Our Saddest Day

My hubby and I had been trying for over 2 years to get pregnant. We had finally given up on natural methods and were scheduled for an IVF in March. January was to be our "month off" before we started the IVF process. We decided to take a week and go to the Bahamas to relax. Two weeks later, I discovered that I was pregnant and naturally so. As you can imagine, we were in total shock and disbelief when we saw the positive pregnancy test! Our prayers had finally been answered, this was our miracle baby!

Up until my 25th week I had the most wonderful, uneventful pregnancy. My girl was healthy and I was loving it. Maybe my body took a little while to get here, but I truly felt that I was made to have babies. I was a part of a miracle, growing a life inside of me. A baby that my husband and I created out of so much love. Life was so good!

At 25 weeks exactly, on my birthday, I started spotting and cramping. We were in DC on vacation and were told by my OB to go to the nearest ER. They worked me up and decided that I was just having premature contractions since my cervix had not changed. We decided to cut vacation short and go straight home, we didn't want to take any chances with our little one. The whole drive home from the airport I was having painful contractions about every 3 min. We went straight to our hospital and I was admitted. I was put on procardia and when I broke through with that, I was put on a Magnesium drip to stop the contractions and to get steroids on board. At this point, my cervix was still closed but I was 80% effaced. I was to be on strict bed rest in the hospital for as long as our Harper would stay put. Hubby kept calling me the "little red hen" sitting on my egg. I had no signs of infection, just an elevated white blood count. They were really not sure what caused the premature labor, maybe placental seperation, maybe infection...no real answers. We would just have to wait and see. The whole time I was in the hospital, Harper was doing wonderful...strong heartbeat, great movement. We were confident that she was a strong girl and that she would do well if she came early! I stuck it out on bed rest in the hospital for a week and then on Thursday night, I started contracting again...3 min apart. Friday am they put in the epidural. I was contracting hard core at this point and dilating. We were still supposed to hang out, wait and see...try to keep her inside as long as we could. Then we lost her heart beat and when we found it, it was extremely low (90's). We decided we had to deliver her. When they broke my water, it was meconium stained (meaning fetal distress). This was the scariest moment of my life, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I didn't believe it was real, how could we lose the heartbeat? She had been so strong until now.

I delivered our daughter, Harper Grace, on June 25, 2010, at 2:39 on a Friday afternoon. I could tell by my husbands face that she didn't look good when she came out. I will never forget the look on his face that day, so sad, so devastated, so lost. The NICU team tried to resuscitate her but she was too weak. I can still hear the sound of them trying to breathe for her, the silence was so painful, I wanted so badly to hear her cry. I prayed she would be ok, I screamed. How could this be real? I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare...she was gone and so were our hopes and dreams. How could this be happening? I would have given anything for her and I still would to have her in my arms.

This was the saddest day of my life, I go over it again and again in my mind everyday...all the what ifs and whys. She was a perfect baby girl, it is so hard to understand why this happened to us. We are good people with good families, we would have been great parents and given her so much love. It is so unfair.

Harper's spirit will always be with us, our first born, our sweet angel in heaven. I always knew I loved my baby during my pregnancy, but I fell in love on the day she was born. The first time a mother sees her child is the most amazing moment. I felt so much love as I held her in my arms for the first and last time. She was perfect in every way, my sweet girl. I have never known such love or such pain and loss since that day. There will always be a hole in my heart.