After Birth

I ended up in St. Agnes from Saturday (April 17) in the wee hours of the morning when I was transported there by ambulance following his birth, til Sunday afternoon (April 18). I apparently had gotten an infection in the lining of my uterus at some point...not sure when that started...I had no fever my entire labor...Jacque and Rhonda checked my temp and Baelin's heartbeat frequently, the whole labor. But when I was admitted to the hospital ER, I was running a temp of 101 and was put on IV antibiotics. Perhaps stress?

I also was unable to get the placenta out by myself. A nurse pushed on my stomach and tried to pull it out but I screamed at her to stop. I had had no contractions to expel it at that point, so I think it was still attached...but just prior to my doctor coming, I did have some cramping and I think that's when it finally detached and he was able to pull it out pretty easily and it didn't really hurt much (good thing cuz if it was still attached he was going to do surgery to get it out)...and what a relief when it was out.

I asked for drugs once we got to the hospital because at that point I didn't care anymore...my baby was already dead and I would not be nursing...I never cared about drugs in my body, only in my children's.

The nurses in the hospital were very kind. I can only imagine what they said behind my back...They couldn't know the whole story...some things are not as simple as they seem...but I would bet it would seem that way to them. Homebirth ending in dead baby? Stupid people shoulda been in the hospital. No, I'll never believe that. Babies have been born safely at home since the beginning of time. We had a very well planned out and prepared homebirth. Very experienced and excellent midwives, great prenatal care... I should have had another of those happy stories...but sometimes things just go wrong I guess...no matter how good the care. And despite this horrible outcome I will still always be a homebirth advocate. I don't know if we'll ever have any answer as to why Baelin died, but I do know that sometimes bad things just happen...no matter where you are.

They wrapped Baelin up and handed him to Adam while they were still wheeling me down the hall to my room, and I had Baelin with me until Sunday morning when the nurse came to take him to the coroner's. I only held him briefly though...when Maeven came in to see him, and when they wheeled me to my new room. Maeven asked to see the baby and after discussing it we decided she needed to see him. She really seemed like she understood. She quietly cried when she saw him. She's only 3! She still tells me "I'm sorry Baelin died." And frequently talks about how she misses him, and does things all the time "to help you to feel better", like bringing me flowers and cutting rosemary from Nana's garden for me to smell and bringing me pretty rocks. She's so darling. Without her I would be having a much harder time going on.
I wish now that I had spent more time holding Baelin and looking at him. I wish I had unswaddled him and counted his toes and fingers and really looked at his hair and his ears and just every inch of him. All I have of that time right after his birth, when he only looked like a precious sleeping baby, are the polaroid pics the nurses took. I am SO thankful for those pictures. I never would have thought to take them. I wish I had taken lots of pictures of him. I wish I had looked at him more. I wish I wish I wish. I wish this was all just a bad dream and I will wake up and still be pregnant. But I was in too much shock to look at him alot...I was so sad and in shock and a little creeped out by having my dead baby in the room with me...but I didn't want them to take him away from me either. When they did come get him I was relieved and sad. I wish I had looked at him more. I just was in such shock I really wasn't feeling much of anything...just reeling from it all. My mom and I sat and talked for hours with Baelin wrapped up in a blanket lying in a basket right next to my mom and I kept feeling like we were being too loud and we'd wake him. I kept thinking I saw him move, a startled baby movement. Then sadness swept over me as I remembered that he couldn't be moving. And we couldn't wake him.

I was in the hospital from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon...on iv antibiotics and I had a dose or 2 of pain meds, although they really didn't help. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I remember telling the nurse early on that this hurt worse than my c-section. At the time it really seemed like it did...I've since realized that I said that when I had had no pain meds and I got quite a lot of pain meds when I had the c-section.

I couldn't believe how long it took to heal physically...Its now 3wks later and its only been this past week that I haven't been in pain or discomfort. Although I did end up with a yeast infection (a result of the antibiotics) and am still suffering from this infernal itching! ARGH!

Everything hurt...I couldn't move very well and this was all so new to me. It would have been a welcome pain, though, had my baby lived. I don't think I would have noticed much. I didn't notice the pain of the c-section much with Maeven. I was too caught up in her and in all that she was going through being stuck in the hospital on iv antibiotics for her whole first week of life. Watching her have to go through getting new iv's inserted every other day or so, milking her heels for blood tests, having to be separated from her when I went to catch some sleep while she slept...it was a living hell that I was so looking forward to not having to repeat with Baelin.

Little did I know I'd give anything for that hell instead of this one.

