Why I Write in This Medium

When I started this blog, it was an outlet for teaching anecdotes. Then I moved and was no longer teaching, but I certainly had more time to knit, so I began to catalog some of those achievements. Then I got pregnant and shared some of that experience for friends and family that lived at a distance. And after losing Katherine, I processed some of my grief through these public writings.

I realize some may not understand why I felt the need to share some of those raw feelings in such a public forum. I'm not sure if I can completely explain that need either. I surely have many journal entries that never saw the light of day here because I thought they were too personal. But there's a feeling of anonymity here, this space online that, unless someone leaves a comment or references my posts in conversation, I can pretend it's this private space all my own. No one is forced to read, and for all I know, few do. I may be absent from this space for weeks, but it just draws me back when I have a spare moment. Here's a limited glimpse of my life. And I couldn't imagine writing about teaching and knitting without focusing on experiences that meant so much more to me than those insignificant bits. So I shared. And I hoped that maybe it would make a difference. I hoped it would help in my healing. That maybe if I could put words to the experience, I would remember the time better, even if it meant recognizing how deeply we'd been wounded, how far we had to come from.

While not the first time some stranger has written me about sharing my story, someone contacted me on Ravelry this week, a knitter that had the misfortune of losing their premature daughter this spring due to pre-eclampsia and HELLP Syndrome (misfortune sounds like the worst word ever, so forgive me for not being able to select a better one). She said my words brought her comfort. She's very early in this period of grief, but it helped her to know that others had gone through the same diagnosis and yet followed that up with a healthy, typical pregnancy and a full-term baby. It gave her hope that there will still be a chance for them.

It's when I get a comment from someone who has been helped by my words that I feel like I have made a difference. In whatever small part, Katherine continues to influence people.

So, Katherine, had you lived, you would have turned 3 last Sunday. I would have loved to know what it was like to be a mother to you on this earth for more than a week, but I take comfort in knowing that you made an impact on my life, and because I was willing to share, even in the midst of the pain and hurt, I have helped others. People that have lost their own children. People that need to know one experience doesn't dictate their future and remove all chances for another child.

Today marks the day three years ago that we had to say goodbye. And it's hard to know best how to recognize this day. I wish it wasn't on our radar, but I am grateful for the ways your short life shaped mine. And I'm still working at it, trying to not keep my guard up, to not assume the worst. To let people in. To be vulnerable. So today, I'll live like I try to each and every other day. I'll draw alongside my husband who has walked beside me as we went through this dark journey. I'll hug and kiss and play with your little sister, think of the blessings you brought us, and pray for our continued healing and those who might be a little earlier on this journey. We have scars, but they're a little less raw today, and we're trying not to let them get the best of us. It wouldn't be fair to you and your memory if we were embittered, despondent people today because we were only fortunate to have six days with you. And by God's grace, I can say that we are not.

It seemed somehow fitting that this was the week someone wrote about the impact my story had on them. We're still seeing how we've been influenced by your life. And I can remember the early months of your loss, how we shut down and somehow made it from day to day. All the tears. The daily meals friends brought by. Returning to work. Physically healing first, then slowly the emotional and mental healing followed. The setbacks as we tried again, and the fear that accompanied the thought of a new pregnancy. Holding our breath as one more week passed without complications. And somehow our story was able to touch others and help them in their own grief and uncertainty. So however infrequently, I'm encouraged to keep returning to this space.

One Year

So today's one of those days where you don't know how to mark the passage of time. What's appropriate to honor a loved child all too soon gone?

One year has passed since having to say goodbye to our child. In a way, I'm amazed it didn't break us, and in a way, it's a relief. We made it past her original due date, and all the holidays without her, and what would have been her first birthday, and all the memories constantly coming to mind, and the frequent tears in private and in public, and we're still here. We feel as weak as all get out, but we made it through each day and we're both still here, both still together.

One year ago today, I was having an amazing morning. Although the doctors hadn't yet seen fit to discharge me, I started feeling more myself. The lethargy was still there, the dizziness, nausea, blurry vision, but my head wasn't as foggy as previous days and I could actually wear my glasses again with some success.

With my sister's aid, I was able to walk to the NICU, get a good report about Katherine from the nurses, and touch my little girl and get a glimpse of her eyes as she opened them. Everyone remained "cautiously optimistic," and that was catching. I was believing that this nineteen-ounce girl was our miracle child, serving as a testament to skilled doctors, advanced medicine, and a gracious God.


And no more than three hours later, we were being called back down, being asked to do what no parent should ever be asked. Take our child in our arms and say goodbye. The first time we held her was to watch as she left all too quickly.

I won't admit it's been easy. It's been a year of being fragile, feeling uncomfortable in large crowds, even when I know every individual. Fearing new relationships and casual conversations. Trying not to ask the impossible question of why. Allowing ourselves to be transparent when the need calls, and not feeling guilty when we find joy in life or when we need to distract ourselves from the pain.

I'm not sure how God is using this. And we will always miss our firstborn daughter. But scars and all, we made it.

Eight Months Later

While the pain is still deep, the tears are less frequent now. I think several things have alleviated my suffering, a couple of which I’ll mention here.

One, I was in such a cloud for the entirety of my hospital stay that the experience is this hazy memory. I think I got a total of a (very short) row and a half knit on the first day of bedrest, but my eyesight was such that knitting and reading were out of the question. I dictated work and personal emails to Eric and the TV gave constant coverage of the political scene during the primaries. If I didn’t have evidence of fading stretch marks or the pregnancy experience in general, I would hardly trust my memories. I guess that’s one grace of having been so sick, but there is an irrational part of me that wishes I had been more alert so I could have capitalized on every moment of Katherine's life instead of being unable to control my exhaustion. I understand my body was just trying to recover from the surgery-preeclampsia-HELLP Syndrome trifecta, but the feeling is there.

