On Tuesday, July 7th, 2009, Chris and I lost our sweet baby girl Maggie. That afternoon I went for my 38-week doctor appointment. I’d been feeling good, but it turned out that my blood pressure was very high. When the doctor couldn’t hear the heartbeat on Doppler, he did an ultrasound. He tried and tried, but couldn’t find the heartbeat. Everything had been going well, but then suddenly our little girl was gone. The doctor called Chris, and when Chris got there, we were told that I needed to get to the hospital right away to deal with pre-eclampsia.
Margaret Stella was delivered by C-section at 9:56pm on Tuesday night. Chris stayed by my side the whole time. The doctors discovered a malformation in part of the umbilical cord right by her navel – there was a narrowing of the cord, and a kink in that part – a fluke thing that could not be detected on ultrasound. Our sweet girl had probably been gone for a couple of days (what I’d thought were her movements were probably contractions). My obstetrician told us about the cord problem as soon as he found it, and this brought us a bit of peace. I was so worried that I had done something wrong (or failed to do something). We will never understand why this horrible thing happened, but at least we know how.
I stayed in the hospital until Saturday – my recovery from surgery went as well as could be expected, but my blood pressure was fluctuating too much for them to let me go home. Everyone at the hospital was wonderful, especially the nurses who took care of us. They didn’t just look after my physical recovery, but they took care of Chris and me as we tried to survive the worst few days of our lives.
Our families also came together to help us through this. My dad and stepmother flew to Connecticut on Wednesday, and Chris’ mother, siblings, and niece came in from New Hampshire on Thursday. A priest baptized Maggie, and that brought us all a bit of comfort. We would do absolutely anything for her to have been born alive and healthy, but we feel like our family has a new guardian angel.
We are so grateful for the support, comfort, and prayers that we’ve gotten from family and friends. I don’t think we will ever get over this, but with a lot of help, we are surviving it.
