I will warn you that this is a painful story and sometimes quite graphic. This is our story, the story of Geoff and Jessica.I am 26, a marriage and family therapist, and the husband of my beautiful wife Jessica of four years. We have tried to conceive for all four years with many health related difficulties, and after we finally found out my hunny bunny was pregnant we were ecstatic. We went out and bought the baby books, we had parties and told our families and friends, we went shopping at all the baby stores and opened registries, we picked out a doctor and a hospital, we designed either Aiden's or Ivalise's new bedroom to be; you name it, we did it. I spent hours just lying there with my wife rubbing her tummy, humming or singing to Jessica and the baby with a smile of joy and awe on my face; just the happiest father-to-be in the whole world. There was nothing in my training or in any of my books that could have prepared me for what happened next.
One night at the end of her first trimester, four days before the first ultrasound, she told me she had some very light spotting and she was worried. I looked it up in our books and on webmd.com, and they said a little spotting was normal and not to panic. I told her this and asked her if she wanted to go to the hospital and she said no. Several nights later, she told me the spotting had not stopped and that it was getting worse and she had some mild cramps. I asked her if the spotting was changing at all, and she said it was getting worse and lighter. That was when I panicked and took her to the ER.
As we waited (only for about 20 minutes, thank God) for a room, it got worse. Her cramps got worse and so did her flow; it was no longer spotting but something that resembled a very heavy period. They did some bloodwork, ran a HCG test, and did a pelvic exam. The doctor said there was nothing to do but wait. We waited for a couple of hours, and it just got worse and worse. She was running to the bathroom every ten minutes and blood was just pouring out of her; we were both freaking out. I held her hand every time, every trip, and I faithfully cleaned her up whenever she needed it, which was alot.
After it started getting really bad, they came and took her for an ultrasound. For some reason, they would not let me be in the room when they did it and it took over an hour. I was pacing in the hallway, praying to God, bargaining with Him and bartering with the Almighty. I begged Him, 'please let our child be OK, please let our child be OK, I will give you anything. Take me if you must, but let our child be OK.' My heart was a useless lump in my chest that felt like it was crawling up my throat to explode. I felt dizzy, like I was going to pass out. After what seemed like an eternity of alternately praying and cursing the tech that wouldn't let me be in the room, the tech told me she was taking my wife back to our ER room. We were told that the doctor needed to look at the results and would be there soon, but as soon as the tech left us alone, Jessica told me that she knew. She said that the tech had been freaking out, saying things like, "oh my God, I have never seen this much blood", and "I don't see a heartbeat".
We knew. I laid my face on her tummy and we cried. I don't think I have ever cried so hard in my life. The tears wouldn't stop. I felt like I was in the twilight zone. We were supposed to be a mommy and a daddy in six more months. Why, why? That's all I could think about. The doctor came in about twenty minutes later and told us that he couldn't see a heartbeat but that there was a fetal pole that was visible. He performed another pelvic exam and told us that her cervix was still plugged and that from his 20 years of experience, it could go either way, a 50/50 chance.
We waited. The pain and the bleeding continued for hours. They gave Jessica something for the pain but it didn't help. About every ten minutes, I changed the soaked sheet under my wife and wiped the blood away from her naked body. Sometimes my vision was so blurred with tears I couldn't see what I was doing. It was all I could do to make sure Jessica was comfortable, but every time I saw all that blood on my hands, I screamed inside. I learned that up until that point, I didn't know what real pain was. Real pain was holding the life giving blood of your unborn dying child in your hands, knowing that there was nothing you could do to make it stop.
I have been through a lot in my life. I held my grandfather's hand as he took his last breath. I helped my uncle pick pieces of my aunt's skull out of the wall with a pair of needlenose pliers after she was murdered, shot in the face. I even watched a man get cut up within an inch of his life when I was in jail once for a few weeks when I was a teenager. Absolutely none of those experiences came remotely close to the pain I felt when I looked at my crying wife and my red, red hands. The hardest thing I have ever done by far is to wipe away the blood from between my crying and sobbing wife's legs and then look at my red, red hands, knowing that our miracle child is dying and there is nothing I can do to stop it. That memory is forever burned into my mind.
I decided I needed some help, that I couldn't go it alone, so I ran outside for two minutes to call our families. I tried so hard to be brave, but when I called my mom to tell her, who I think was happier about the baby than we were, I broke down. I could barely talk between the tears. When she got to the hospital, she didn't even know why we were there. I told her and she was devastated. I called my best friend, who happens to be Jessica's cousin, and told him. He cried with me a little too and asked if there was anything at all he could do. After thinking about it, I asked him if he could tell just a few key family members who could pass it on to the rest of the family, and he did it. Bless you Gabe, your were my savior that night because God knows I couldn't have done it, called all those people who were so happy for us.
Several hours later, after the cramping subsided and the bleeding went down, they sent us home and told us to come back if anything at all happened or if anything came out and to bring it back with us if it did. We were starving, so I dropped Jessica off at home and ran and got some fast food. When I got back, Jessica was quiet and crying again. She told me that right after I left, she went to the bathroom and the cramps came back even worse and then all of a sudden she bled everywhere and something large came out of her. She told me that she didn't have the heart to check to see what it was and she closed the lid of the toilet and after five minutes of tears and screaming she flushed it; I don't blame her. I know I didn't have the strength to do what the doctor asked. We went back to the ER and they did another pelvic exam and sure enough her cervix was open. That was it, it was over.
It has been two and a half months since that awful night. We were told over and over again that it wasn't our fault, and that God must have known that the baby couldn't have survived, etc. etc. but it really didn't make it any easier. Jessica wrote about it in her journal and had a funeral for our unborn baby in the pages. I cried and cried and made a plaque that read, " 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.' Jeremiah 1:5" and put it in our garden, named Aiden's Garden, since everyone in our family (but me) thought it was going to be a boy. I listened to my favorite song from my favorite band over and over again, and here are the lyrics, the group was called Creed and the song is called With Arms Wide Open:
Well I just heard the news today
It seems my life is going to change
I closed my eyes, begin to pray
Then tears of joy stream down my face
With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
With arms wide open
Well I don't know if I'm ready
To be the man I have to be
I'll take a breath, I'll take her by my side
We stand in awe, we've created life
With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
Now everything has changed
I'll show you love
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
With arms wide open
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
Wide open
If I had just one wish
Only one demand
I hope he's not like me
I hope he understands
That he can take this life
And hold it by the hand
And he can greet the world
With arms wide open...
I can't listen to that song ever again without crying my eyes out. I thought that after so long, that it wouldn't hurt so bad, but then just today I was sitting in church and they were performing a baby dedication and I started crying. I wasn't angry, but it made me remember and I was praying that those parents knew how lucky and blessed they were to have a healthy baby who was so beautiful and sweet. I still dream about our unborn child, and I remember her (I wanted it to be a girl so bad) in my dreams. I love Jessica with all me heart and soul, and this experience made us just that much closer. We will try again someday, but we will never forget our first child.
I found something here at this site that made me cry and made me happy all at the same time that SandDevil6 wrote; she said that even though we may not have our babies, we are all still mothers (and fathers), but we are just the mommies and daddies of angels, and that nothing can ever change that and that someday, we will see our angels again. And I know that someday I will see Ivalise again and I will be proud of her because she will be the most beautiful angel in heaven, my guardian angel.
I love you Ivalise.
You will always be daddy's little girl.
~Geoffrey
