The story of Nina-Lou

I got pregnant with Nina-Louise in April of 2013 after having 3 early miscarriages in the year prior.  My pregnancy with her immediately felt different from my previous pregnancies.  It felt... secure.  When I was 8 weeks pregnant, we went in for a viability scan.  That morning, before the appointment, when I was walking Riggs in the park, I looked down to see a single butterfly wing sitting on the ground at my feet.  I thought it might be a good omen.  I knew it was silly; I don't believe in omens or fate or any of that shit.  But I wanted this one to work, and I thought it would, and I wanted something out there to tell me that it was ok to have faith in this little nug, burrowing its way into me.  Hours later, I saw her little heart beating away on a fuzzy computer screen.  She was alive.  Turner and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows: holy shit, we might actually have a baby.

We held our breath for the next 4 weeks, just waiting for the bleeding to start, or for my symptoms to go away (they did come and go a lot, and I was convinced on more than one occasion that we had lost her), or for the bad news at the next ultrasound.  I went in again at 10 weeks, and to our amazement she was still in there, and even waving her tiny arms and legs around.  At 12 weeks we had an NT scan, and she was so active that they could barely get the measurements.  We were so proud.  She was given an astronomically low chance of Downs and some other genetic issues.

At 15 weeks, on a camping trip with friends, I felt her kick for the first time.  Two little flutters on one side of my belly, then two little flutters on the other side.  It was real.  There was really a person growing in there.

When I was 16 weeks they wanted me to come in to check my cervix, and they did a pretty thorough check of the baby, as well.  They said she was a girl.  We had already felt it.  We knew.  She was our baby girl and she was alive and it was really happening for us.  My heart felt like it would burst!  I had everything I had been wanting and dreaming about for so long.

We did the 20 week anatomy scan, and everything looked amazing.  She had all of her little fingers and toes.  Her umbilical cord was functioning well.  Her organs were all there and doing their jobs.  I stared at her beautiful profile and imagined what her face would look like.  I imagined she would have my small nose and chubby cheeks, Turner's dark hair and perfect mouth.  I asked the tech at the end of the scan, "Is there anything, any little, seemingly insignificant thing, that I need to worry about or follow up on?"  She said, no, the baby looked perfect.  I agreed.  She was my daughter, and she was perfect.

At that point, I let myself go completely from worry.  I still had nagging doubts, I knew that babies sometimes died later in pregnancy, but I knew that wouldn't happen to us.  We had paid our dues.  We had suffered 3 losses already.  We had waited long enough.  Anytime I heard about or read about a stillbirth, I shut my ears to it completely; don't tell me that, I don't want to see that, I don't need to freak myself out worrying about that kind of thing.  That is a horrible tragedy and I am so sorry it happens to other people, but you have to understand that it won't happen to us because this baby is meant to be.  It's our turn.

I got big.  I felt her do somersaults.  I got terrible acid reflux and back pain.  I was the lady people held doors for, and the one that old ladies smiled at knowingly.  I ate whatever I wanted.  I rubbed my belly and fantasized about everything we would do together.  I thought of her every waking moment.  When I ate lunch by myself, I wasn't by myself, because she was in there.  I sang to her in the car.  I told her sweet things under my breath.  I apologized to her if I used particularly graphic language to curse out another driver on the road.  If I woke in the night, I could not go back to sleep unless I felt her kick.  I woke every morning and sipped my coffee and felt her stir awake with me.  I loved her.  I just loved her with every cell in my body.

After awhile, as she got bigger, I was confused about the fact that she seemed to be moving less.  I asked my midwife, my friends, and the internet if this was normal, and I was assured that it was.  The baby runs out of room, so the baby doesn't move as much.  I was sure everyone was right, and that other moms were just being dramatic when they talked about how much their babies kicked around and made their lives miserable.  I never got sick of feeling movement.  I lived for it.  I joked now and again if she punched me in the cervix or something particularly uncomfortable ("settle down in there, ya crazy bitch!"), but I still loved it.  My due date got closer.  I started measuring small, but it was within the normal limits, and the baby seemed fine, so no growth scan or NST was ordered.  I would have rolled my eyes if they were; people just needed to chill the fuck out and let my perfect baby be born the natural, beautiful way that she was meant to be.

