Little Bag of Dreams, Part 2

If you missed part 1 of the story, click here.

So, what was I to do with this little bag of mine?

Just so you know, I am the farthest thing from a hoarder (unless you count books, but that's a library, right?). My personal philosophy of organization is that I would rather buy a new . . . anything . . . tomorrow than store it for a day. I'm usually ruthless in what I keep and what I toss.

Something about my diaper bag wouldn't allow me to let it go.

It sat on my laundry room counter for a few days, daring me to find a use for it that would justify me keeping it.

Then, it came to me.

I knew exactly what my favorite diaper bag could now be trusted with--my most precious memories of my babies' babyhood.

(Heidi took her box of baby stuff to Idaho with her, including her blessing dress this past summer. I was sad that I didn't have it home so I could include it with all of the rest.)

Little tiny beautiful clothes for each of my little tiny beautiful babies.**

Heidi--March 1991. She was three months old before we could bless her, since she spent 65 days in the NICU. Her soft blessing dress was intended to be short on a normal-sized baby, but she was about sixteen inches long and weighed only five pounds at the time. On her miniature frame, it looked like a long, grand gown.

Tucker Christian--July 1992. His legs were so fat that the crotch snaps barely held and his head was too big for the hat. I fell in love with the pintucks immediately.

Benjamin Andrew--June 1996. His was the first white ensemble made by my mother. It hadn't occurred to me to even ask her when Heidi and Tucker were born, and in hindsight, I wish she had made all of them. She pays such careful attention to detail and makes each outfit personal for the baby, and she tries to make it exactly as the mama wishes. His little head kept disappearing in the sailor collar that day.

Lily Jane--May 2000. When Mom came to help me after her birth, we spent quite a while at the store measuring lace and trim. I wanted this blessing dress to be perfect. And it was, down to the hand-sewn pearls and the lace trim on the slip that only Mom and I knew about. Lily's cousin Emma, born a few months later, has an almost identical gown.

Micah Thatcher--July 2004. The little baby boy with the twisted leg who healed a mother's broken heart. Grandma picked a shimmery soft fabric for him. I begged her to make him a hat to match, but it was so big that it was never worn. His outfit is the tiniest of the boys, which is good, because he was the tiniest of my boys, by a long shot.

Hyrum Kimball--May 2007. Something with Hyrum made me want to break out of the all-white box. Mom found this soft, textured baby blue fabric, and I knew this was the right one for him. She added the teeny blue buttons and hand-stitched detail to the collar and pockets, and I love how different it is from his brothers'. Six months later, when my friend was blessing her triplets, she borrowed Ben's and Hyrum's outfits for her boys. They are the only outfits to have been worn more than once.

And Eve Diana--November 2009. My final baby and I knew it. Named after my beautiful mother, I wanted her gown to be an extra special link to her grandmother, a dress like those of a hundred years ago. Her dress, a simple cotton, has all the details of a true artist--inlaid lace panels, cutout trim, and dozens of pintucks on the skirt. After her blessing, a friend's husband told me that it was the most beautiful blessing gown he'd ever seen. I agree. It's my favorite.

I knew this would be the perfect place to store these precious memories of mine. After gathering them from different closets and boxes in the house, I looked at them all and knew something was missing. There was one more thing I knew needed to be in that bag as well.

My Grandma Olsen crocheted this "baby afghan" (her words) when Heidi was born, and each of my children used it on their blessing days. Made of a rough acrylic yarn, it was spit up on, dropped in dirty parking lots, then washed and tucked away until the next baby's special day, good as new. It belongs with their clothes.

So many memories of special days and perfect babies.

Now they have a place where they can all be clean and safe and protected and together--a place where I can pull them out on occasion to shed some happy tears and be wrapped in my memories.

And they all fit inside as if the bag had been designed for this purpose all along.

**(If you would like to read my children's birth stories, they are recorded on my blog. Click here to find them.)

Empathy--My Final Birth Story

Empathy--the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions

Every journey through the loss of a child is different. It doesn't matter if you lost your child as an infant, as a toddler, as a teen, as an adult--or if they never even took their first breath. No one's journey is harder or easier--each journey is just different.   I don't claim to tell anyone else's story.  This just happens to be mine.

For Heather and Greg--
How I wish I could change this last week of your life.  How I wish I could do something to alleviate your pain.  Just know that I love you, and that you are not alone in your journey. I love you like one of my own.  I haven't felt compelled to share my complete story of loss until now. This post is for you. I hope it helps.
Jenny

I have a small blue treasure box (hand painted with roses) that protects a set of precious, tiny memories.  
I had two pink stripes on a pregnancy test. 

It was June of 2002, and we were on vacation in Mexico with some friends. My period was late.  I was never late, but I didn't really consider the possibility that I could be pregnant until we had been in Mexico for four days and there was still no sign that my period was going to start.  Brad and I took a small detour to a Mexican pharmacy, where I bought a kit that informed me that I was indeed embarazada. After needing six rounds of Clomid to get pregnant with Lily, we had indeed succeeded without even trying.  We were excited.

I have a crocheted baby afghan no bigger than a kitchen rag, a small teddy bear, a seashell, and a knitted baby hat that would fit a racquetball inside that blue treasure box. 
I had an expanding waistline under a red gingham maternity shirt.
Heidi was eleven, Tucker had just turned ten, Ben was six, and our baby, Lily Jane, was two.  My hands and my days were full of mothering, and I was happy.  I always carried my pregnancies straight out front, and it was no secret to anyone that we were expecting again. 

