The Worst Day

"I'm sorry, I don't know what to say...there is no...we cannot detect a heartbeat." The doctor looked at me with sad eyes, then at the monitor, then at his feet. 

They wheeled me down to another floor for a second ultrasound. It didn't show anything different. She was still. No whooshing, galloping baby heartbeat came from the machine. My husband began to weep, and grief ripped its way from some dark corner in the center of me and out my mouth, filling the room with a ragged animal wail. It went on and on and I couldn't control it. A part of me had already known. I had known as I waited to be buzzed in at the door to the maternity ward. I knew when the fetal heart monitor was silent, when my belly felt oddly squishy as the nurse felt around for my baby's position. I knew before the first ultrasound and before the second. But I'd hoped....I'd hoped. The bottom fell out of the world. All joy was sucked out of my life in that instant. Colours grayed, music lost its sweetness, and food lost its taste. She was gone, my beautiful baby girl was gone, and so was the person I used to be.

It was just over two weeks ago. It was Valentine's Day and my last day of work before maternity leave. A day of celebration. I finished up some projects for my work replacement, then went for lunch at one of my favourite restaurants with my closest coworkers. I opened a gift: tiny, hot pink ballet shoes, a plush, hooded baby towel, a practical onesie. I oohed and awed. We ate and joked about the baby, talked about what I was looking forward to the most. "Everything," I said, with a shy, crooked smile. I poked at my belly a few times during my meal. Shook it gently from side to side. "You're awfully quiet in there today!" I was glowing. Powerful. Triumphant.

I was also a little uneasy. Was she sleeping longer than usual? Wait...had I for sure felt her move that morning? Or had I only felt Braxton Hick's contractions pushing things around? I went back to work and called my husband. "Don't be worried, but I haven't felt the baby move much today - I think we should go to the hospital, just in case."

Every memory of that day makes me feel physically sick. I hate the me I was on that day. I wish I could shake her and scream at her, "it's too late! She's already gone! You lost her in the night while you were sleeping and you don't even know it yet! How could you not know?" I also envy that me. She was so brilliantly, beautifully, perfectly happy. She was so hopeful. So confident. So alive.

We had been calling our baby "Shrimpy" since the week we found out we were pregnant; my pregnancy book had said that she looked like "an oddly shaped prawn." But her true name we had picked out long before and had kept it secret from all but family. Haven Melody... "safe place" and "music, song." When we found out at 19 weeks that we were indeed having a girl, we were overjoyed. Haven was real, and she was ours. We had imagined our future daughter for years, and now a surprise but welcome pregnancy would give us a chance to start the family we so wanted. We were going to have our longed-for, dreamed-about baby girl. We had joked about so many scenarios over the years, tried to imagine what she would be like. This little person growing inside me already had a personality and a history that she didn't even know about yet.

The third trimester came and we drank the Kool-Aid. Stillbirth was something that happened to other people. Something that didn't happen very often. We had no idea that babies are born still every day and no one ever talks about it. Not your family doctor, not your obstetrician, not your pregnancy book. It's the dirty little secret that is hidden from pregnant women to protect them from worrying. We had no idea that, as first-time parents, we were at a higher risk of it happening to us, even though I had a normal, healthy, "picture perfect" pregnancy (my OB's words). That 50% of the time, parents get no answers, even after an autopsy. That research is scarce, and "stillbirth" is an umbrella term that can mean one of so many scenarios. That it can happen very suddenly, with no warning, and you can go from the heights of happiness to the depths of grief on the turn of a dime. Death can rob you in your sleep.

She's gone. My baby. My hope, my future, my joy.

We are among the "babylost." Parents with empty arms and a hollow ache. Adrift. But she is still in our hearts...our love for her is Haven's Melody.