At 37 weeks, on Christmas night, while watching Die Hard with Turner, I felt some crampy contractions.  They were pretty consistent (about every 10 - 15 minutes) but they were not super painful.  Easy to talk through.  But, I knew it was prelabor.  I knew that it could last for days, even weeks, but it was starting.  My baby was going to come soon.  I looked around at our cozy apartment, at our tiny xmas tree, our sleepy dog, and I felt so thankful and excited and peaceful.  Everything was the way it was supposed to be.

The prelabor contractions lasted a few days, and by the night of the 28th, they were painful enough that I felt compelled to breath through them.  I slept that night, but I woke up several times to breath and moan through the pain.  By the morning of the 29th, we were pretty sure this shit was HAPPENING.  I decided to fold laundry and watch football, stopping now and again to lean against a wall and get through a contraction.  Turner was a flurry of activity.  He packed an overnight bag bursting full of everything we could possibly need.  He walked the dog.  He made phone calls.  He stressed me out, honestly, but I loved him for it.  He is such a planner, like me.  He just wanted shit in order.  I was so grateful to be going through it with a partner.  It made so much sense; I could focus on having the baby and he could take care of the details.  I stopped worrying about what he was doing and focused on myself.

Eventually, the contractions got close enough together that we decided it was time to go to the hospital. It was early evening and the sun was setting and there were lots of folks out walking dogs, going to dinner, coming back from the park.  Every bump was excruciating, and sitting in the passenger seat while in labor was pretty awful, but it was ok because we were on our way.  Turner was doing his best to stay calm, drive safely.  He smiled to himself and said, "It's our turn, A-Bone!  It's finally our turn!"  I managed to say, "Yup!" as I leaned forward and grimaced through the pain.  We got to the hospital, and I couldn't help but think it was funny how much like a movie it wall was.  Big old pregnant lady and her husband walking in to Labor and Delivery, me panting and groaning and Turner trying to wrestle an overflowing overnight bag, along with whatever else he had thought we might need to get us through the labor.  We were hilarious, and excited, and scared, and happy.

They put us in a small room with a bed and a heart monitor for the baby, and the nurse explained that they would hook me up to the monitor for about 30 minutes, during which time they would see how far along I was, and then they would determine whether or not to admit me.  I really don't like the moment of having the doppler placed on my belly, because after 3 miscarriages, it can be a pretty upsetting experience when you don't hear anything.  However, from about 12 weeks on, every time it had happened in this pregnancy, that beautiful chugging train of a heartbeat would immediately fill the room.  It didn't happen this time.  She moved the monitor to different spots on my belly.  I started to panic, and she said not to worry.  Turner sat in a chair to my side, frozen, with his hand over his mouth.  This was our nightmare scenario.

They hooked me up to an ultrasound machine and brought in a more experienced midwife to check the baby.  She looked.  And looked.  She jostled Nina with the ultrasound wand to see if she could get a response.  She calmly turned to the nurse and said, "Jen, can you please call Dr. Norell and have her come in here? Now?"

I knew.  She didn't need to tell me.  But she did, she looked at me with kind eyes that were filling with tears and said, "What is happening right now is that I'm looking at your baby's aorta, and I cannot see a heartbeat.  We are bringing in the OB and the Pediatrician to double check, but I have to tell you that I think that your nightmare is coming true and your baby is gone."