I have a soft pink washcloth used for a blanket and a miniature headband made by my own hands with a bow in the center inside that blue treasure box.  
I had flutterings in my stomach.
Although getting pregnant was difficult, my actual pregnancies were joyous times for me.  I always felt great.  Sometime around fifteen weeks, I started feeling those unique butterflies that only come from new life inside.  I treasured every tickle, every private moment I shared with my baby.  I had been spotting and feeling some pressure, but that was nothing unusual for me; the doctors were monitoring it.  In fact, I went to see the doctor just the day before, where the nurse strapped me to the monitor to assure me that Baby was strong and good--"Listen to that heartbeat," she said. "I will schedule you for an ultrasound in the morning, just to be sure, but I think everything will be fine."

I have a full pewter photo album which I assembled whenever I could be alone. 
I had blood--there was so much blood--and a middle-of-the-night emergency to the hospital. 
We left all four kids asleep in the house that night, not knowing what time we would return. I grabbed a red hand towel from the hall bathroom as we left the house, hoping it would mask how much blood there was.

I will never buy another red towel.

I have poems, scriptures, quotes, and photographs glued carefully and lovingly on embossed linen paper, all inside that pewter photo album.
I had one lucid moment before I was lifted to the examination table.
Brad ran into the L&D entrance of the hospital to get a wheelchair for me. I had one final moment alone in the Suburban, and that is when I knew.  I whispered out loud, "Good-bye, Baby," before I was gently helped into the wheelchair by my sweetheart and rushed into the hospital. 

I have a matching set of tiny--oh, so tiny--handprints and footprints, made from purple ink that was pressed onto pink paper.
I had a baby.  A baby girl.
It was over before the doctor could even make it into the room. I was blessedly unconscious for the actual delivery, my body performing a task to which my heart never could have agreed. We spent a few difficult hours in that hospital room, building sacred memories that should have been formed over decades but instead needed to be completed by morning. Brad returned to our four sleeping children, making it back home before any of them knew we had ever left. 

I have a white rose bush growing in what is now another woman's yard.  
I had one small vase in my hand.
We left the hospital as early as they would discharge me. I was carrying a small blue treasure box (hand painted with roses) in one hand and a bud vase with three daisies and a single white rosebud in the other hand. My arms were glaringly, achingly empty. Before getting Lily from my Aunt Alison's house, we stopped for some breakfast. I had no appetite.

I have a dried rose topiary in the back of my bathroom cupboard. 
I had my own private funeral.
Flowers and meals and friends who had no idea what to say filed through my home.  I would sob on the couch in my cheery yellow living room for hours, looking from vase to vase, trying to find my old self again: the self who had never known such pain, such gut-wrenching, heart-searing, mind-numbing pain. I would never find that old self again. She is gone forever now.

I have a broken silver locket that cradles a single black and white photograph.  
I had a broken silver locket around my neck every day for eleven months.
One day in the shower, my milk came in.  What some women would have seen as a curse, I counted it as a blessing.  My body really had nurtured a child, and if she had waited until February, my body would have cared for her just as it had cared for her four older siblings. Each time I showered, I watched her milk and my tears run down my body to the drain until the milk dried up a few days later.  My tears didn't try up. Two weeks later, I found myself walking through the mall, and I couldn't understand how the world had kept going while I had cocooned myself with grief. Didn't they know that my entire world had changed?  Couldn't they see the pain on my face?

I hungered for some physical evidence that my whole pregnancy--my baby--had been real. I had a silver locket, and I placed inside it the only evidence I had that she had ever been on earth--a fuzzy black and white photograph of my tiny baby cradled in her mother's hands. My hands.

At two years old, Lily didn't understand why her baby sister lived in heaven or why they would never play together, so she would often crawl into my lap and ask if she could see her sister, then she would reach for the chain around my neck.  One day, she handled the locket too clumsily--but gently for a two year old--and the clasp on the locket broke.  My anger and tears rushed to the surface uncontrolled for the first time in months, and her shocked little face softened as she reached up to my face and wiped away my tears. "Don't cry, Mommy.  It's okay." She was right.

Not knowing how to fix the locket permanently, I glued it shut and wore that locket every day until my baby's first birthday--September 10, 2003.  I would finger it absentmindedly many times during the day, flooding my mind with memories.  Sometimes memories would trigger tears, but as time passed, the tears grew fewer and the memories grew sweeter. Over the next few years, three more babies joined our family, but never again would I take for granted the miracle of pregnancy and a safe, healthy delivery.

I have seven beautiful, wonderful, adored children. 
I had eight.
I have eight beautiful, wonderful, adored children. When September 10th rolls around each year, I catch myself thinking about how our family would have been different.  Would Evie have a blond, blue-eyed twin?  Where would this missing daughter be standing in our family picture? Who would be her best friend? What would be her favorite book? What dress would I have bought her for Tucker's wedding? It's the little things that flit through my brain.  Little things.

I know that one day I will see my Ella again.  The beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that families can be together forever.  Life continues beyond earth. Families are eternal units. Grief is real, yet temporary. Growth is possible, yet elusive.

While I almost always respond that I am the mother of seven children to avoid a lengthy explain, I never, ever, ever forget the truth.

I have eight.

Heidi, Part 5--Denouement

Angel Nurse escorted Brad out into the hall where he was given a gown, hat, and shoes to wear into the operating room.  While he was changing, Dr. F came into the room.

"Jennifer, how are you feeling?"

It had to be him.  Of course he was the one who would be performing my surgery.  This man that wouldn't listen to me and had ignored my pleas three weeks earlier--he was going to deliver my baby.

"We will have you in the OR in five minutes.  Dr. L will be assisting me.  I will see you soon, and try to relax.  We will do everything we can."

Once again, Angel Nurse returned to the room, this time her dark hair covered with an OR cap.  "Jennifer, I won't leave you again.  I will be the one beside you throughout the surgery.  It's time."

