Well, the few of you that read my blog already know about my recent tragedy. On July 3, I went in for a 20 week ultrasound (very excited because I brought Alan with me & we were going to find out the sex- plus he had never seen the baby move like I had, so I couldn't wait for that). After 15 minutes of taking u/s pictures, they told me that the baby had died, probably at about 17 weeks.
The following Monday I delivered the baby at 10:03 pm and that Friday we buried the baby in a cemetery.
We don't know the sex yet (too undeveloped to tell, but my doctor thinks it was a boy). The baby was 7.5 inches and weighed 3.2 oz. He most likely died from the cord being wrapped around his neck. The chances of that happening in the 2nd trimester are about 1 in 10,000. We're still waiting for the tests done on the baby's DNA and the placenta, so we'll know what to expect the next time. Those are the bare-boned facts. I won't include, for now, how unbelievable depressed I am when I think about my tiny little baby dying inside me and I didn't know and couldn't help even if I had known. Or the horror of spending 16 hours in the labor and delivery wing of a hospital, waiting to deliver your dead child whom you spent months looking forward to and loving. Maybe I'll save that for another time.
I don't think the pics above are really graphic (I have others of the baby in more detail, and while it's not that bad, I don't want to subject my baby to so much exposure on the internet.) Suffice to say, everything was there and in tact, and the only "grossness" was that the baby had been dead for a couple weeks so the bones had shifted a bit and the skin was disolored. He didn't even small bad, since the amniotic fluid had preserved him. His hands and feet were so perfect- right down the nails. The eyes, the nose, the mouth- even the little biceps- everthing was there but in miniature.
I don't want to leave this post on too sad a note. I'm doing ok and my family & Alan have been good to me. I'm taking it "one day at a time." (I never understood that phrase till now). I have to keep reminding myself, though, that little Joseph Gerard/Catherine Hope is in God's care now, and that's even better than my care. I don't know how the lack of baptism plays a role, but I might as well assume that God will let my baby in heaven, since thinking otherwise won't help anything and will drive me mad. So, here's my tiny baby.