I really do wonder about all that Maeven went through to come into this world and her first week in this world...if all that has affected who she is today. I really think it did. I really wonder if Baelin would have been calmer and less sensitive to everything than his sister, had he been born alive and well, at home. Maeven has always been super sensitive. She's always been hyper sensitive to pain, screams like a limb was chopped off every single bump or scrape. EVERY little thing gets a shriek...Its exhausting. For all of us. I wonder if that may have been born out of her first experiences. I wonder if her tendency to be so emotional and cry over every little thing may have been influenced by that first week of chaos. All this I've wondered a thousand times and all this I wanted to save Baelin from, if I could, by having him born in a loving, nurturing, sensitive environment...at home...where he belongs. I wanted to save him from all the poking and prodding and institutionalized birthing...I wanted my baby treated like the beautiful precious being he was...handled with the sensitivity he deserves...to be welcomed to the world with love and kindness...and he was.

I feel like there are 2 separate issues with this birth. The birth and the death. I am so happy to have finally experienced a vaginal birth that was nearly everything I wanted it to be. It took half the time, and this time my strength and determination wasn't undermined...Instead of "oh, you're STILL only about 3 cm" or "there's STILL no change, you haven't progressed"...I got "you're progressing just as you should...baby's moving down nicely" and "you're doing a great job!" Amazing how the simple wording makes all the difference in the world. In the hospital, when things were taking too long for them, no one had confidence in me that I could do it...at home, Jacque and Rhonda helped me see I could do it and WAS doing it...and there was no hurry, the baby would come when he was ready. Afterwards I realized how quick things went in comparison to Maeven's birth...and I really think I could have done the same with Maeven had the environment been different.

Being able to give birth vaginally when I had not been allowed to birth before...that was what Baelin gave me. I have to find some good that came of this...not at the expense of my child, but because of my child. After Maeven's birth I was left with an emptiness and a strong feeling of something being taken from me. It was a deeply wounded feeling that I had not given birth, she had been taken from me. I could not shake that deep feeling of loss. I realize birth is not a spiritual experience for every woman, but for me it was way more than just the outcome, a baby, it was the whole birth process and GIVING BIRTH...I didn't get to give birth with Maeven...I did with Baelin. And it was glorious! To feel him coming out of me...to push him out...the strength that I felt within me when I could feel the top of his head with my hand...the ring of fire...I loved it all! I didn't "enjoy" labor, mind you...it hurt like hell! And it was the hardest thing I've ever done and will ever do. But I fully understand now that glorious feeling of triumph I had heard so many women describe. Up until the moment that we realized there was a problem and Baelin wasn't breathing, I experienced that triumph of birth. It was a fantastic feeling...and I hope with every fiber in my being to get to feel it again...real soon.
For now, we grieve. And it really really sucks.

Maeven's behavior was so volatile the week after Baelin's death. Tantrums and meltdowns constantly and mood swings from hell. But we tried to comfort her and allow her to grieve in her own way. She was very sad...she still is. But she seems to slowly be calming down. I've definitely noticed that the more individual, focused attention I have for her, the better she feels and acts.
We agonized on whether or not to see Baelin one last time. A week and a half after his birth/death, they were finally done with him at the coroner's and he was ready to be viewed at the funeral home. It was a tough decision, but we decided to see him one last time, even though we knew he wouldn't look the same anymore. And he didn't. You can see a big difference in the pictures on the first page, which were taken just hours after he was born, and the picture below, which was taken a week and a half later.


They didn't want us to see anything but his face, because of the extent of the autopsy they did. But when I said I really wanted to see his hands and feet (I didn't really look at them in the hospital), they did get one of his hands out for us. But it was skinny and nothing like the pudgy large hands that he had when he was first born. And his head seemed caved in on one side, so I think they must have removed part of his skull for the autopsy...I guess because of the bone samples they needed. He no longer had the tube in his mouth, so it was good to see his sweet little mouth finally...But his eyes were looking very sunken in. It was hard to see...and he just didn't have the round, pudgy baby look anymore and was obviously dead. But at the same time, he was still my beautiful baby boy. And I was sooooo glad to have had that last chance to see him.

It was really therapeutic for me.

I think it was harder for Adam, though.

We got Baelin's ashes nearly 3wks after we lost him. Adam came home in tears with them. It was a hard day. We will plan a memorial for our little guy sometime in the next couple weeks.
I will write more as I can...update these pages when I have more information or thoughts. Right now everything's still so garbled in my mind and I jump around from thought to thought. That's just how my brain works these days. There's not an hour that goes by that I'm not thinking of the birth, death, my little baby, what I've lost, what I should be doing right now...The diapers I should be changing, the baby spit up I should be smelling, the crying, the nursing, the endless exhaustion and joy...I yearn for it all. And I yearn to be able to be pregnant again. To fast forward to next year and hold a living baby in my arms again.

I've become a part of several online stillbirth communities. I don't know if its helping that much, but I do like to know I'm not the only one who's survived this nightmare. We are working on putting together some memorial things to remember Baelin with. A tree and statue to put at The Discovery Center...a fountain for our backyard.