Thursday, May 25, 2006 Joshua and I went to our regular monthly doctor's appointment. I was 17 1/2 weeks along. The doctor couldn't find the heartbeat. We both got really worried. The doctor got the ultrasound machine and still couldn't find the heartbeat. The baby wasn't moving either. She measured the baby and told us it was the size of a 16 week old fetus. It had been gone for almost 2 weeks. Later that afternoon we went to the hospital for another ultrasound. We didn't find out anything we didn't already know. We spent a lot of the day crying.
Friday, May 26, 2006 at 7:00 am we went back to the hospital to deliver the baby. They gave me some pills to put me into labor. A couple hours later I started feeling cramps so they gave me some drugs for the pain. It kept getting worse and they kept giving me more drugs. Two of my best friends, Heidi and Amber, came to visit and brought me some flowers. Joshua's parents came too. At about 6:45 pm the cramping started getting really bad. They had just given me drugs so there wasn't anything the nurse could do. I knew the baby was coming. Finally the nurse checked and said oh yeah, it's coming. They called the doctor who delivered the baby at 6:57 pm. They cleaned him (this is when we found out he was a boy) up a little then handed him to me. My parents and Beth got there just as everything was happening so they sent them down to the waiting room until I told them they could come in. I got to hold our little boy for a little while. He had big blue eyes. He was 7 inches long and 4.6 ounces. After the nurse took him to get his picture taken my dad helped Joshua give me a blessing of comfort, then my dad gave one to Joshua. Joshua's parents came again later to bring us some food from Panda Express, now that I could finally eat something. We didn't get to leave until about 11:00pm.
We have a little memory box for him. We have the little hat and teddy bear they took his picture with. We have a few pictures of him on a cd in the box, plus one we printed out. We found out he died of Amniotic Band Syndrome. A band had gotten tied around his cord, pinching it completely closed. If one hadn't have gotten around the cord, one was around his leg too so if he had grown any more he would have been born without part of a leg. At this point it was just a little smaller than the other.
The past few days have been really hard for both of us. We love our boy a lot and wish he could have spent more time with us. We are excited to give him little brothers and sisters and let them know they have a big brother watching over them.