Two, since Katherine was never brought home, in one sense our house was never touched by her presence. There are memories everywhere – the overflowing box of cards, Julie’s painting, the photos of her and the prints of her hands and feet, small items of clothing both purchased and knit. But there aren’t the memories of crawling out of bed to tend to her cries or holding her as she slept. No memories of her nursing or of introducing her to Augustine or changing soiled diapers.

Just these disjointed, foggy memories of her birth and that beautiful wail she let out as she tested her newfound lungs. Memories of first being wheeled down to the NICU, then trying my legs at walking. Memories of sitting by the side of her incubator and talking to her as I stroked her frail body. Memories of pumping and Eric or Heather running the collection tubes down to her. Memories of the nurses or Eric updating me to her steady progress, then the memories of holding my little girl as she left this world.

Some nights, though, as Augustine comes looking to cuddle with me as I drift off to sleep, I cradle her little ten-pound form in my right arm just so – exactly as she insists – and as she settles down and lays her head onto my chest or against my neck, my throat turns raw and my face constricts as I think about how I wished I were instead cradling my precious daughter.

A Defense of More of the Same

I'm struggling with how to share my life with the cyberworld.

When we lost Katherine, people we had known for years began sharing their own stories of loss. They cried with us, revealing their own pain over the years. They wrote letters detailing their own darkness.

And it has made me think why we don't have more opportunities to be transparent. Here I've known them for a while, to varying depths, and they've been keeping this hidden.

I think I can understand what happened, though. It's twofold.

There comes a time when people around are tired of hearing, are thinking it's time to be over the pain. I suspect these reactions are from those who haven't experienced a close loss. They are the ones trying to get us to some future state.

I'm not saying I've encountered much of this, but I'm sensitive to the potential, and so I'm just as likely to keep my own counsel as I am to bring up some emotional experience.

Also, I think we deserve some of the blame. We fear they don't want to hear about more of the same and we don't give ourselves the opportunity to take the time needed to heal. Or we don't give our friends the credit that they do want us to be honest with them.

In this, I realize I'm ignoring the fact that we don't often open up and share the most pivotal moments of our life with those around us every day, for whatever reasons.

So I guess the conclusion I'm coming to is that I will try to be authentic. Sometimes all I have in me to write about is what we're experiencing in the aftermath, and other times I might return to what I'm knitting or my love of coffee. I'm still balancing how much detail to go into and what I should just keep private in my own writings. But much of life is finding a balance.

So I'll share two stories, the first shocked me, and the second was a comfort.

It's customary that when a child is born to someone in our department, a birth notice is posted around the building. This happened for Katherine, but they were promptly pulled a week later. An email wasn't sent, but the word spread throughout most of the building that we had lost our daughter.

However, a couple weeks back I was in a common room at work when another employee, grabbing some coffee, asked me, "How's your little one?" This is someone I've rarely talked to and don't often see, so I was surprised that those were the words that came out of his mouth. He hung his head and froze when I told him she had died in August, and then I retreated to my office. I assumed I had broken the news to the last person, so this revelation six months later caught me off-guard. I took a couple deep breaths, but I couldn't still the shaking until I cried it out. I remained jittery for much of the day.

On the final note, over Christmas a friend's father shared that his parents had lost their firstborn, a daughter. He said that while he had never met his older sister, he felt that she was a part of the family growing up. I hope for the same with us. I'm not sure how this is implemented, but I'm grateful for the photos and reminders we have around us, and I know those will play a role.

Comfort and Some Knitting

One of my colleagues had given me a book her daughter recommended, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief by Ann Hood.

You may recognize Hood as the author of several knitting novels; those novels were shaped by her life. This memoir shared her experience of losing her five-year-old daughter suddenly. With prior losses, like the death of her father, writing had helped her grieve. But she found that she couldn't think, couldn't make sense of letters and words, after Grace died. A friend recommended she learn to do something else with her hands, knowing in time writing and reading would return to her. So Hood learned to knit and the act of working each stitch individually, concentrating just enough on the process, allowed her to retreat when life became too overwhelming.

Reading the dust jacket had me somewhat skeptical. I was worried it would boil down to, "Knitting saved my life." And as much as I enjoy knitting, I knew that theme would leave me empty. I enjoy having it around me and in my hands, but fiber is not redemptive. The book, however, gave the proper amount of credit to knitting. Her memoir was a good outlet for me. Reading about her daughter's sudden death let me relive our own loss. So each day I read a little and cried when I needed.

Regarding knitting, I will say that there are times when I'm tired of feeling emotions, so I pick up some project to allow myself to be mindless and only focus on the pattern. Hood talks of retreating to her needles and being so fearful of being without a project that she stocked up on yarn (to obsessive levels) so as not to be put in such a position. It's not the only time I knit, since I did find enjoyment in it before, but I do like the escape. It gives my fidgeting hands something to do and can calm my racing brain.

I know I'll still share here about how we are coping, but I'll also try to touch on lighter things as I feel them. However, I know the majority of people consistently reading are family and friends, and will thus grant me the grace to dwell on it when I need to.

Keeping up with the knitting vein, I'll quickly share some projects I've accomplished in the last couple months.

First, Heather received a pair of socks for her birthday, a small gratitude for her presence by my side during everything. Everyone has been gracious and sympathetic, but it meant a lot to have had my older sister with me. And were it not for her, we would have far fewer photos of Katherine. When the doctor called me down, Heather thought enough to grab my camera and document our precious minutes with her.