The walls receded away.  I looked around me, trying to make sense of what was happening.  For a little while I was certain that I was having a dream, because it felt so strange.  I thought back to the day and the moments leading up to the present, and I realized that it couldn't be a dream.  It was real, it was happening.  I couldn't cry, I just nodded my head.  I wanted them to see that I knew, I understood what was happening, and that I wasn't going to freak out.  I heard Turner sob.  I started having another contraction and turned to my side.  I heard the nurses tell him to go to me, and he collapsed next to me, holding my hand, apologizing for everything he has ever felt guilty about in his entire life.  The room filled with people, and the nurse started to hurriedly run an IV on me, and I heard things like, "we just want to make sure mom is ok."  Oh yeah, I thought, I guess there's a chance I might die now, too.

I honestly didn't give a shit.

I was about 5 centimeters dilated, so they moved me into a delivery room.  I had planned on a natural birth, but I wanted to be mentally and physically numb.  I told them to get me high as fuck and stick an epidural in my spine, ASAP.  My two best girlfriends showed up, sobbing.  They each went to one of us and held us while we all cried.  The anesthesiologist came in and discussed with me the risks of an epidural.  She told me that I might not need one and I said, fuck it, ok, let's do this thing.  I did get narcotics, and while they got me good and high, I still felt all the pain.  I am glad I did it that way.  I am so grateful to that anesthesiologist for talking me out of the epidural.  Childbirth was painful, but I would do it 100 times over if Nina-Louise could be here with me now.  I'm glad I felt the experience.  I am proud of myself for doing it.

At 9:45, about 3 or 4 hours after arriving at the hospital, I pushed her body out of me.  She was 19.5 inches long and weighed 4 lbs 9 oz.  She was small and her placenta was small.  Intra Uterine Growth Restriction.  We never found out why.  She just had a small placenta; no blood clots, no cord issues; just not quite enough of a placenta to get her the nutrients she needed to last til the very end.  At some point she stopped growing, and wasted away.  My poor baby.  I can't believe she starved in there.  She had a head full of dark hair, a small button nose, a tiny little chin, and the most perfect, heart shaped mouth I have ever seen.  She had beautiful hands.  Her jaw was slack and she was dead weight in my arms.  She was unbelievably, tragically, undeniably dead.

As I held her I really didn't know what I was supposed to do.  I couldn't cry.  I just stared.  My OB was really wonderful.  She narrated the experience for me, showing me each part of her body and saying it out loud: "here are her hands", and "see, she has dark hair", and so on.  It helps me remember it, her doing that.  I am so, so grateful that I remember it.  We didn't want pictures.  I heard everyone around me crying.  I handed her back.  This was so fucked up.

I ended up not needing any stitches.  We went home before midnight.  Turner and I held each other in bed, and calmly talked about how grateful we were to have had her, how much we loved her, and how this experience would change our lives forever.  We talked about adopting a puppy.  We said we might not be meant to be parents.  We said all kinds of crazy shit.  We drifted off to sleep, while the shock and weight of what had happened hovered all around us.  I woke up hours later, while it was still dark, and burst into tears.  My baby.  My meant-to-be, rainbow after the storm, gentle, tiny, innocent, perfect baby was GONE.  She wasn't in my belly.  I never got to hold her in my arms alive.  Everything I had dreamed about, it was all over.  I felt like I should combust.  But I didn't.  The pain of it ran through me like a drug and it was the worst thing I have ever felt.

She's gone.  We're here.  And none of it makes any fucking sense.

A whole lot of nothing.

I picked up Nina's ashes from the mortuary today.  The process of having her cremated was exactly like I thought it would be.  The mortuary was cold, the ceilings tall, the art shitty, the curtains and decor tacky... The people who worked there were appropriately sympathetic and kind, but business-like.  The cold business of death is bizarre.

