Number Four

I've been planning this post in my head for the last three months. 12 weeks to be exact. I knew exactly what I would say. I knew what pictures I would post. I was going to wait until Thanksgiving--I was going to share just how grateful I was to be blessed with our fourth baby. But this post looks nothing like what I had imagined.

My baby is dead. I went in for a routine appointment with my OB on Friday morning, my 12 week appointment. We had been in for an ultrasound at 6 weeks and at 9 weeks. Baby was growing and its tiny heart was beating away, strong and fast, like the fluttering wings of a bird. My OB tried to find the heartbeat with a doppler, but I knew she wouldn't because my uterus is extremely tipped and nobody can find a heartbeat until 14 weeks on me. So I tried not to worry. After all, I had already seen a heartbeat twice. And my HCG more than doubled in 48 hours, early on. After trying for a few minutes, she left to grab a portable ultrasound. But when she placed the transducer on my belly, all we could see was a baby. A still, unmoving baby with no visible heartbeat, and no visible blood flow. I was alone with Noah; Alan was at work. Disbelief. That's what I felt. Disbelief, and an overwhelming feeling of this can't be happening again.

My heart is broken. It's broken for my kids. It's broken for Noah who will probably never have a younger brother or sister, a buddy like Nate and Abbie are for each other. Noah is almost six years younger than Abbie; I so desperately wanted him to have someone to grow up with. My heart breaks for Abbie who has been begging for a sister for years. She has two brothers and thirteen boy cousins, no other girls. I hoped, I prayed, for another girl for her to share her life with. When I look at my children, I feel blessed beyond measure to have them. I never expected to be able to have my own children; they are each a miracle to me. I'm trying to focus on them right now. I'm hugging them more, and rocking Noah to sleep, and kissing their sleeping heads at night. But it doesn't take away the pain of this loss; it can't wipe the dreams I had from my mind.

And so I write this post, as I wait until tomorrow when I'll go to the hospital to have a D&C. My body doesn't seem to recognize that the baby has died. I actually spent all of Thursday sicker than a dog, sick from being pregnant. Pregnant with a baby that was dead. My post is titled Number Four, the same title I had been planning to use as I dreamed this post for the last three months. But this is a different number four. Instead of being a fourth baby for us to hold, a possible sister for Abbie, and a sibling close in age to Noah, this is the fourth baby we've lost.