I also made a winter hat to match a scarf completed early this summer:


I had decided that 2008 was going to be the "Year of the Sweater," and I faithfully began in February. My enthusiasm waned with the spring temperatures and my pregnancy. After all, would the cardigan even fit me come fall and winter as temperatures dropped? So it began hibernating until a friend reminded me, as I spoke of 2009 being the "Year of Lace" and also the "Year of a Felted Project," that I still hadn't met 2008's aim. So out it came, and a couple weeks later, it was finished.

Here's a photo of it completely buttoned:


And one with it partially buttoned:


It's made from Paton's Classic Merino Wool, so I can vouch for the toastiness of it, a welcome trait this week. And blocking may be my new (inanimate) best friend. I love how it transformed the sweater, and I'm happily thinking of tackling other sweaters. In my ideal world, sometime this winter I would be snowed in for a week or two with plenty of coffee, food, and yarn.

I joined in a knit-along with some local friends to make Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket, a rite of passage that every knitter should experience. It is knit in one piece and looks like a sloppy blanket until you fold it just so and sew the two final seams. I have yet to attach buttons, but I have a couple of ideas for the delightful insect or flower buttons that could finish it off.


Perhaps it's strange, given my recent experiences, to see me knitting baby clothes or understand how I can distance myself from thinking of babies as I make such a project. It helps that this one was made without any expectations. The white sweater I was working on during my pregnancy has been since put aside. I will return to it, but right now, the memories are too raw.

I associate certain memories and sounds with familiar actions. For instance, when I work outside, I remember what I was last listening to on my iPod when I previously raked the lawn or weeded the garden, or as I drive a familiar stretch of road I will recall a conversation or an interesting NPR story that occurred in that same area. Many hours of anticipation went into that little cabled duffle coat, so I just need some space before I return, knowing they will all flood back. I'm just not ready right now.

Life Now

If I go back to where my last post left off, a couple things have taken place. We held two memorial services: one in Indiana and one in Iowa. We were sometimes surprised at those who showed up, which leads me to again remind myself that it is when times turn for the worse when certain acquaintances step up and invest in you like never expected. That has been one of the blessings during this time.

While I could tell many stories about such surprises and am making an effort to write them down, I'll limit it to one here. First, a brief background. In my office, our Fed Ex driver arrives in the last few minutes of the day to collect packages. Some days he rushes in and out with a rushed word since his schedule is tight, other days he has five minutes to spare with us. Immediately before the Indiana memorial service began, he came up to us to express his condolences, begged off that he couldn't stay, and left. I don't think he even spoke with us for one full minute, but it meant much that he took the time to find out the details and slip in briefly, even though he had a conflict.

Both services were special. In Indiana, the pastor who conducted it had been by us through our whole time in the hospital and had wept and prayed with us when Katherine died. In Iowa, the pastor was one we know from college. We met with him beforehand to finalize details, and he shared how he was fixated on our story as he read Eric's account, and even knowing the ending, he starting from the beginning and it consumed his thoughts for that day. He thought he was collected, but during the slideshow, he became so overcome to the point of being unable to share his original message, instead shortening his words as tears streamed down.

For about a month after Katherine died, every day's mail brought cards, some even from strangers. We both found them cathartic to read and some made me quite emotional, especially when people entrusted us with their own stories of loss, some within the last year, others from decades ago.

I returned to work at the beginning of October. The first week and a half were probably the hardest as people streamed in to welcome me back and express condolences or turned silent and awkward when they were surprised to see me and didn't know what to say. It's not as constant now, but initially it wasn't a matter of whether or not I cried at work, it was how many times in any given day. There were some people who didn't know what had gone on, evidenced by the student who said, "Have you been on a long vacation?" And at least one who knew only the first part of the story and asked, "How's your little one?"

I think I can say Eric and I are doing okay through this. We know the pain won't go away, we still miss our daughter fiercely, but we have been leaning on each other and loved ones around us.

My workplace donated a memorial brick in Katherine's honor at the Angel of Hope Memorial Garden, a memorial for parents who have lost children. It was installed last week and we were invited to be present and even lay the brick. That afternoon was draining for us, but it was also good to cry. We know we need to face our emotions in order to heal, but when that becomes too overwhelming, we both cope by distracting ourselves with thinking of anything but what happened.


When my brother died, I remember a conversation with someone I consider a mentor. Years earlier, she had experienced the sudden deaths of several family members and as she was processing this, someone accused her of not properly grieving. She insisted to me in my own grief that never was anyone to guilt me about not grieving the right way, as there is no right or wrong way to grieve. I can be outwardly demonstrative or a bottler of my emotions, and provided that it's not destructive, no one has grounds to fault me. Some days I can take joy in small pleasures, other times I'm noticeably quiet or sad. I admit that it can be hard to see other pregnant women or young children, even while I seem calm. I don't censure myself for the emotions I'm experiencing, since I know how intensely I wished I could have changed the outcome. I don't lay blame on myself or others, because it doesn't seem that this could have been avoided. So I take each day as it comes.

Being the former English major and teacher, I think in literary references, so I wasn't surprised when I recalled a passage from a book I read earlier this summer. In Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, the father solemnly walks down the street, and the author writes the following:

He wondered if any in all the hurrying crowd crowd had come from such a house of mourning. He thought they all looked joyous, and he was angry with them. But he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are even now enduring, resisting, sinking under? You may be elbowed one instant by the girl desperate in her abandonment, laughing in mad merriment with her outward gesture, while her soul is longing for the rest of the dead, and bringing itself to think of the cold flowing river as the only mercy of God remaining to her here. You may pass the criminal, meditating crimes at which you will to-morrow shudder with horror as you read them. You may push against one, humble and unnoticed, the last upon earth, who in heaven will for ever be in the immediate light of God's countenance. Errands of mercy--errands of sin--did you ever think where all the thousands of people you daily meet are bound?