My bed began to move, and I frantically searched for Brad, who had been detained in the hallway talking to Dr. F.  I later learned that my 23-year-old husband had bravely cornered the veteran physician and told him, "You be nice to my wife.  She doesn't trust you and she's really scared.  Be nice to her." When he finished talking with the doctor, Brad stepped next to the bed, grabbed my hand, and talked about what was happening around me, where we were going, and what the OR looked like, never once revealing his inner fears for the baby's and my safety.

I remember little of the actual OR experience leading up to the delivery.  What I do remember is the exact moment I saw a small pink frog with a giant head being quickly lifted from my warm body and moved to an already heated isolette, then rushed off to the NICU.

Just as the NICU nurses left the room, I asked Brad, "Was it a boy or a girl?"

He looked at me quizzically, then asked, "I don't know.  Doctor, was it a boy or a girl?"

"I don't know.  Nurse, was it a boy or a girl?"

"I don't know.  We better call down to NICU right now and find out."

"It's a girl."

And that was all I remember.  A girl.

Since my condition had gone undiagnosed for weeks, my health was just as tenuous as our new baby's.  My recovery was monitored very closely--a blood transfusion to combat my life-threateningly low platelet count, blood draws to track my sky-high liver enzymes, and for the first 48 hours I had no visitors other than Brad in my dimly lit room as they hoped to lower my off-the-chart blood pressure and prevent a stroke or coma.  My skin turned the pale chalky color of the recovery unit's walls as my body tried to rid itself of weeks' worth of toxins in my blood and liver.  I was so sick that I barely cared about anything.  I couldn't think or eat or even see our tiny new baby girl.

Tiny baby girl.

Tiny doesn't do her justice.

Born at thirty-one weeks gestation, Baby should have been 3-3.5 pounds, but just as I had lost weight over the last three weeks, so had Baby. Our girl was one pound and twelve ounces--half her anticipated size.  My aunt tried to describe how small she was to her boys by taking two boxes of butter out of the fridge, and after removing one cube, she handed them the boxes and told them that's how much she weighed.

795 grams and thirteen inches long.

She was so tiny that in the above picture she is wearing the nurse's size 8 wedding ring around her arm.

Brad would bring me updated information and Polaroid snapshots of her as often as he could.  She was astounding the NICU staff.   Soon after birth, the doctors removed the ventilator because she was breathing around its support, and within hours, she had been weaned down to room air with no supplemental oxygen. Most babies in the NICU are sedated and intubated so that their lungs can develop to a stage when they can breathe on their own, so there is little crying heard within its walls.  Our little girl occasionally even let out a cry since she was free of these inhibitions--a sound much louder than any thought possible from such a miniature thing.  She was quickly given the nickname MIGHTY MITE, for her strong lungs and healthy cry--and her exceptionally small birth weight.

Two days later, my condition stabilized enough that I could be wheeled down to the NICU and hold our daughter for the first time.  My illness had left me weak and timid--never before did I remember being so afraid of what was coming.  What would I think of her?  Brad and the staff had tried to prepare me for what she looked like--nothing like a regular full-term baby--but I was her mother.  How would I feel about this tiny baby hooked up to monitors and cuffs and with an IV coming out of her head?

I shouldn't have worried.  The second that nearly weightless bundle of blankets was placed in my arms, I loved her and I knew she would be mine forever.

Before her birth, Brad and I had discussed names.  I don't remember any of the boy names we liked, but if it was a girl, her name was going to be Alexandra.  When a baby is born weighing less than two pounds, a grand, elegant LONG name like Alexandra runs on longer than the child, so Alexandra was tabled in favor of shorter names like Emily and Christine, but none of them seemed to fit. Three days of discussion eventually led to me writing Heidi on her birth certificate, and just like that, she became our teeny woman, Heidi Denton.

Although she did have two blood transfusions and a PDA ligation at four days old (a heart valve surgery that is rarely performed now without waiting weeks to see if the valve will close on its own), Heidi's life in the NICU was uncharacterisically crisis-free.  She was never on any medications or extraneous machines. These were the days before the use of synthetic surfactant to assist lung development, so her strong lungs and audible cries were a novelty to the nurses who cared for her.  I was able to hold her as often and as long as I would like (back in the day where they kept preemies away from touch for fear of overstimulating them), and on rare occasions, the nurses would allow me to dress her--like a real baby.

Our life became routine--Brad had transitioned to his new job at WordPerfect, a blessing that we never could have foreseen.  WordPerfect's health insurance covered pre-existing conditions from the day of employment (with a $20 deductible, no matter the issue), so Brad rushed to the new office a week earlier than planned, a decision that saved us from carrying most of the enormous financial burden generated by nine weeks in the NICU. I would drive to the hospital late in the morning, pump out my breastmilk, then sit and hold Heidi for a few hours before heading home to work on changing that mint-green office into a buttery yellow nursery or to finish the school work left from my seventeen incomplete credits the previous semester. Then, after dinner, the two of us would head back to the hospital for a few more hours, surrounded by the now-familiar sounds and smells associated with the NICU--sponge-backed brushes to scrub our hands like surgeons, monitors and bells going off around every bed, respiratory therapists pounding babies' backs in what seemed a too-harsh fashion to free their lungs from the harmful fluid building there.  Even though Heidi's growth rate was the doctor's main concern, we would often come to the hospital at night and see that she was visibly bigger than our previous visit, and we would hope that one day she would be big enough to come home.

Sixty-five days in the NICU.  Sixty-five days of charting her unbelievably slow growth.  Sixty-five days of pumping breastmilk and dumping it down the sink.  Sixty-five days of visits and stress and promises that when she reached five pounds, she could come home.

Heidi was healthy and strong, but she refused to grow, even by preemie standards, and the doctors were puzzled.  There was no outward reason they could find that would impair her growth, and they tried everything to help her gain weight, with no success.  Around the beginning of February, when her weight hovered just below four pounds and refused to go higher for three days, the doctors had a discussion and decided the mandatory five-pound weight requirement could be suspended in Heidi's case since she was perfectly healthy with no monitoring issues or necessary external oxygen, and they told us we could take her home that night.

