By Heather Steinacker, MS, CNS, LDN
Disclaimer: Please read with caution if you have experienced the loss of a pregnancy or a child. It is my hope that putting my story out there will help you find comfort if you went through what I went through. But I also know how incredibly painful it is to encounter these types of stories, especially when you least expect it.
I wrote this during my first year in grad school, about 7 years ago. It was for an assignment that I had been given in one of my classes. This class was a meditation and mindfulness class, and was the first time I had ever had any sort of experience with meditation and mindfulness. It was also the first time I ever sat down and just started writing my feelings. I have always wanted to share this story, but it was such a tragic event in my life, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Part of me felt that sharing my story might help other women who had gone through something similar, but the other part of me just wanted to bury the memory as deep as I could. But this class taught me how to bring those feelings front and center and confront them. This was the first time I had let myself sit with this memory. I took my time and just wrote, and these are the words that came out. If you have ever suffered from the loss of a pregnancy or a child, my hope is that you might be able to find some comfort in reading my words and how I came to allow myself to have these feelings and share my experience in its entirety….
After struggling to get pregnant with our 2nd child for almost a year, my OBGYN told me that I would need fertility treatments. We finally got pregnant and we were so happy! We couldn’t contain our excitement and shared the news with everyone. At about 5 weeks, we were out shopping with our 2-year-old and I started having terrible pains in my abdomen. When we got home, I was in so much pain that my husband had to call the doctor for me. I was sent for an ultrasound. The baby was there and looked okay! We were so relieved. Then the doctor saw what she called a Subchorionic Hemorrhage, or a “bleed.” She said that most of the time they resolve themselves and bleed out or absorb back into the lining of the placenta. If I got plenty of rest and stayed off of my feet for a few weeks, then everything should be fine. We went home, feeling a little relieved but very worried. Weeks went by and I never stopped bleeding. I stayed in bed and did everything the doctor told me to do. One night, I began bleeding so heavily that I felt light-headed. I called the on-call OBGYN, who told me to go to the Emergency Room. They took me right back and gave me an ultrasound. The baby was still okay. But the “bleed” was getting larger, not smaller. I was sent home again, with the instructions to remain on strict bedrest. My poor 2-year-old. She was so upset with me. Mommy couldn’t play with her, or pick her up and hold her, or even put her to bed at night. But I was going to do everything in my power to keep that baby safe. Another few weeks passed, and I had to go back to the ER. They did another ultrasound, and we were able to see the baby moving around. But the “bleed” was still there, growing even bigger. It was then that they sent me to Maternal Fetal Medicine. I was hopeful that they would have the answers I needed to hear. Was this my fault? Would my baby be okay? They gave me another ultrasound. It was a girl. She was beautiful. But the “bleed” was still there and even bigger than her. The doctor at Maternal Fetal was not as optimistic. He saw that the “bleed” was causing a small tear in my placenta. He sent me straight to the hospital where I was to begin monitored bed rest. I was put in the maternity ward, among the women who were delivering healthy babies. They were happy and they all got to go home with their babies in their arms. The nurses got to come in and check on me in between taking care of newborns and their happy mothers. I knew that I would never get there, that this was the end. A few days into my stay, it was determined that I needed a blood transfusion because I had lost so much blood. My OBGYN actually told me that she had never, in her 30 years of practice, seen a case like mine. Wow! She had no idea how to deal with me! If I had been somewhere else, or with a different doctor, how would things be? After the transfusion, I started having contractions. I was 20 weeks pregnant. The doctor wanted to get me to 24 weeks so that I could be transferred to a hospital with a NICU and my baby girl would have a chance at survival. Sometimes labor can be stopped. But now it was a matter of saving me. I was having contractions because my placenta had torn completely. I was in danger of dying from loss of blood if they didn’t let the labor continue. So I was in labor for 36 hours, knowing that my baby girl wouldn’t make it. I could hear other women in labor, who would get to hold their babies. The whole time I knew that mine wasn’t going to make it. She was born and the doctor asked if we wanted to hold her and say good-bye. My husband did, but I couldn’t. It was too painful. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t save her. I didn’t protect her. I missed my 2-year-old daughter, and all I could think about was how she could have lost me. She had been without me for almost 2 weeks straight, in addition to the 4 months before that when I was on bedrest at home. What was this doing to her? To our relationship? When we finally got home from the hospital, she didn’t want me. She wanted Daddy. Our bond was severed. I blamed myself. And then I lost faith. How could God have let this happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? What did I do to deserve this? And then there were the people we had told about the pregnancy. We used social media to get the word out quickly, but then had to read all of the condolences and stories on how they can’t imagine what we are going through. The hardest part was when someone would see me and ask how the baby was. I would get upset and they would feel awful. And then came the phone calls from the nurses, asking how I was coping. For a year after, one nurse in particular called my house every month. She wanted me to join a support group. It wasn’t her business. She should just leave me alone! I was grieving in my way, and I didn’t need a stranger telling me how to cope. I was trying to forget and all she was doing was making it worse. I decided then that I would not let anything like that happen again. It meant not taking risks. It meant protecting my daughter from everything. I didn’t want to let anything bad happen to anyone I love, ever again. The impact that this event has had on my life has been significant. I had another pregnancy and was a nervous wreck the whole time. My son was born safe and healthy. I became scared of anything that could take me away from my kids. You could say I am over-protective. But I cannot ever imagine having to go through something like that again.
This was hard for me to write about. It has been almost 7 years since it happened, and this is the first time I actually wrote about it. I cried during most of my writing. I could feel a pain in my chest. Like the pain you get when you are holding back tears. Finally, I let it all go and had a really good cry. There was some anger, too. Since this is the first time in a while that I have looked at the entire event (not just the outcome), I had memories coming back that I haven’t accessed in years. I hadn’t remembered that I didn’t want to see or hold her. I felt like since I couldn’t save her, I had no right to see her. But how is that useful to me now? Seven years later, I know that I had so much love in my heart for her. I know that she is somewhere happy now, and that I will see her again someday. If I look at it that way, I feel at peace. And although this will always be a painful event for me, this assignment helped me see that it doesn’t have to be something that causes me constant pain. I can let go of the anger and resentment I have been holding onto against myself, and the doctors, nurses, and other women in the maternity ward.
Over the past 7 years, I have grown and “healed” in small ways. That is a matter of time going by. There are times when it is more difficult than others (the anniversary of it, when someone mentions losing a child or a baby, the whole month of October, which is pregnancy and infant loss remembrance, etc.), but I usually have a small cry with my husband and then move on. This is the first time that I have actually gone deep into the memories of the event. I realized that I was holding onto a lot of resentment, mostly towards myself. I saw this when I read back what I wrote. But as I sit here and type this now, I am actually feeling a sense of relief. I feel like that resentment is lifting. I know there was nothing I could have done to change the situation. It was meant to happen, and it is not going to help me to stew on the why’s for the rest of my life. I have 2 beautiful children who I love more than anything, and they are my focus now. I will never fully move on from this, or let this story go. But I know that I can let certain parts of it go. It is important for me to honor her by remembering her time here in a positive way, not beat myself up over what could have been.
So there you have it. My story. The event that started me on the path to where I am today. I can say that now, without feeling guilty. It DID send me on a path, and that path has been a wellness journey in which I found my health. It led me to the birth of my son, my rainbow baby that I was told would be impossible after what my body went through. And it led me back to school, where I enrolled in 2 Master’s programs at 37 years old (I got a lot of “what were you thinking” looks from people). But those degrees enabled me to help other people find their paths to wellness, and I am so grateful for that.
It has been 7 years since I wrote these words, and today is the 13th anniversary of when we lost our baby girl. I still have some moments of grief, but I have come to accept those moments and even embrace them. I went from “why did this happen to me?” to believing that perhaps this happened for a reason. Will I ever “get over it” per se? No, and that is okay. I’m not sure I will even ever fully accept what happened. But, what I can do, and what I WILL do, is allow myself to grieve and be human, without beating myself up. And I will allow myself to share my story. I will talk about her often, instead of suppressing my feelings about what I went through. And I will love myself, my life, my family, and the beautiful children I have. For I am blessed.