I guess I'll end with that. I sometimes people-watch and wonder what their lives are like and what they're facing, and this also serves as a good reminder to try to keep myself from making judgments or assumptions about those I know.

Baby Story, Part 3: Continued Hospitalization and Saying Goodbye

This has been slow in coming, and I underestimated how long it would be going into it, so this is a long and rambling post. You may need to pace yourselves.

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In the weeks previous, I had been slowly getting over a persistent cold and was left with a cough. While it had been a dry cough for several days, it suddenly turned into a more raspy, wet cough in the hospital. This raised concerns of the possibility of pneumonia, so they were frequently listening to my lungs, which were still sounding good.

Throughout several nights, I was monitored with an oximeter, a small instrument clipped to my finger that measured the level of oxygen in my blood and my pulse. The first one I was on only beeped an alarm if I dropped below 94 percent oxygen in my blood. I think I was initially placed on this since there was a concern of possible sleep apnea. If the beep sounded, I was to cough and take deep breaths to increase my oxygen level. Unfortunately, I regularly dropped below 94 percent, so I felt that every time I drifted into a heavy sleep, I was immediately brought out of it due to the incessant beeping.

When I was switched to the Post Partum wing, the oximeter I was on was different in that it kept a steady beep with my pulse and then only increased in intensity if I dropped below 88 percent. Eric and my sister Heather would take turns staying with me through night, and I pitied all of us for the constant noise that kept us from a restful sleep. I think there were only three nights where I wore the device, but I was happy for it to go.

After Katherine was born, a lactation consultant came to speak with me. One of the best things they told me I could do for Katherine was provide milk for her, or 'liquid gold' as one person called it. They explained it may take some time to come in since I was only 24 weeks along, but we began the preparations, and while it was slow going, it was more than enough for her at the time. They started her with 1 ml every three hours, and by the end, they had increased it to 3 ml/feeding since she was doing so well.

My hospital routine consisted of a restless night with frequent blood-pressure checks and medications followed by a day of steady naps and television and wheelchair visits to see our little girl in the NICU. My eyesight wouldn't allow me to read or knit, so I depended on friends and family to entertain me or the occasional movie.

While I was still too weak and needed to be taken in a wheelchair down to the neonatal intensive care unit, Eric would fill the time in between my visits with updates, telling me about the little toy skunk the nurses placed in the incubator with her, and what he called her 'sunglasses' she wore while under a UV light.


On two consecutive mornings, even though I wasn't feeling myself, I took the opportunity to visit Katherine and later admitted that I needed to listen to my body, as they ended quickly when I became sick (I think I traced it to taking my morning medications on an empty stomach, although with my blurry vision I had to be careful to close my eyes to keep from getting dizzy while I was wheeled down the bright hallway). Fortunately, afternoon or evening visits fared better.

Each day, even though the doctors would only admit to being cautiously optimistic, we grew more and more hopeful. We were told the first 2-3 days were important, and when those passed, we looked ahead to future milestones. From Eric's updates:

It's 9 AM Saturday. Katherine is nearly two days old; given her condition, she is far from out of the woods, but the neonatalogist tells me that he is 'cautiously optimistic.' Her lungs haven't been inflating in the way that they were hoping for (which is not surprising, given her age), so they've switched her to a different ventilating machine. The old machine gave her 40-50 'deep' breaths a minute, making her breathing more natural, but since her lungs aren't fully inflating, that method wasn't getting enough oxygen into her bloodstream. So they have now put her on a machine that gives her up to 900 tiny breaths per minute; apparently this allows her lungs to get enough oxygen even if they don't fully inflate. When I checked on her this morning, they had just gotten the first readout of her blood-gas levels after hooking her up to the new machine, and the O2/CO2 levels in her blood were much more encouraging than they were last night.

And two days later:

Monday morning is here, and Katherine is still doing well. She has a very long way to go, but her first four days have been a promising start. She is drinking milk now (though only about 8 mL/day) and seems to be digesting it well. Her biggest problem remains her lungs; it appears that it will be a while (weeks, perhaps), before she is ready to breathe normal atmosphere on her own. This is basically what her doctors had expected all along, though they were hoping that her lungs might have been slightly more developed by now.

Also, today she will have a head ultrasound to discover the state of her skull and brain; there have been no signs so far that anything is wrong, but babies as premature as Katherine sometimes develop bleeding in the brain. If the ultrasound returns good news, then it seems like our little girl might be out of the darkest part of the woods for a while.

Faith's condition is also improving. She is able to walk around a little, occasionally sits in the glider or on the couch in her hospital room, and has made the trip by wheelchair to the NICU to see Katherine at least five or six times now. Her blood pressure has still been bouncing around a little; if it is relatively stable today, she may get discharged from the hospital this evening. Her eyesight is still a long way from normal, but she tells me that her vision in her right eye is much better than it has been for a while.

Beginning Monday, August 25th, doctors began discussing my pending discharge. It was dependent on my blood pressure being stable and my platelets steady or increasing. My blood pressure stayed high, and the doctors had me on three different medications, trying to rein it in. Even with those three, the results weren't encouraging. And my platelets had been dropping without explanation. So each day they would check my blood and delay my release for another day. I felt that I could heal more comfortably at home, so each delay discouraged me more. By Wednesday, I was nearly in tears, beginning to wonder if I would ever get home and wondering if something serious was wrong.

