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Who We Are

Kayla Lynn

My husband ("Tim") and I knew we wanted to have children right away and, believe it or not, we conceived Kayla Lynn on our wedding night. What a surprise that it happened so quickly! This would be the first grandchild for my parents, and the second for my in-laws. Needless to say, everyone was elated!

The first 23 weeks of my pregnancy went very well. I was extremely tired during the first trimester, but was fortunate to not have any morning sickness. At 16 weeks we had an ultrasound and everything was fine. The ultrasound calculated a due date 2 weeks later than the doctor's calculation based on my last menstrual period, but the doctor didn't see a need to change my due date because of the calculation error factor of the ultrasound machine.

At 24 weeks, I was admitted to the hospital for 4 days with pregnancy-induced hypertension. I was taken off work and put on complete bed rest for the last 4 months of my pregnancy. What a drag, right? But anything for a healthy baby.

Because of my PIH, I was seeing the doctor on a weekly basis. At my 31 week appointment, the doctor pictured up an irregular heartbeat. She wasn't sure if what she was hearing was Mommy's and Baby's heartbeats together or not. She sent us to the hospital for fetal monitoring. To make a long story short, I ended up having an ultrasound, too, which indicated something was wrong with the baby's heart and that the baby was about 4 weeks behind in size. That's all our doctor's could tell us, so at 8:00 a.m. the next day my husband and I were at a specialist's office.

The specialist did a thorough ultrasound and pointed out the hole in the baby's heart. Based on some other things she saw, she suspected our baby had Trisomy 18 Syndrome. She wanted to do an amniocentesis, and gave my husband and I time to discuss it. We decide to have the procedure done, which wasn't bad at all. In fact, if I wouldn't have been so tightened up with fear it wouldn't have hurt at all. After a few hours resting in a hospital bed, we were told we could go home. Unfortunately, we wouldn't get the results for 2 weeks! Preliminary results might be in within a few days.

Two days later, the doctor called with the preliminary test results. 75% of the cells showed Trisomy 18 Syndrome. If the preliminary results show less than 50% of the cells contain some sort of syndrome, the doctor usually waits for the final results to come in. But in our case, it was pretty definite. Our baby had three #18 chromosomes and would either die in-utero or shortly after birth. If babies with this syndrome do live after they're born, it's usually only for a couple of months.

Because of laws and other ethical issues, which I won't go into here, I had to carry Kayla until one of two things happened: my body went into labor naturally, or she died, at which point they'd induce labor. So we waited..... Everytime I felt her move, it was a mix of emotions. Tim had to see his pregnant wife knowing that our baby was going to die. The whole waiting period was awful.

"Fortunately", two weeks later, I stopped feeling movement. (Considering we had another 6 weeks to go in the pregnancy, it could have been a lot worse.) The doctor confirmed that Kayla had died, and we started induction the next day before she started poisoning my body.

Since my body was not prepared to give birth yet, there were many health concerns with induction at 34 weeks. The first day, I received vaginal tablets of a medicine that helped soften my cervix. This was necessary before the doctor started Petocin in order to reduce the risk of rupture. The second morning came, and the doctor started the Petocin. Then he broke my water about 1:00. My husband and I walked several laps around the hallways to "get things going." Sure enough, the contractions got harder. I always wanted to give birth without any pain medicine, but my doctors insisted I didn't need to suffer for this stillbirth. Emotionally I was going through enough as it was. After about 30 minutes of hard labor, I "gave in" to the pain medication. Why should I make this any harder on myself than it already is? About 4:00 I got extremely tired and asked both sets of parents to leave the room so that I could rest. (Needless to say, Tim and I didn't get much sleep the last couple of nights.) Tim no sooner got the blinds shut and I was in pretty major pain. In fact, it seemed like the pain medicine wasn't touching a thing! Then, all of a sudden, I had this urge to PUSH! Other mothers had tried to explain what this feeling was like and, to be honest, I never really understood until I was going through it. It's something you can't control! Tim quickly got the nurse, who in turn got the intern (the doctor was at his office). Sure enough, I was fully dilated and was told I could push. A couple of good, strong pushes and Kayla layed so still and lifeless on the hospital bed.

In the case of a stillborn, part of the grieving process is to hold and name your baby. The nurses quickly cleaned her up, took her handprints and footprints, and dressed her in the outfit I had brought to the hospital. When the nurse first placed that silent little baby in my arms, I thought I would die from sorrow. How could they say this makes things easier?!?!?! But, you know, the longer we held Kayla, the more peaceful it became. It's true -- you need that bonding time with your stillborn, to say good-bye. Both sets of grandparents were able to hold her, as well as my brother and sister-in-law. Our minister was with us the whole time, and we had a small informal service at the hospital.

It was definitely not fair to have to leave that hospital with empty arms. In fact, it really tests one's Faith as to why something like this happens. Tim and I returned home without a baby, to what seemed like an extremely empty home. Especially with the beautiful nursery that we had decorated less than a month before. A few days later, we had a formal service at our house for immediate family.

Since my body didn't know I had a stillborn, my milk came in and I had post-partum depression. It seems like things would never get better!

But, I'm here to tell you that things do get better over time. It's been almost 5 months, and the good days moments are starting to outweigh the bad moments. But we'll never forget our precious Kayla.

Now there were concerns about my genetic make-up as well as Tim's. We had our chromosomes tested, and we are both fine. Thank God we didn't have to deal with that problem on top of everything else! What a relief! We can try to have another baby on our own as soon as we are ready. Kayla's syndrome was a "fluke" thing that happened at conception, as it does in 1 of 6,000 births.