With that, on February 5, 1991, we bundled up our three pound, fifteen ounce daughter, and we walked out of the hospital.

And so we began life as the Denton family.

The doctors would tell me at her checkups not to worry about her size--she would catch up by the time she was two. No, but definitely by the time she was four.  No, but surely by kindergarten.  No, probably by the time she was eight.  Okay, she will always be small, but we never worried because she was so healthy and bore no lasting effects from her prematurity--no learning disabilities, no vision problems, no hearing issues.  We would take small and embrace it gladly.

Both kids in the t-shirts brought home from the hospital--Tucker two months, Heidi nineteen months

Heidi has always been a special child--a daughter blessed with quiet wisdom and a peacemaker's heart. She always has time for friends or family, always calm, usually in the background enjoying life around her.  I've always been able to trust her decisions, even when I couldn't see the end like she could.

I've been there every day of her life.  I've watched her learn and change and sorrow and triumph.  I will always treasure the gift that God gave me that terrifying day in December 1990--not only the gift of a beautiful and miraculously healthy child, but the gift in knowing that life here on earth is not to be taken for granted--every moment precious, and every birth a miracle.

Now, as I sit in her home and watch her care for two beautiful children of her own, I see the circle of life begin again and my mind can't help but wander back down the paths where memories linger of me and my two tiny firstborn children.

Where has the time gone, my love?

My tiny, tiny daughter with the huge heart. I love you, Heidi.

Happy birthday.

Heidi, Part 4

The drive from the obstetrics office to the hospital was less than half a mile, and I knew we would be there quickly, too quickly for me to process what was happening or even worry that I had no change of clothes or carefully packed overnight bag with me.  I was nine weeks away from my due date, and although the idea of having our new baby had been everpresent in my mind, it was December, not February like I had been planning, and I wasn't ready for this.

Brad and I didn't know what to expect as we parked our burgundy 1984 Honda Accord in the hospital parking lot and then made our way into the only slightly familiar hospital.  I had been so excited about having a baby that we had completed our prenatal introduction to the hospital a week before Thanksgiving, so at least we knew which direction the Labor and Delivery unit was.  We took the elevator up to the second floor, and when we stepped off, there was a nurse in the hallway who asked us if we were Mr. and Mrs. Denton.  Dr. L wasn't kidding when he said they would be waiting for us.

To this day, I can see her kind face, her green surgical scrubs, and her dark, thick ponytail, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot recall her name.  I will always remember her as the angel sent to help me through what would soon become the scariest few hours of my entire life.

Gymnastics 2001

Angel Nurse took me by the arm, and in a calm, almost too-sweet voice that on any other occasion would have driven me insane, she began asking me questions about my doctor's visit just moments earlier.  She had received the alarming stats from the doctor (4+ protein, 140/110 blood pressure), so she already knew what was coming, but she was attempting to help me process what had happened and what was going to come.  I rattled off the information I could remember, recounted the weeks of epigastric pain I'd endured, adding something about coming to the hospital for a gall bladder ultrasound as she escorted us through the double doors to the Labor and Delivery area and a private room.

I sank down on the bed and Brad found the only chair--a recliner placed under the west-facing window.  It was December, but there was no snow outside, just the barren brown world begging for a fresh white blanket to cover its ugliness.  Angel Nurse opened a cupboard and handed me a teal gown, instructing me to change into it and then she would be back shortly.  Bewildered, I looked up at her from my perch on the bed.  "What?"  This was just too much.  "What is happening?"  She gently took my hand, another gesture that in a different time and place would have taken all my resolve not to brush away, and with all the kindness she could muster, she broke the news to me.

"From all the information in your file and from what you've told me, this would be my best guess.  Your blood pressure is very high--dangerously so.  So is the protein level in your urine.  You have pre-eclampsia (nowadays this condition goes by the acronym HELLP), a condition where the mother's body decides, for some unknown reason, that the baby is a foreign body that needs to be fought, much like an infection. Usually it manifests with a very quick weight gain and swelling, slight protein in the urine and elevated blood pressure.  Since the first symptom is usually swelling, which you don't have, the doctors were very surprised to find the other symptoms. The only cure for pre-eclampsia is delivery."

Before the word delivery could shock me too badly, she continued, in the same calm, sweet voice, while still holding my hand:  "The doctor will admit you to the hospital where you can be hooked up to an IV that will administer a drip of magnesium sulfate, a medication designed to lower your pressure.  You will also be hooked up to a blood pressure cuff that will monitor your pressure every fifteen minutes and an infant monitor that will track your baby's heartbeat.  And one final thing--you will be given a steroid shot very soon and a follow-up shot in 24 hours to beef up your baby's lungs.  If I were to guess, and I've seen this before, you will probably be parents within 24-48 hours.  Please change now, and I will be back."  Then she left the room, leaving me and Brad alone with the words parents within 24-48 hours hanging in the air above us.

Blessing Day, March 1991

If this information was designed to help lower my blood pressure, they were wrong.  As I changed clothes, I burst into tears, wondering and worrying and uncomprehending.  Brad, in his own state of shock, was trying to calm my fears while still addressing his own. Moments later, Angel Nurse returned and hooked me up to a blood pressure cuff as she asked me a few more questions--insurance, prenatal care, social security number.  These mindless details distracted me from what was happening around me until a technician entered the room pulling a large unfamiliar machine.  Angel Nurse explained that this was the ultrasound machine, and they were going to get some quick images of my baby.  This was the first happy news of the day--we would get to see our baby for the first time!  In today's ultrasound-happy world, this may sound ancient, but the technology was so new at the time that we were fascinated by each step--the gel squirting all over my belly, the flat edge of the wand gliding across the gel as it transmitted images to the monitor turned so we could see the images.