As it was, Wednesday started as normal. Eric made his regular morning trip to the hospital to see me and Katherine, then sent out the following update:

Faith is still in the hospital. Every six hours or so, the doctors tell her that they'll probably let her go after the next blood test, but every time the blood test comes back with negative results. (For those of you with medical backgrounds, we're told that her platelet count is low, and they keep expecting that it will bounce back any day. I really have no idea what that means.) The latest news is that she might get to go home tomorrow, but we'll see what happens.

Katherine is still doing well and keeps doing a little better every day. They've increased her feedings twice in the last two days; she is now taking 3 mL of milk eight times a day, which is six times what she was eating just four days ago. She should really start putting on some weight soon, given the amount of calories they're giving her.

We still have not received the official report from Monday's ultrasound on her head; they have to send the pictures in to some lab to be read, and that lab is apparently backed up right now. But the doctor who performed the ultrasound said that she didn't see anything that concerned her while she was taking the pictures, so that's promising news for the time being.

Also, they did an EKG on Katherine's heart yesterday. I'm probably butchering the explanation here, but my understanding is that there is a blood vessel between the heart and lungs that is wide open in the womb, but that is supposed to constrict after birth. It's not uncommon for that vessel to stay open in premmies, and, indeed, Katherine's was wide open. They are currently giving her medication which is supposed to cause that vessel to constrict.

I paid Katherine a visit early Wednesday as well. The doctor encouraged me to touch our daughter in the incubator, although she reiterated that while it was yet too early for me to hold her, before we knew it we would be changing her tiny diapers.


Eric called around 11:30, asking how I felt if he stayed on campus until his afternoon class, then spending the evening with me. I understood this schedule had been grueling on him, making an average of three trips to the hospital every day as well as attending classes. My sister was with me, so I told him we were fine.


Maybe ten minutes passed before the doctor entered my room to inform me that Katherine's heart rate was dropping and she was giving up. I called Eric before Heather and I headed to the NICU.

Nurses were surrounding her incubator, giving her chest compressions and pumping breaths. I was still holding out hope, thinking maybe everything would stabilize, but I realized the truth when they asked me to sit down so they could hand Katherine to me. Eric realized it when the chaplain joined us and offered to baptize her.


Together Eric and I held our little daughter for the first time as she was baptized and we said goodbye. I don't think I want to detail that time now -- suffice it to say we were brokenhearted to lose our daughter when she had just joined us.


What I wanted most after losing Katherine was to go home and mourn in peace. Unfortunately, the test results kept me in the hospital. My doctor was sympathetic to our sorrow, but he said I was one sick person and he couldn't discharge me until they figured out what was wrong.

It didn't help matters that not everyone noticed the photo of the white rose on our door, the sign to doctors of our loss. The morning after Katherine died, the resident entered my room as usual. He had looked at my numbers and said, "Yesterday afternoon wasn't very good on your blood pressure, was it?"

"No, but it was a hard day for us," I replied.

"Why do you think that was?" he responded.

And incredulously, I said, "Because our daughter died." He admitted he was unaware of that development, apologized, and left our room.

Finally they ran some extensive tests on my bloodwork and diagnosed me with HELLP Syndrome; Wikipedia calls it "a life-threatening obstetric complication usually considered to be a variant of pre-eclampsia". In my case, since I was already receiving treatment for preeclampsia, nothing more needed to be done since my platelets didn't drop to the point where I needed a blood transfusion to stave off any spontaneous bleeding, whether internal or external. One doctor was able to increase one of my medications to finally control my blood pressure, and within twelve hours, my vision began improving and my platelets began to increase. Two days after our daughter died and maybe 18 hours after the HELLP diagnosis, I was finally released from the hospital.

It has been a hard few weeks since everything happened. My eyesight has cleared up and I have returned to work. Our departments have embraced us during this time, providing meals the last few weeks and being sensitive to any help we might need. We held two memorial services, one in Indiana and one in Iowa. And life is resuming a routine, but there are still triggers that set us off and we know the pain is going to stick with us.

Once in a while, I get responses that I wouldn't recommend using in similar circumstances. The "You're young; you can have other children" observation is not welcome (said by someone I only know by sight at church when I began crying during a child dedication). We're aware that it is possible we will have other children, although this is made more dangerous due to the raised risk in future pregnancies now that I've had HELLP Syndrome. We wanted to keep this one and another child, whether biological or adopted, will not replace her.

A mother of two asked, "Do you miss her?" Of course we do. We didn't have weeks or years with her, but she was our daughter and we had been anticipating this event for a long time. Even friends who miscarried or had a stillborn have shared of their great pain.

While I've written much here, there is still plenty more I could have added. But as far as an account of what we experienced, here it is.

Baby Story, Part 2: Delivery

Soon after Eric relayed the news to our family, he had a voicemail from his parents -- if we wanted to get ahold of them, we should try the cell phone. It was no mystery to us that they were on their way to Indiana. My older sister would fly in that night as well.

I don't remember if Eric had called them or whether they had arrived unawares (I suspect the former), but the couple in charge of the high-school group at church where we volunteer showed up. The neonatalogist had stopped by again, this time to spin the positives of a 24-week-old baby; the day before had been more gloom. As he prepared to head to surgery and await the arrival of our child, he asked if he could pray with us, so the five of us had a short prayer.

I was prepped for surgery and taken to the operating room.

The anesthesiologist was prepared to give me my spinal. Apparently it was difficult for him to find the exact center of my spine where he needed to inject, so for each of the four shots, he would press the needle tip to my back and ask, "Do you think this is in the middle, left, or right?" Only if I answered middle would he proceed with the injection. I must have done okay, since I was appropriately numb for surgery, although the last one was so incredibly painful. I don't think it came to tears, but there was much grimacing taking place.

