“I’m sorry, I can’t find a heartbeat.”
Those words kept ringing through my head in the days preceding the loss of Mia. My story starts out as a normal pregnancy. My husband and I found out that we were pregnant in August of 2001. Everything was going well up until my 7th month as I went to the doctor for my regular appointment and she said I was measuring small. The next day, we went back for an ultrasound and the technician said everything looked fine. So I continued in my normal living. My 2½ year old was keeping me busy as we anxiously awaited the birth of our second child. As with the first child, we waited to find out the sex of the baby.
At 34½ weeks, on a Monday I was having a normal day. Just trying to prepare for the new baby by going through clothing and taking them up and down the stairs in storage containers. I had a normal lunch, which consisted of a salami sandwich. Sometime in the afternoon as I put my daughter down for her nap, I started to feel pain in my stomach. The pain persisted and would not allow me to do anything. I laid down on my bed for a while, but could not find rest.
I finally called the doctor and she asked me several questions. One question in particular was what did I have for lunch. I said salami and she thought maybe it was causing the pain as it may have gone bad. I said I don’t think it is as the pain is so severe. She asked if I am bleeding and I said no. She also asked if the pain felt like labor pains similar to my daughter. I said, yes. She then told me to come to the hospital.
I immediately called my husband and he rushed home. We arranged for babysitting for our daughter. On the 30 minute journey to the hospital, I was in extreme pain. After parking in the parking garage, I walked into the hospital, down the hall and to the elevators and pressed the 8th floor button as this is where the doctor told us to go.
When we were on the floor we went to the nurse’s desk and I saw my doctor. Afterwards, my doctor said I was white as a ghost. They took me to a room and strapped those horrible belts around my stomach. The nurse proceeded to move the belts around searching for a heartbeat. She kept searching and then said, “I’ll get the doctor.”
The doctor came in and started doing an ultrasound. She was rolling the wand all around my belly and it was hard for me to see anything, but in my mind I knew something was terribly wrong. She turned to us and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t find a heartbeat”…