My Stillbirth (Child Loss) Story
Friday May 11th 2018. There I was, 38 weeks pregnant crying myself to sleep that night.I had the feeling that something was wrong. I hadn’t felt the baby move in the past hour or so and I found it very weird. I thought maybe I just haven’t really noticed since we were pretty busy around those days with renovating our room, buying a new car and buying final baby stuff. I remember that Friday I washed my hair and did all the laundry because we were literally expecting a baby any minute now and I really didn’t want to go into labor with dirty hair. I told my boyfriend Luis what I was feeling and he agreed with me that maybe me being so busy took away from noticing any baby movements so whatever, I kind of let it go.
Saturday, May 12th 2018. I woke up that morning extra early, drank almost a gallon of orange juice hoping it would make the baby active. I had a huge knot in my stomach and my heart felt sooooo heavy, nothing like I’ve ever felt before. It was time to get up and get ready for my Saturday class and so I did. Almost walking out the door I sat back on my bed debating if I should go to the hospital or just wait until my upcoming appointment on Tuesday. I thought “oh wth let me just go”, because I didn’t like the way I was feeling. I told Luis, who was getting ready for work that I was going to go to the hosp bc I wasnt feeling too well and he called me an Uber right away.
I get to the hospital, let them know that I’m not feeling much movement in there and they start hooking me up to the monitors. This is when things got REAL for me. (And as im writing this my heart is racing because I’m literally feeling as if I’m reliving the moment). As I’m laying down the nurse is looking for the heartbeat. I’m still feeling pretty positive at this point. She turns up the volume to the monitor and tries to find it a second time but nothing happens. This is where my tears start running down my face because although nothing has been confirmed, I start to realize that theres a high chance that my baby boy isn’t alive anymore. A doctor comes in and says to the nurse something along the lines of “oh I’m hearing that you’re not finding the heart beat, let me bring the sono machine”. She brings the sono machine along with like 5 other doctors, nurses or midwives. As she starts scanning for babys heartbeat I can see her face along with everyone else’s face and it’s at that moment that I realized without them telling me anything that my baby was no longer alive. I cover my face and start to ball my eyes out. The doctor holds my hand and says “we’re sorry but your baby no longer has a heartbeat”. Shira, my amazing midwife who happened to be there in the labor and delivery unit that morning walks in and man, I lost it even more. It was like seeing a familiar face made it so much more real for me. She hugged me, we cried together and we hugged some more. She then stepped out and gave me the chance to call someone. I immediately called Luis sobbing and all I could utter was “our baby boy doesn’t have a heartbeat”. He couldn’t believe what I was saying. He asked 100000 questions, “are you sure?” “Can they check again?” “What does this mean?” Etc. I remember crying and saying “babe, our baby boy is gone”. I honestly could not believe I was saying that. I mean for goodness sakes I had just placed an order on amazon for the baby just the morning before and this just seemed too un real. I really couldn’t believe this was happening to me. Then I tried to remember when exactly was the last time I felt any movement and I just couldn’t. Luis was estimated to be there around the next 45 min or so. So for those next 45 min there I was, laying on a bed in the labor and delivery unit, on the 9th floor of Bellevue Hospital (which btw I was born there too). I remember staring out the window in such shock and disbelief and I really just could NOT believe that this was happening to me, that my life had changed so much in a matter of minutes. Luis finally came into the room, he speed-walked towards me, hugged me as I cried and for a moment I felt like I no longer had a heartbeat either. We called our midwife in and Luis asked all the questions he had asked me when I told him the news. She kindly told us that there was nothing that could be done at this point.
“What happens now?,” is exactly what we asked. Our midwife told us that I had to be induced and that we were going to try for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarian). My whole pregnancy I was excited about vaginal delivery because with my first I had a c-section, and this was just not the way I had envisioned it. I almost wanted a c-section again. I mean I just couldn’t imagine pushing a baby out and not hearing a cry, it almost seemed torturous to me. The midwife gave us the option of getting induced right away or waiting until we were mentally and emotionally ready. I decided I wanted to get induced right away and just get this nightmare over with.
The next morning at 8am my midwife walks in to see how dilated I am while I’m half asleep. She says “omg its time to push”. I’m not kidding when I say I have never woken up from a nap so fast. “Time to push?” “Like right now?”. I was kind of excited and then reality hit me harder than a truck going 100 mph. As the nurses are setting up the room for delivery the midwife is talking to me about how the baby might look since we don’t know how long he was in there without a heartbeat. She asked us if we wanted to see him or not, if we wanted to spend some time with him. I was still in shock and didn’t know what I wanted yet. I told her I’d decide once he is born. It was around 8:20 am when I started pushing and at 8:40 am we met our sweet angel Uriel Mendoza weighing in 5 lbs and 14 ounces. Levi’s exact same weight! Such a bitter sweet moment for me, giving birth to our angel baby on mother’s day! It was such a perfect delivery (which I can go more into detail in another post). I Pushed for like 20 min, no tearing and just such a smooth process for me. Everything seemed so unreal still. Not only was my body numb from the epidural but so were my emotions. I didn’t know what to feel or how to feel, as weird as that sounds.
After Uri was born we were able to spend all the time we wanted with him. We spent a total of 4 hours with him. Telling him we love him, taking pictures of him, carrying him, kissing him, crying, and just enjoying every minute of every second.
»Special thanks to the Bellevue midwives and nurses who were MORE than amazing to us! I literally could not have gone through this without every single one of you. You guys know who you are!«
WE LOVE YOU URI!!!