Eric was then brought into the room, and the surgery began. We knew this was a tenuous time. She was so small at this stage, the brink of viability. The doctor had said depending on our daughter's condition, they may have to rush her to the NICU, so we shouldn't be concerned if we didn't get to see her. Also, with the likelihood that she would need assistance breathing, he also informed us that we may not hear a cry because of the obstruction, so we shouldn't be concerned.

Our little daughter was born at nineteen ounces and 11 3/4 inches long at 10:06 AM. The sound of her newborn cries was one of the most welcoming sounds I've ever heard, and I promptly dissolved into tears. For me, even as I had begun showing and feeling little slight movements, there was much that still felt surreal and none of this was supposed to happen until December, so the frail sounds of our daughter, while proving that she had some developed lungs, also reinforced the fact that life would now be different since we were suddenly parents, an event we had been anticipating.

Apgar scores were 6 for the one-minute check and 8 for the five-minute one. Eric had the camera ready and spent his time taking pictures of our little girl and watching over me. I had to laugh when on one of his returns, he caught a glimpse of the other side of the sheet as they were stitching me up, and only with some deep breaths was he able to regain composure.

Our daughter was doing well enough that when it was time to head to the NICU, they took the time to wheel her next to me and pause for a couple minutes. She was so tiny but entirely whole. I was even amazed to see some black hair already on her tiny head. There was no extra flesh on her, as that was to have come in the remaining weeks, but every little bit of her was perfect.


We didn't have a girl's name selected yet, but as I wheeled to surgery, in my mind I knew we would have to name our little girl Grace, although I hadn't yet shared my decision with Eric yet; after her birth, Eric himself would volunteer that same name. We would later learn that more than one relative was thinking of and praying for our daughter, even before she was formally named, as Baby Grace. We felt we really had no option -- when a baby is given a chance at life at only 24 weeks and at such a tiny size, every minute we had with her was due to the grace of God.

One of the nurses shared with me that the surgery was done at the right time; our daughter had expelled meconium in the womb, which meant she was beginning to show signs of stress. With everything that would happen later, this was a consolation to remember. Had the surgery been delayed, the outcome could have been more sobering, and although I certainly wouldn't have wished for her to come so early, I needn't spend energy blaming a doctor for rushing me to surgery unnecessarily or prematurely, as it was done at the proper time.

Over the next few days, doctors and nurses alike encouraged us by repeatedly stating we had one leg up because we had a girl; apparently girls in the NICU fare better than boys. I had no idea what to expect or when to be optimistic. I didn't have the heart to ask the size of the smallest baby in the NICU in recent history (or the outcome), but Eric's parents did ask the first part, and the answer was nine ounces. At 24 weeks, she was at the cusp of viability, so we tried not to think too far ahead and take each day as it arrived.

I think I'll include some of Eric's updates from time to time, since my memory is faulty due to the painkillers I was on and just the monotony of the days following, so his timeline can help ground these posts. Any indented text on these posts can be credited to him:

We've been out of the operating room for about an hour. Faith is doing very well; her blood pressure started dropping (plummeting, really) during surgery and is now about down to normal. Her pulse has also stabilized, and the nurses think that her swelling is starting to go down as well. The only symptom that hasn't gone away yet is her blurred vision; she's still not seeing clearly out of her left eye. The nurses hope that will recede shortly.

As far as our daughter, she entered the world at 10:06, weighing all of 19 ounces. We haven't been able to see her since she left the OR--they're doing a number of procedures on her in the premature baby ward--but I've been told that she is doing very well. It'll be a long road with lots of hills and valleys before she'll be able to leave the hospital, but it appears that the start of that journey has been promising. Right now all we can do is hope and pray that she continues to grow and mature as she should, and that she doesn't fall prey to infection, heart problems, brain problems, or any of the dozens of things that could overcome her this early.

Her name is still forthcoming; we thought we would have a few more weeks to settle on a girl's name.

I was taken back to my room as Eric checked out the NICU, and they placed me on magnesium for 24 hours. This was due to my preeclampsia and to ward off any potential seizures, which is what could happen if my condition worsened to eclampsia.

Unfortunately, this would compound my vision problems, as it caused blurriness in my right eye as well (side effect). I had already been infrequent with wearing my glasses, and this made them useless. My right eye had about half that was blurry, and my left evolved during my time in the hospital. At one point, without my glasses I could see clearly from the middle of my left eye (TV from across the room, for instance), and on the peripheral, it was all blurry, like trying to see in a pool with water swirling across.

Next post: Continued Hospitalization and Saying Goodbye

Baby Story, Part 1: Admittance to Hospital

A lot has happened since I last posted. While I suspect those who read this blog are aware of the changes, I thought I'd use it as catharsis and document the recent events. Since I'm wordy, it may take several installments.

Since I last wrote, Eric and I took a trip to Iowa to visit our families. On Sunday, August 17, Eric's family hosted a baby shower for me. I had been experiencing some swelling in my feet and ankles, and while I had been monitoring the situation, I wasn't too concerned since it seemed to coincide with the humidity, and as the temperatures dropped, the swelling receded. On Monday, however, for our drive back, I did my best to walk at every opportunity.

Tuesday morning, I noticed swelling in my face. I prepared for work, waiting for Eric to say something about it (I'd once warned him about such swelling, to alert me to it if I suddenly swelled up). On our way to work, he still hadn't said anything, so I asked him if my face looked swollen to him. He responded with, "That's it! I knew something was different, but my first thought was that you had put makeup on this morning, so I didn't want to say anything." Eric is adverse to makeup as a general rule, so he thought he'd keep his mouth shut if his hormonal wife needed to put on some for returning to work.