We were intrigued by this whole process and we watched as the technician found Baby's head and feet and hands.  Suddenly, he turned the monitor from our view as he began this stream of questioning:  "Did you feel the baby move today?  Did you feel the baby move yesterday?  Are you sure you felt the baby move today?  Are you positive?"  When I answered yes with increasing fear each time, he became more and more serious.  He then concluded the process with this statement, "You have one pocket of amniotic fluid left in your uterus.  It is between your baby's arms as they circle its head."  And then he and his magic machine left the room.

Again, this was not news that could lower my ever-rising blood pressure, or could calm my increasing fear for the safety of our baby.  Angel Nurse returned to our room, gave me my first steroid shot, charted my pressure with concern, asked me if I had had anything to eat that morning (a bowl of raisins-and-spice oatmeal was all I had been able to choke down), then left the room after a few encouraging words to remain calm and everything would be all right.  Brad had called his friend Joel to come give me another priesthood blessing, and he arrived about that time.  In the blessing, Brad tried to calm my fears by saying that all would work out, that I would be fine, but he never mentioned anything about Baby. Although I didn't notice this omission, he did, and his fears climbed as well.  Joel left and we were alone.  What was happening?

Suddenly, the door to my room opened and a technician with a small tote over his arm entered the room.  After placing an IV drip in my right hand, he took a seat on the swiveling doctor's stool, wheeled it over to the left side of the bed between me and Brad, grabbed my left arm, tied a band above my elbow, and instructed me to make a fist and pump it.  Obediently, I complied as I watched him remove a razor blade from his white medical coat and use it to cut a half-inch slice in my left forearm.  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING??"  I couldn't contain it any longer.  "I'm just seeing if your blood will clot."  "WHY????"  "I can't answer that.  You need to ask your doctor." And with that, he too left the room, carrying two small vials of my blood and the last of my composure out with him.

This third round of information shot my blood pressure even higher.  Why would they need to know if my blood would clot?  What did all of this mean?  Angel Nurse entered the room again, and I could tell by her face that something was different.  Encircling me with her arm, she stood by my side and calmly began to speak.  "Your pressure is increasing quickly.  Our last read was 188/140.  Although we are administering mag sulfate, we don't really have time to let it start working. Baby has very little fluid in the sac and is measuring extremely small for its gestational age.  The doctors have determined that they need to perform an emergency c-section as quickly as possible, not only for the safety of your baby, but for your safety as well.  Because you ate breakfast this morning, it will be impossible for us to administer a general anesthetic, for fear you will vomit and aspirate during the procedure.  Therefore, an anesthesiologist is on his way to administer an epidural so that the doctors can proceed with the surgery."

We had little time to think before I would be sent to emergency surgery, so Brad asked if he could make calls to both of our parents and tell them what was happening.  After trying my house with no answer, he called his mom and explained as quickly as he could what was going on, and then he added, "I haven't been able to get in touch with Jenny's mom.  She works at Fabricland in Twin Falls.  Could you please look up the number and call her and let her know Jenny's headed into surgery?"

I have always been deathly afraid of needles, and I had determined my delivery would be medication- and needle-free, but now, I had no choice.  The anesthesiologist entered the room very soon thereafter,  and he instructed me to sit on the edge of the bed while he prepped my back for the large needle and tube that would send numbing medication to my lower extremities and my shrinking belly.

My belly, where my precious baby had been growing for way too short of a time.  How could this be happening?


It was now 2 pm, and I had been a patient in the hospital about two hours.

Heidi, Part 3

Christmas 1991

Before 8 am on Monday morning, December 3, 1990, I called my doctor's office and scheduled an appointment for 11 am.

In a doctor's office with three doctors, you never know who you're going to see, and the only available appointment for the day was with Dr. F, the doctor who had incorrectly diagnosed me three weeks earlier.  I was hesitant to see him, because I knew that I would have a hard time standing up to him and explaining that I thought I had a gall stone--based on what?  Three weeks of insufferable pain and the diagnosis of an untrained 50-year-old near stranger?  I hung up the phone, then proceeded to beg Brad to come to the appointment with me for moral support.  He agreed, but hesitantly, because today was the day he had planned to give two weeks' notice at his job to accept a full-time position as a technical writer for the software giant of Utah Valley--WordPerfect.  He would drop me off at BYU for my teaching assistant class that began at 9, then he would be back to pick me up after checking in at work.

Fall 1995

We arrived at the doctor's appointment and were greeted by some great news:  Dr. F had been called into delivery that morning, so I would be seeing Dr. L instead.  I was so relieved that I almost sent Brad back to work, but he decided to stay and then we would have lunch together before splitting up fpor school and work again.

When my name was called, we were ushered back into an exam room after a quick weigh-in, once again without the usual blood pressure check or urine sample. No eyebrows were raised when my weight at 31 weeks was recorded as eleven pounds lighter than it had been just three weeks earlier. The nurse questioned me for a few minutes, then we waited for Dr. L.  I remember wondering what he would think of our amateur diagnosis:  Would he believe me, or would he send me back on my way with a quick word and a pat on the head?  He entered the small room, and he read aloud from the chart, "possible gall stone.  What makes you think it's a gall stone, Mrs. Denton?"  I hesitantly explained my conversation with Brad's aunt, her gall stones during pregnancy, and how my symptoms seemed to match with her experience.  I told him how long I'd been miserable, how many bottles of Mylanta I had burned through, how I couldn't eat, and how the pain would even wake me as I slept.  And then I waited for his response.