I have known for several days that her ashes were ready to be picked up, but I put off doing it, because I wasn't sure how I should approach it.  Should my husband and I go together?  Because, that involves a certain amount of planning, since he's at work while the mortuary is open.  Can I go by myself?  Should I bring a friend for moral support?  Can I just swing by and grab them?  Do I need to emotionally prepare myself for this?  It's not like picking up dry cleaning, but I also don't hold any misconceptions that her soul is floating around in that tiny box.  I don't refer to the ashes as "her".  I refer to them as "her ashes".  Because that's what they are.

I decided to go by myself, today, because I was going to be about 3 blocks away at a chiropractor appointment anyway, and after that I would have a few hours free to cry, or be depressed, or do whatever one does after one picks up one's daughter's remains.  It went pretty much as I expected.  When I got there they led me into a private room to wait for Melissa, the lady at the mortuary who's job it is to handle the delicate matter of dead babies.  She left the room to get the paperwork and I proceeded to sob violently into my hands for about 30 seconds, after which I took a deep breath and got it together real quick before she got back.  She came back into the room and had me sign some papers stating who I was, my relationship to the deceased, and that I had received the death certificate and the remains.  I filled these out (relationship to deceased: mother) as tears poured out of my eyes and ran down my face, but I didn't sob.  She nodded, knowingly, and looked at me with deep sympathy.  It was like I was a character in a Lifetime Special: the Bereaved Mother, who stoically takes her daughter's ashes and silently walks out the door as rivers of tears run down her cheeks.  Turns out that shit is real.  That shit happens.

I got in the car, and I held that small, lightweight box to my chest and cried harder than I have in days.  I cried the not-pretty tears that there is no point in wiping away.  I coughed and gagged on my sobs and let snot run out of my nose and filled my glasses with sad little salty lakes.  I let myself cry until I was absolutely sure I was done.  The last thing we need right now is for me to drive around crying and crash the car we just managed to pay off.  These are the things the Bereaved Mother thinks about; safety first.  Then I texted with Turner a bit (we've had some pretty intense and deep conversations via text these past few weeks), and then I drove home.

I don't know what we're going to do with the ashes.  I feel attached to them.  Although I know they aren't "her", they are what I have left of her.  They hold meaning to me.  We have decided that eventually we will scatter them, but we don't know where, or when.  In the meantime, should I find a pretty box to put them in?  an urn?  Two dear friends of mine from when I lived in Seattle sent me a little statue of Jizo, who they tell me is sort of a Buddhist saint who protects travelers, women and children.  Right now Jizo is sitting atop her box of ashes, and I like the idea that Nina-Lou is being protected; held, like I should be holding her.  The box is sitting on a small bookshelf in what was going to be her room (it's actually a walk in closet; we live in a one bedroom), but I think that if Turner is ok with it, I'll put them on the bookshelf by my bed.  I don't feel like they need to be displayed, per se, I just think that they should be somewhere where I can see them every day.  Somewhere near the warmth of human contact; not cold and alone in a dark closet.  And here I am, despite myself, attaching some sort of personality to these remains.  It's hard to avoid doing so.

Holy crap, I miss her.  I still have these moments in which I find myself fantasizing that she lived and we took her home, and she were a month old, and that I could look at her face, kiss her little hands, see her smile for the first time.  In the wake of those fantasies, the realization that she is gone, really completely fucking GONE, hits so hard.  Those are the times that I cry so hard that I wail and scream, like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.  It's so unfair and meaningless, her death.  She's just not here, and that absence, that concave void that I can physically feel right in the center of my chest, is the worst thing that I have ever felt.  I wish it were sharp, like a dagger, or burning, like a cigar put out on my skin, but it's not.  It's just a stupid, silent fucking NOTHING.  The dullness and nothingness of it is cruel, and dark, and it takes my breath away.

1 month

Today would have been Nina-Lou's 1 month birthday.  A one month birthday isn't that big of a deal for the majority of us, but with babies, these milestones become important.  It pains me greatly to think of all the stuff she might have been doing by now.