As soon as I arrived at work, I called my doctor's office and explained the situation. It took them two hours to contact the doctor on call and get back to me, but then they asked me to come in. I left my work computer on, hoping I would soon be back at my station, and Eric and I went to the office.

My blood pressure was normal, and the diastolic number was even lower than normal. However, there was protein found in my urine sample, I had started having some white spots in my left eye, and the swelling was a concern as well, so I was going to be in the hospital overnight for observation. Furthermore, since my appointment two weeks earlier, my weight had increased something like sixteen pounds, and I certainly hadn't been eating any more than normal to explain the sudden gain, mostly from water retention. As Eric drove, I called my boss to explain the situation.

At the hospital, I was making a list of what Eric could bring me for the overnight, including my laptop to monitor work email and stay involved in life in general and thank-you cards for the baby shower gifts.

I was to undergo a 24-hour urine collection and have another ultrasound. I felt silly being taken down to the ultrasound in a wheelchair, but I assumed it was regulation. This third abdominal ultrasound did reveal that we would be having a girl. At one point, the blood flow to our daughter was constricted, but later upon a more thorough monitoring, it had regulated, so the assumption was made that she had been laying on the umbilical cord.

Once I arrived at the hospital, my blood pressure soared. I wrote most of it off to nerves, as I felt uneasy being admitted so early. I suspected it would go down once I would be able to get to sleep and my mind stopped racing. I composed a couple messages to work, explaining where I had been in my preparations for the upcoming new-student orientation.

I told Eric there was no need to spend the night with me that first night, as I figured it would be pretty straightforward and uneventful and the chair available to him looked anything but comfortable. I was put on blood pressure medication, and before bed I was given a dose of Ambien. I was told it wouldn't be enough to make me fall asleep, but once out, it would help me have a deep sleep.

Ambien has been known to have some interesting side effects on a small population taking it. Apparently I am one of that number. When I awoke needing to go to the bathroom, I was quite disoriented and it took much internal coaching to remember where to go. I threw up three times, and each time I was so foggy as to how to react. I was able to find my remote for calling the nurses, and I had to stare at it repeatedly before I could decide on the proper button to push (for those of you unfamiliar with them, there are two buttons for turning on lights and another, with the picture of a nurse, for contacting the nurses' station).

Then when the nurses would come and help me get cleaned up, they asked me to stand up and walk to the bathroom. And then, when I seemed unable to respond, they helped me up and said, "Okay, now walk straight." When I would react by walking elsewhere, they came back with, "Here, we'll just push you in the right direction." Once in the bathroom, I knew I needed to wash my hands and somewhere I would find water and soap. I really had to be shown how to do everything. In my mind, I could hear what was being said, or think about what action I wanted to take, but it took such a long time for me to communicate to my hands or legs ("Now I need to dry my hands. Somewhere I should find a towel hanging up. Where is it? What do I do when I find it? I should pick it up. Hands, do you see that towel hanging up right in front of you? You do? Now pick it up. ..go ahead...pick it up, already. Okay, now dry your hands. You know, wipe each hand on the towel until the moisture is gone. Hmm, let's try this again.").

Eric saw me at breakfast the next morning, where I was still groggy. I would try to wipe my mouth after eating, and would promptly drop my napkin directly into my plate of biscuits and gravy, which I was still working on. After repeated bemused suggestions ("No, Faith, don't put the napkin in your food" and the like), he finally took over and fed me.

Several nights after, I would be asked if I wanted Ambien (the first night I wasn't given the option to refuse). I declined every time, explaining that it had made me loopy. The first nurse I told responded with, "That was YOU?! Not that we're gossiping, but it was such an unusual reaction! You only had 5 mg, and we normally give 10 mg without batting an eye!"

So now it was Wednesday, August 20. My blood pressure had lowered, but my left eye had gone from having spots I could blink away to a more constant blurriness. I had some visitors throughout the day -- the knitting crew stopped by, as well as a professor from work who had gone through a similar situation a year earlier with her pregnancy. She was hospitalized the first time at 24 weeks, and finally the third hospitalization around 32 weeks resulted in an early delivery to a healthy baby girl. She brought some resources and answered all of our questions. In my mind, this was what was in store for us, and I figured after everything was regulated, I would be sent home for a time to wait things out.

We were being told our baby would be premature, it was just a matter of how premature she would be. In preparation, a doctor who specialized in high-risk pregnancies ran another, more sensitive ultrasound this day, and we met with a doctor in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU); he explained what having a baby at 24 weeks would be like. Admittedly I thought this was premature, as I still thought everything would hold off.

I was given another steroid shot to hasten fetal development. Eric read in a preemie book that each shot can be the equivalent of one gestational week of development, and they had given me my first the day before.

After the professor left Wednesday night, my blood pressure was elevated again. I wondered if it was a temporary rise, due to the discussion we had been having, but I did ask Eric to stay with me overnight. Given my first night of confusion, I was pretty tired and slept through most of the night even with the interruptions for medication, but Eric said there were a couple blood-pressure readings that were elevated to a frightening level (one was something like 200 over 140).

Early Thursday, August 21, around 5 AM, I was pretty hungry. I am naturally more of a grazer, and my unfinished meal from the night before at 7 PM seemed far removed. The nurses found me a bowl of cereal since the kitchen wasn't open for room service yet. I had most of it. This morning they also checked my weight again. It had increased around 8 pounds since 48 hours earlier. I saw pictures of myself from this day, and I don't look at all healthy. My face, and presumably the rest of me, was quite swollen.

