bleeding, only permitted to go home for Christmas and New Year’s, though the holidays were celebrated over Skype instead of at my parents’ home in Connecticut as planned.

I went into labor on January 3, 2014. I was 23 weeks and six days pregnant.

I was taken to Labor & Delivery, where a neonatologist met us to talk to us about the baby’s viability options before 24 weeks. We were warned that he would likely not survive and we were asked what lifesaving methods we wanted them to take, since they could cause permanent damage. I was given indomethacin to stop the contractions, but told there was only a 50% chance it would work, and I was started on a course of steroids to help mature the baby’s lungs should he happen to come that weekend.

He came that weekend, in a blur of sudden contractions, running nurses, a jammed OR door, my wife sodden and sweating in her snow gear, my anxieties still powerful enough to ensure my belongings (sentimental teddy bear, glasses, cell phone) were still with me. My son was born kicking and screaming, but neither of us saw it. I needed two pints of blood and I guess it was a messy procedure, and the placenta was all in tatters. I drifted in a Demerol-induced haze in recovery for over four hours, not quite believing that I had just had a baby. I didn’t see it, after all; there is an element of the surreal in being told you have just given birth, but not remembering any of it.

I was lucky – as soon as I was alert enough, before they took me to my room, they wheeled my gurney to the NICU so I could see the baby. I couldn’t sit up yet, and his isolette was a bit high, so I didn’t see much of him that day – but it was enough to know that he was alive and stable and perfectly okay for now. The first thing I said was, “he’s so big!” Of course, 1 lb 9 oz, 12 3/4 inches isn’t that big, but to me, he was huge! I couldn’t believe he had fit in my stomach. The second thing was looking at my wife, and then at the nurse, and confirming that his name is Anderson.

Ander slept so peacefully, with his hands under his chin or on his cheeks. But his heart and lungs were struggling from his first breath, 16 weeks before he was supposed to need them. We cupped his head and sang him Christmas carols, hoping to get his oxygen levels to improve. We had a “honeymoon period” the first week, and we held him. But then: he needed heart surgery, as his heart hadn’t finished forming properly. His lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen to his developing organs, and the doctors played a “game” of ventilator roulette trying to find the best combination of pressure, suction, ventilation, and oxygenation. The threat of pneumothorax loomed. Our doctors discussed with us our options for treatment, and started putting some of the aggressive treatment options in frames of quality of life and expected outcomes. Our son’s chronic lung disease kept getting worse, so they put him on a go-big-or-go-home drug that was, one doctor explained, “like hunting for an antelope with a torpedo.” A few days later, he went into cardiac arrest, but was revived. The next day, it happened again. The third day, we chose to take him off of life support so he could die in our arms. We informed our family: “Anderson is a Scandinavian name that means brave and strong,” we told them. “And our little boy fought like hell to give us 26 days together.”

The feeling of bitterness, the vast expanse of unfairness, is not altogether different from that you felt as a child when you didn’t get something you wanted, even though you behaved. But then, perhaps you could blame your parents, a teacher. When you lose a baby, who can you blame? You could blame yourself, but when you know you did nothing wrong (a fact confirmed by several doctors), it feels hollow. You are left, then, blaming intangibles. Life. Often, God. With Ander’s death, the structural support upon which I had built my perfectly constructed life came crashing down.

I am still waiting for our first “permanent” child to arrive. They have a name. They have parents who love them, who have planned, literally for years, for their arrival. They have grandparents already debating who gets first visitation rights and what they want to be called.They have cousins stashing aside hand-me-down clothes and promising not to steal “our” name. I know this, because our angel boy had all of these things, and he still did not survive. I know this, because they are on the way, due to arrive this August. So, I’ll keep following the rules, because they protect me from guilt and are a subtle but present barrier to some of my anxieties.