Much to my surprise, Dr. L looked at me and then nodded.  "I think you probably do have a gall stone, young lady."  Relief swept over me.  Finally I was going to have someone help me.  Finally I would get some relief from the pain.  Finally I would stop thinking I was crazy.  He pulled out a small pad of paper that I recognized--a prescription pad.  What was he doing?  "Here is a prescription for you to go over to the hospital and get an ultrasound of your gall bladder (back in the ancient days when such machines were only found in hospitals and only used for emergencies like these).  Once we know for sure what we're dealing with, we can proceed."

Finally a baby sister--with Lily April 2000

As he turned to leave the office, he glanced through my chart and offhandedly called over his shoulder to the attending nurse, "Let's get a urine sample and a quick blood pressure check before they leave." I obediently took the cup from the nurse and filled the cup in the bathroom.  My urine had been unusually dark for days, but I was young and had no idea what a red flag this was.  I handed her the cup, and a surprised, worried look flitted across her professional face before she could stop it.  "4+ protein in the urine," she muttered as she disposed of the sample and recorded the information on my chart.  None of this meant anything to me. Why did urine matter now, anyway?  I was headed to the hospital for a confirmation of my gall stone diagnosis.

The nurse then reached for the blood pressure cuff and wrapped it snugly around my left arm, blew it up and listened for my pulse to react to the pressure. "That can't be right," she said, probably louder than she meant to.  "Let's try your other arm."  I obediently gave her my right arm, but I was beginning to suspect something was unusual.  She listened, wide mouthed, then motioned for another nurse to join her and run the pressure test again on my left arm.  "What numbers do you get?" she asked.  The second nurse performed the test, and adding her shock to the first nurse's, she barked, "140/110.  Get Dr. L right now."

The first nurse measured my face and body with her eyes, and trying to contain her worry, she said, "You just don't look that sick."  What was that supposed to mean?  I glanced up at Brad, who was beginning to register the idea that this was more than gall stones and visit to the hospital for a quick ultrasound.  "What is it?"  I asked.  The nurse looked me in the eye and asked me quickly, "So do you have a job?"  "No," I replied, "I work as a TA at BYU for History 120 and I have seventeen credits this semester."

I will never forget her response.  "Today was your last day."

What?

July 1992

The nurses took me under both arms as if I had suddenly developed the inability to walk under my own power and guided me gently back into the exam room, exchanging worried looks and muttering, "She just doesn't look that sick.  She isn't swelling.  She's lost weight. She doesn't look that sick."  I was supposed to go to the hospital right now and get that ultrasound.  What was happening?

Quicker than ever before, Dr. L appeared in the doorway, shut the door, gave me the same measured looks up and down my body, and said the same thing, "She just doesn't look like it."  Like WHAT?

The doctor and nurses regained their professional composure once we were all in the exam room with the door shut.  I was sitting on the exam table and Brad was standing next to me, both of us confused at what had just transpired over the last five minutes.  Dr. L took my hand, and with a kind expression on his face, he changed my world in an instant with these words.

"You are very sick.  Very, very sick.  You have a condition called pre-eclampsia that has not manifest itself in the regular ways.  I want you to go straight to the hospital.  Do not go home.  I will call them right now and let them know you are coming."

And that was all.

It was just before noon, and I had been at the doctor's office less than an hour.

Heidi, Part 2

Nine months old

I tried to resume my old life of school, work, home, and looking forward to a new baby.

I kept attending classes daily.  I kept correcting papers and answering freshman questions.  I made dinner occasionally.  I still walked by the mint-green room adjacent to our bedroom and envisioned it empty of office furniture and randomly discarded stuff, repainted a cheery yellow and furnished with a crib and changing table--and a healthy little baby.

The pain in my gut made regular life difficult.  I carried my trusty bottle of Mylanta wherever I went, and when I would feel a wave of pain overtake me, I would sneak a swallow under tables or behind doors like an alcoholic from a flask.  One particular memory is especially vivid.  As a Humanities minor, I spent hours and hours  in the JKHB, a warren of classrooms and offices added onto many times over the years with little rhyme or reason to their layout.  One day I entered a mostly deserted bathroom on the ground floor, and I walked into one of the stalls where I sat fully clothed on the toilet, removed the half-empty bottle of Mylanta from my blue backpack, and a swallow at a time I would pray that the pain would abate long enough for me to leave the bathroom and return to my day.

Rocky Point, Mexico

Days were hard, but nights were worse.  We would get in bed, turn off the light and go to sleep, just to have the pain awaken me in the night with such a shock that I would shoot upright in bed, screaming with pain.  Helpless and worried, Brad would rub my back and ask me if there was anything he could do to help as I writhed around trying to find a position that would take the misery away and allow me a few more blessed hours of unconsciousness.

Agonizing days and sleepless nights began to take their toll on me.  My house was dirty.  My homework was slipping.  Scariest of all, I was losing weight--eleven pounds total by the time Heidi was born--but I kept on going through the motions that life was as it should be and all would be well.

Great-Grandma Olsen, Grandma Tucker, and Me

Thanksgiving came and went.  My family came down to Utah from southern Idaho to spend time with my mom's parents.  While they were staying at my grandparents' house, three generations of my family lovingly added stitches to the quilt my mom had made for our new baby.  It was the years before routine ultrasounds and gender-reveal parties, so the fabric was a healthy balance of baby pinks and blues.  I had seen my aunts and my grandma stitch many quilts over the course of my life, but this time was different--this was for my child, and I loved thinking that even after all of these women were gone, their stitches and their love would wrap my baby/child/adult/grandchildren in its cozy embrace.

Road trip to Utah, 1998

Still I ventured on, and as the end of November approached, so did Brad's dad's wedding in Seattle.  We had received plane tickets weeks ahead, traveling to Washington with Brad's younger siblings, Daniel, Nancy, and Katie.  I remember buckling myself into my seat, and having only made one plane trip before in my life, I reveled in each detail of flight, from the moment the plane was airborne to our arrival in Seattle.  It was going to be an exciting three days.