For Turner and I, it means we've survived a month of this awful, crushing grief.  I have made some progress... I no longer cry every morning the moment I open my eyes.  I have eaten lunch with a friend without breaking down.  I have held a baby.  I have been around more than one baby at once.  I even went to the grocery store by myself yesterday.  I still cry, every single day, but it is not always with deep sobs that threaten to tear me to pieces.  I haven't put on eye makeup yet, but I have considered buying some waterproof mascara.

One of the most cruel things about going through a tragedy like this, is that the minutiae of daily life goes on.  Continuing to live while my daughter is dead is the hardest thing I have ever done, and will likely (I hope) ever do.  It takes every ounce of strength that I have, which isn't  much.  Many of my family and friends have commented on how "strong" Turner and I are being through all of this.  While I appreciate their recognition that this does indeed take a LOT of strength, I often respond by saying, "I'm not strong.  I just don't have a choice."  And I really mean that.  The amount of strength I have is irrelevant.  I HAVE to open my eyes each day and face what has happened.  I HAVE to eat food.  I HAVE to put clothes on.  Every single one of those things hurts me deeply, because they are all reminders of how empty my life feels.  I honestly feel like I have zero strength left.  I used it all up just opening  my eyes the morning after Nina-Louise was born and died.  The fact that we have made it a month without the world imploding on itself is crazy to me.  Because that's what should have happened when she died.  The world should have ceased to exist.  To live in a world in which babies die and their bereaved mothers wake up and drink coffee and answer emails and pay bills is fucked beyond belief.  Yet, there it is. The sun comes up.  The tide goes in and out.  The weather changes.  I throw my hands up at all of it, because it makes no sense.  And then I do the dishes, because they're dirty, and someone has to do them.

It is awful and amazing that women have been going through this forever, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.  I am in awe of the fact that we were ALL under the assumption that Nina-Louise was going to be born alive and into my arms.  When I went to my group prenatal care sessions, we talked about what diapers we were going to use, how long we planned to breastfeed, what sort of help we would ask for in the first weeks at home.  We NEVER discussed the fact that 1 out of 160 of us would deliver a dead baby.  1 out of 160 are fucking terrible odds.  Now that I have joined this club of bereaved mothers, I cannot believe how many of us are out there, choking back tears as we struggle to accomplish simple daily tasks.

Despite my whining, I get it.  I know that life goes on, and ultimately, I want it to.  But I constantly wrestle with the fact that I do these mundane things, when what I feel like I should be doing is running into the streets and shouting, "My fucking baby DIED!  She was beautiful, and she died, and I miss her!  You have to know that she existed, and that I should be holding her right now, and that you should be telling me how adorable she is!  I am not just some normal person, I am a mother who lost her baby!  We live in a world where that can HAPPEN, for fuck's sake!"  Then there's the other part of me, which wants more than anything to just be normal.  To not cry every single day.  To laugh with my friends without that pit in my stomach.  It is really hard to balance loving her and grieving her with healing myself and finding happiness.  I am coming to realize that I will cling to this grief forever, because it is also the love I have for Nina-Lou.  I will, for the rest of my life, miss that little girl.  I believe that I will also learn to live with the fact that she is gone, and find a way to live without her.  I'm making strides, and I'm going through the motions, but it hurts.  It always, always, always hurts.  I both despise and cling to the pain; I hate it because it has to exist at all, and I cling to it because it's all I have left of her.

Today I'm going to burn some sage in Nina-Louise's room, and whisper her name to myself, and tell that ball of energy that I think might be her how much I love and miss her, and how much I would sacrifice to have her here with me.  I am also going to make beef stock, fold laundry, clean the toilet, and join a dear friend for dinner.  Because I have to live.  I just fucking have to.

My little bunny.