Around 7:30 AM, my doctor came in to let me know it was time to deliver given the status of my early-onset pre-eclampsia. The results from my urine monitoring had something like 8 grams of protein (a normal level is something like 150 mg/day), and I wasn't expelling as I ought to have been (see: insensible weight gain). He was explaining the surgery I was about to have and the incision. The anesthesiologist also met with me, and here the consumption of cereal was revealed. I wasn't going to have a sedative for the surgery because of it, but I would still have the spinal.

Eric called his parents as well as my dad. My dad had returned from the Czech Republic the night before. He hadn't yet read the email Eric sent to him letting him know of my hospitalization, and due to his jet lag, he was disoriented on the phone. Eric, after relaying his name, even had to tell him who he was ("your son-in-law"). He soon came to when Eric brought him up to date.

Next post: Delivery.

A Bittersweet Birthday

Today would have been my brother's 23rd birthday. Instead, he's been at 19 for several years now.

That's one part of his death that takes an adjustment. His sisters around him all age and live to see another year pass, but he is eternally nineteen. I mentally tally the passage of another year, the arrival of another April 30th, and I can tabulate what his age would have been had he still been here. But there's another dynamic; I can only imagine him as a teenager. I speculate what his life could have been, someone catches my eye because of some passing resemblance to him, but he is securely in place as the blond-haired introvert that sported dry humor, a creative streak, and would come to rival me for pages read.

So today on Jon's birthday, I indulge in an afternoon off and time to reflect. In fact, it's the first time since I finished it that I've picked up my NaNoWriMo project and have begun reading. It has been good to isolate myself to do so, as I am unfortunately adept at closing off my thoughts and feelings when it suits me.

It's difficult to articulate today, or to understand how, even when years have passed, just a simple date on a calendar can mean so much. I guess all I can say is that I'm feeling thoughtful.

Introspection

As Sunday nears, the day that my brother Jon would have been 22, I am feeling introspective. I certainly think of him on other days, but I'm conditioned that April 30 is my brother's birthday, and on that day we celebrate his birth and another year of growing older. This will be the third birthday we have experienced since his death. It makes me realize how much changes in life. I look back to times when Jon was alive, and they seem so removed; I am another person then. I lived those days, but when I look back, I'm looking in on another time, at a play that was performed. I am merely an actor who has forgotten some of my lines in the various scenes I've played. Memories are foggier and specific days fade away into general feelings.

It is good for me to take these times and deliberately think things through. I need a reminder that life doesn't consist of 140 seventh-graders revolving through my room daily. I get so bogged down in the here and now that I lose sight of the bigger picture. I had a 'moment' at the start of my spring break. We were flying to Los Angeles and my heart was in that ready state. Maybe it was because I'd taken a personal day to travel, maybe it was because I was rested and had few immediate, pressing demands on my plate. Whatever the reason, I was reading a book that I'd set aside for a season. It had been highly recommended by friends (Blue Like Jazz), and I'd picked it up and began reading it. Initially, I was somewhat intrigued, but in some regards I was just reading by rote. It was set aside and I lost track of it. Spring break approached and I discovered it again, and I was primed for it. It was really forcing me to think, and I was allowing the tangents to take place. Periodically I would set the book down and just gaze over the dark expanse below me. And I began to be taken out of my little world. There were hundreds of farms I saw, thousands of cars. Each one represented other beings. I wandered into predictions of these untold stories, putting flesh on the unknown. Who down there was experiencing heartache? Who was caught up in the mires of deception? All around me on a daily basis I cross paths with hundreds of others, but I'm so often focused on me and what I need to do to get by, to survive another first-year teaching job that I'm consumed. I can't get above my mire to notice what is really going on.

A friend and co-worker further fed this introspection. There has been a young couple closely affiliated with my school district--both teachers--going through a difficult time. She was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and just passed away a week and a half ago. I knew of them through co-workers and students, but didn't know them directly. The husband began sending out almost daily emails, detailing her progress the last couple months. After requests, he encouraged people to forward them on as they saw fit. My co-worker compiled them into a fifteen-page document and sent them my way. I had brought a book to read during the day as my students worked on reading their novels silently, but I instead read his words. I was drawn to the gripping messages.

I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to know your spouse is most likely going to die from this invasive cancer, and yet you must slowly watch the process unfold. She was losing her hearing, struggled with muscle deterioration, and ached with sleepless nights and pounding headaches. Even as a Christian, I was challenged and encouraged by their faith. He was frank in his feelings, but he was also filled with hope. They desired so desperately that she be healed, but they were willing to acknowledge that, if that didn't happen, God was still supreme and they would trust. Yet he didn't just sit back and let his wife die. They wrestled with God, begging for healing. The whole community embraced them, and through it all, she had a strong spirit that rarely complained. They were a testimony to everyone around them, many confused and amazed at how they walked through this trial with such grace.

Death is so sudden and unpredictable. Sometimes we have notice that lives are going to come to an imminent end, but it seems as more often than not, we are challenged with the unexpected: death through a freak car accident or a suicide. Is it easier to know in advance that a loved one is done for this earth, in order to prepare and have closure? Or does this draw bitterness about the inevitable? I guess I'm left with the truth that we aren't promised a certain number of days. God would have us to acknowledge our mortality each and every day, and live accordingly. But as frail humans, this is hard for us to do when events seem to coincide so smoothly into our predictable routines. It should be no surprise that, in those husband's letters, such eloquence was drawn out of such heart-rending pain. Struggles force us to bare our souls and thoughts and be honest with what is truly important.