Brad's grandparents picked us up at the airport, and all seemed to be going well. Friday night we had arranged to have dinner with Brad's maternal uncle and his boisterous family.  I had met Chris and Royal Cardon at my wedding and had seen them once or twice since, and I already loved being around them.  Their family tends to burst into song at random moments, to play cards and games like an Olympic medal was on the line, and to fight for their rights around the dinner table just like my own, and I felt comfortable at once in their sparsely furnished but lively home.

Brad was happy to be around the family--when he was fourteen, his parents got divorced, and he spent the summer living with Chris and Royal in Wisconsin.  He had left with many memories and a place in Chris's heart as her favorite nephew.  Now, he laughed and joked and enjoyed.  Chris had been working all day, so she had picked up Subway sandwiches on her way home from her office at Pepsi's headquarters.  I remember watching everyone hover around the table as they quickly assembled a plateful before anyone else could grab their sandwich and chips of choice.  I was watching--from my seat on the floor in the corner of the living room where I was trying to mask my pain and lack of culinary excitement from these people I barely knew but already loved.

I don't remember how or when my condition became the focus of the night, but I do remember the pain becoming so unbearable that Brad and his uncle gave me a priesthood blessing.  Chris, with her mother-hen good intentions, strongly encouraged me to go to the emergency room and have a doctor evaluate my condition.  I refused, saying that it would pass and that I would be okay.  With doubt written across her face, she relinquished me back to the care of Brad's grandparents, where I spent the night before the wedding hoping I would feel well enough to attend the festivities.

The day before the wedding had brought a rare skiff of Seattle snow, and I know everyone was worried that the unpredictable weather would continue on December first--the day of the big wedding.  Although cloudy, it was warm enough that the snow from the previous day had melted, and no one in Seattle expects the sun to shine anyway, so the day was perfect.  Brad's sisters Nancy and Katie, ages fifteen and twelve, were looking forward to the makeup, the hair, the dresses.  It was a big day.

All I could do was stay on the guest bed and moan.  I felt awful--I knew there was no way I could make it to the ceremony.  After confirming again and again that I would be fine, the wedding party left, and I was alone in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar city, fighting an all-too-familiar enemy--my own body.  TV was my only company for hours that day, and I will never forget watching Ty Detmer receive the Heismann trophy that afternoon--I had watched him lead the BYU Cougars on the football field that season, and I was a proud cougar at that moment.

Early that evening everyone came home, tired from the celebration and full of stories--descriptions of the wedding officiator and the ceremony and the food and the dancing almost took me from my afternoon in the wood-paneled TV room to the wedding venue.  Almost.  Brad's Aunt Monica sat down next to me on the couch, and I knew what was coming.  With concern in her voice, she asked me to describe to her the pain I was experiencing.  I didn't even have to think--I had described the pain and the location and the burning so many times over the last three weeks that describing it didn't elicit any emotion from me. This was my new normal, and what could anyone else do?  Monica, however, had a different perspective.  When she was pregnant, she had had a gall stone, and the pain I described to her matched what she had felt over fifteen years before.  Finally, someone else knew what I was feeling--knew the agony and the misery, and she knew there was nothing the doctors could do about it until after delivery.  She counseled me to go see the doctor when I returned home and ask him if a gall stone could be the cause of all my trouble.

It was amazing to me the relief I felt after talking with Monica.  I wasn't crazy.  I wasn't a hypochondriac.  There was a reason and a solution for all of this, and my hopes were hanging on my gall bladder and its inability to pass a small stone.  I flew into Salt Lake City that Sunday night with a lighter mind and renewed determination for the doctor to listen to me in the morning.

It was December 2.

Heidi, Part One

There are some events in our lives that embed themselves into our memories almost like they happened yesterday--details and smells and tastes and sounds that remain fresh and unpolluted for decades.  Our memories use these events as a marker--a marker of "life before" and "life after."  These occurrences take on legendary proportions, stories that are told and retold at family gatherings, punctuated by everyone's recollections from those days and accompanied often with deep emotion.

December 3, 1990--Heidi's birth--was such an event.

Brad and I were married June 23, 1989, in the Salt Lake City LDS temple.

One year later, on June 23, 1990, we announced to our families that I was expecting our first baby.  I remember the day vividly because we were in Idaho staying with my parents as we prepared to attend Brad's extended family reunion north of where my parents lived.  I received roses, and we excitedly shared our news. This would be the first grandchild on both sides of the family, and everyone from first-time grandmas to first-time aunts and uncles was thrilled with the prospect of the next generation joining our lives.  It was a memorable day, full of joy and naivete of what the next months would bring to our lives.

Heidi's birthday 1993

Brad graduated from BYU in August that year and began working full-time for his friend, Bruce, as a technical writer.  It was far from his dream job, but it was work, and I still had one semester plus a few classes left before I graduated with a degree in History and a minor in Humanities, with emphasis on the Middle Ages (ah, Charlemagne and flying buttresses--the secret joys of my soul!).

Baby's due date was February 2nd, over six weeks after I would complete my seventeen-credit semester and finish working as a teaching assistant for a history professor.  I was busy, but it was a good busy, and I took comfort in the fact that the worst would be over way before Baby arrived.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans, right?

My pregnancy was textbook from the beginning, aside from the fact that I never threw up--never even felt nauseated.  I felt great.  I kept my doctor's appointments religiously, even though I was a patient in an overcrowded Provo, Utah, obstetrics office. In my day, Utah County had the highest birthrate of any county in the country, and many of those babies were first or second babies of BYU students--students who were inexperienced and poor but excited to be making the leap from couple to family.  Often I would be in the waiting room 70-90 minutes before my ten minutes with one of the three doctors in an exam room.  The doctors were overworked and overscheduled for certain, but what could I do?