My therapist asked me yesterday, if what remains of Nina-Lou were a ball of energy, if I have a sense of what that energy would be like.  I think that what she was getting at was, how can I find peace with what is left of her.  My therapist asked me if I could imagine that that ball of energy could say to me, "I'm ok, mom.  It just wasn't my time.  I'll always be here."  I simply said, no, I can't; those thoughts aren't a comfort to me.  My problem with that idea is that it implies that my baby had these adult thoughts and feelings, which I just don't buy.  She was a baby.  She knew nothing more than my womb, my heartbeat, the sound of my voice and the other sounds that filtered through my belly.  She was utterly innocent.  It also implies that she is somehow watching over ME, which isn't the way it's supposed to be.  I should be caring for HER.  I should be telling HER that I'll always be here.  I could drive myself completely mad thinking about all of the things I should be doing.  

For me, rather than imagining that my baby is some sort of guardian angel or spirit who watches over me, I imagine myself holding her tiny body to my chest, and then feeling her melt back into me.  I know that eventually I will have to forgive my body for whatever it did to fail her in the end, but in the meantime, I just want to think of her as my sweet baby, who I love, and hold her spirit inside my heart, protected, warm, safe.  I don't ever want to let go of her.  

There is this chidren's book called The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.  In it, the little bunny tells his mom that he's going to run away.  He comes up with increasingly grandiose ways in which he will escape her, and she comes up with even more grand ways in which she will stay with him.  I used to find this story a little disturbing... I mean, geez, this poor bunny just wants a little independence.  But, having now experienced the loss of my only child (whoa, I had to take a little break after typing that phrase... I still can't believe that I am a person who has lost a child), I have a different take on it.  It's about the unbreakable bond between a mother and a child.  If, at some point in the story, the little bunny had said, "Then I will stop my heart from beating, and I won't be alive any more, and you won't ever be able to hold me again," then I imagine that his mother would have said, "Then I will hold your spirit inside of me and think of you every day until I am also gone.  For you will always be my little bunny."  

My little bunny.  My Nina-Lou.  I just can't let her go.  I'm quite sure I never will.  

Change

Well... shit.  I started this blog 3 years ago and quickly lost interest.  Since then, everything has changed.  I started acupuncture school, I blew out my ACL and had surgery to repair it, I retired from roller derby, and the majority of the women I know got pregnant and had babies.

I also got pregnant, but my baby died.

My baby died.

Those words get a little easier to think and write as time goes on, but I cannot say them out loud without crying.  It sounds so wrong.  It looks so wrong written on the page.  It is a horrible thing that was supposed to happen to someone else; someone stronger, or someone who hadn't suffered as much as my husband and I already had.

But it happened to us.  Our baby girl, Nina-Louise Danger Van Ryn (yes, I wanted her middle name to be Danger... a reminder from her mom that she was born to be a badass, even when she didn't feel like one), was born and died on Dec 29, 2013.  There are many more details to this story, which I hope to eventually share here, but that simple fact is what has changed our lives forever.  She is gone, and we are here.  Without her.

I debated a lot about whether I should write publicly about losing my daughter.  The fact is that four weeks after losing Nina-Lou, miraculously, I'm still here.  Shattered, irreversibly changed, but here.  She died and I lived.  I don't know how or why I lived, but I did.  I remember telling people, towards the end of my pregnancy, "If I lose her at this point, I will be destroyed.  I will lose my mind.  I won't be able to go on living."  Oh, how I wish it were that easy, when something like this happens, to just dissolve.  I would like to curl up into a ball and shut my eyes until it's over.  But I wake up.  I shower.  I put food in my mouth and chew it up and swallow.  I don't find any meaning or purpose in these things, but I do them because I have to.  I hope that by writing here about my experience, maybe I'll find some purpose in this life; the life that I have to go on living without her.

Maybe I will create a tribute to my lovely little girl.  Maybe I will look back at this later and realize how far I've come.  Maybe I will provide solace to other bereaved parents.  Maybe, at the very least, I will pass the hours of the day a little quicker until it's time to crawl into bed with my husband, and fall into the sweet, mindless surrender of sleep.