Days with a working husband and a student wife became our norm. I would drop him off at work on my way to campus, where I would spend my days correcting history papers or writing humanities papers of my own.  My class load that semester, although credit-heavy, wasn't too bad--a religion class, a beginning interior design class, a history class. I loved my Humanities 200 class, a class taught by a teeny, dark-haired, bespectacled lady who loved music and literature and art and where they all fit into the history of the world even more than I did, and I remember sitting in the second row of her class, listening to music and feeling my baby kick to the rhythm of the music she played.  I was so astounded by the ability of my unborn baby to hear and respond to the music that I couldn't keep the news to myself, and I ran up to her lectern as soon as class was over to share my secret with her.  It's no secret that I love being pregnant--love feeling the baby move, love massaging my expanding belly, love knowing that a new life is growing inside me, a private little corner of the world shared by only me, my baby, and my God.

I was happy.

Lincoln Park Zoo, 1994

Unexpectedly one day in mid-November, my perfect world began to unravel.

As perfect and textbook as my pregnancy had been up to this point, something was different.  I had diarrhea for a day or two, which was a little strange for me.  Then, over the next few days I developed a very strange pain that, 22 years later, is still excruciating even in memory.  It felt like a combination of the worst heartburn I'd ever experienced and something stuck and burning in my esophagus just above my stomach.  Although I had never really experienced heartburn, I knew it to be common during pregnancy, so I didn't think much about it. I consulted my trusty pregnancy and childbirth book (ah, the days before Dr. Google and self-diagnosis!) and decided first to try TUMS then liquid Mylanta in an attempt to extinguish the fire just above my growing baby.

After trying everything I could think of for three days with nothing smothering the burning in my gut, I made an appointment with my doctor.  Squeezing an unexpected appointment into their already bursting schedule was virtually impossible, and I knew my time with the doctor would be limited even more than usual. Without performing the customary blood pressure check and urine sample from all of my previous visits, the nurse quickly escorted me into an exam room where the doctor asked me what had brought me in that day.  I began with, "A few days ago I had diarrhea, but it's gone. Now I just have this horrible pain right here," as I touched the area just below my sternum and just above my expanding belly. Ignoring the comment about my pain, the doctor quickly jotted out a prescription, saying, "This will take care of the diarrhea."  My protests that diarrhea wasn't my concern--it was this near-constant fire that plagued me day and night--fell on deaf ears as he stood up, walked out of the room with a quick comment over his shoulder--"It will be fine. Let the office know if you have any further problems."

Further problems?  He hadn't answered the current problem.  Looking back, I now realize that I should have said something more, done something more, insisted that he listen to me.  But I was a young girl/woman--just 21 years old--and what did I know?  He was the doctor, I was the patient, and if he said this would take care of it, surely he was right.

Right?

Wrong.  Very, very wrong.

Eve

October 23, 2009--Eve Diana Denton joined our family.

Eve is the only one, of all my children, whose entire life has already been documented here at the Sanatorium.  I know many of you didn't know me way back in the spring of 2009 (except Sue, Allyson, and my mom!), so I thought I'd rehash a few of the details from her life.

Best practical joke ever:  We disclose my pregnancy on April Fools' Day.  I still find that joke hilarious, but I wonder if my mom has ever forgiven me?

I described in my posts about Hyrum's and Micah's pregnancies what it was like to be bedridden for weeks at a time.  Here is a little portrait into my thoughts during this time--when I began to love my little gummy bear.

Rereading through my posts, I had forgotten that I got a spinal headache from the saddle block administered during my cerclage. 

For the first time in all my pregnancies, we decided to find out Baby's gender.  I was ecstatic when we found out we were having a little pink gummy bear to add to our family.

This post reveals much of what a mother who loses a pregnancy or a child feels while she waits to see if her efforts will be rewarded at the end of 40 weeks.

We were foster parents to our Angelo through August that year, and I remember with heartbreak the day they  took him to live permanently with his grandmother on the reservation. 

Wow.  I was big.  And I still had weeks to go at this point.

I got my stitch out on October 8th, and one of my favorite posts ever (one that I'd forgotten about, in all honesty) was "For the Last Time,"  where I expressed my joy about pregnancy and delivery.

And then, after a long night and a horrible morning (click here for the full birth story, including her stubborn refusal to enter the world in an anterior direction), here she finally was:

Our Evie.  Eve Diana Denton--named after the first woman on earth, and the last Tucker grandchild and the only one to bear her grandmother's name.

I enjoyed every single second with Evie as a newborn--dressed her like a living doll . . .

Who would have thought that after seven pregnancies, our eighth child would be . . .

October 2010--one year old

. . . white-blond with blue eyes?

 October 2011--two years old

2012--three years old

I love watching her excitement when someone comes home to see her.  I love the way she says, "Mommy, where IS you?"  or "Mommy, I lost you!"  or "Sanks (thanks)" or "SURE!"  I love snuggling close with her after naps and first thing in the morning.  I love watching her personality develop--her stubborn streak, her shy side, her love of babies.

I often marvel that God reserved such a spectacular blessing to complete our family.

I love you, Evie Diana Denton. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life loving you and being your mom.

Happy Birthday.

September 10

One birth story will stay locked in my heart. 

 It's been ten years today.  Strange to think that if life had been different, I would be helping a fourth grader with homework, shuttling her to tumbling and piano and play dates.  Every chair at my kitchen table would still be full and Lily would have a roommate.

As years pass, it gets sweeter and less painful, to be sure, but the wound never goes away.  Ever.

Someday, my love.

Thank you for the lessons you taught me--for the compassion and perspective.  And especially for reminding me always to focus on eternity.

Previous birthday posts here and here.