So at the hospital, they hooked me up to a fetal monitor and a contraction monitor and seemed okay with the findings (they were mostly amused with the sounds the machine was making - think "I speak whale") and after about 2.5 hours, they couldn't find the heartbeat after I went to the bathroom one time. When I expressed concerns about this, the nurse told me that since they'd had so much activity up til then, she assumed the baby was just tucked back at a hard place for the monitor to reach and was sleeping - and since she's the professional, I went along with it.
I was discharged, took dinner to Nate, and started to get some pains in my back - which I, again, attributed to the fall since I wasn't bleeding or leaking any fluids. On the way home, I had to stop on the side of the road to be sick a couple times, and called ahead to have the girls draw me a bath (that's what the instruction sheet they gave me at the hospital said to try if I was having any sort of cramping) but by the time I got home, I started thinking that something was seriously wrong as I was having a hard time staying upright and moving around at all.
I managed to get myself into the bathtub, but couldn't stomach the Tylenol and called the after-hours service of my doctor's office (like the discharge instructions said to do) and was told that if I thought there was a problem, I shouldn't be calling them, I should get back to the hospital. I knew I was in no position to drive and that by the time Nate got home to pick me up and we made it back to the hospital, it would be too late, so I called 911 (let me mention that I've ALWAYS been terrified of emergency vehicles - they make me cry every time I see one) and they arrived a few minutes later.
It took forever to make it to the hospital (and I later noticed on the EMS report that even though I told them I thought I was in labor and didn't know when I'd felt the baby move last, it was documented as a non emergency transport) and was put straight into a room. The nurses all clustered around the bed around the time that Nate got there, trying to give me something for the pain and trying - without success - to locate a heartbeat. I just remember calling my mom and telling her that Kylie didn't make it and that I was so sorry to have to tell her that. She said they'd be there the next day (since it was around 8:30 at that point), but to call at any time.
I was moved up to a delivery room and given pitocin and an epidural (where I thought Nate was going to deck the anesthesiologist for telling me, very rudely, that he was going to have to stop crying and sit up straight if he was going to get the needle into my back - but my spine's not perfectly straight!) and we waited. I just kept telling Nate, "I don't want to do this" over and over again through the tears. I couldn't believe that this had happened and I'd still have to go through all the pain of delivery. Shortly thereafter, I started bleeding from the epidural site - and we're not talking a small trickle, I was soaking through half-bed mats every 10 minutes and they couldn't get the bleeding to stop since I'd used up all my clotting factors when the placenta abrupted. As drugged up as I was, I can't imagine what it was like for Nate having to go through this by himself - he just kept telling me that he needed me to stop bleeding, that he couldn't stand to lose me too. I promised him that I was going to try - and when he left the room to put a call into one of his coworkers, I was finally able (as if I had anything to do about it) to slow the bleeding to a trickle... when the nurses had said that if I hadn't stopped when they came back from getting more blankets, I would need a transfusion.
Kylie Jeanne was delivered January 16th at 1:40am (my brother was born at 1:52 the same day 14 years earlier) and weighed 1 pound 13 oz and was 13 1/2" long. She had my toe shape (3 middle toes approximately the same length) but with Nate's long toes. She had the most beautiful lips and dark hair. When they handed her to me, I almost didn't believe that she hadn't made it - except she wasn't the right color. We held her until she grew cold and handing her to the nurse was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
Since I had lost so much blood, I was moved to the intensive care unit and put under constant supervision - which made for a very long night. My parents came the next morning with my siblings and the girls, whom they offered to take back to Raleigh with them until we were discharged. It was so difficult being in the ICU where I was only supposed to have one person with me at any given time, but when my vitals started to pick up, they moved me to the recovery floor - which was even harder. Nurses and an anesthesiologist (not the one we had) came in on several occasions asking about our experience and which one our baby was, not realizing that we'd lost her... and the counselors and nurses wanting to know what we'd decided on for a funeral service couldn't have been more unwelcome. Honestly, I didn't want to think about burying my daughter the morning after she was delivered - couldn't they understand that? I convinced them to let me go home a day early since I couldn't take it any longer, and we tried to just get on with our lives.
We spent the next day (Monday) at the funeral home making arrangements for her service - more than a week later since we didn't think we could handle it being the following weekend - but we both went back to work the Tuesday afterwards since sitting at home was just too much time to think about it.
Her service was beautiful and I still get caught up on memories and triggers and bawl my eyes out, but very slowly, I'm coming to realize that our lives are moving on and that she wouldn't want us to stop living because we'd lost her. We've filed a suit against the hospital for malpractice as the nurse practitioner who was monitoring me relayed positive fetal heartrate increases in the last 30 minutes of monitoring - when there was no heartbeat on record - which is the reason that I was discharged. It is believed that if I had not been sent home, when the placenta abrupted, I would have been at the hospital - instead of on the side of I-40, and they may have been able to save her via emergency c-section.
Kylie's remains are in a beautiful hand painted heart-shaped urn on our bedside table and I know that she's with us always. I try not to talk about her often, preferring to keep her in my memories as the energetic bundle in my belly that I loved from the day the test turned pink, rather than the form I held in the hospital. I know that she's watching over us and has blessed my current pregnancy (or so I believe since we're having a boy, which we never thought possible with Nate's history, rather than a girl, which I worried would feel like a "replacement baby") and is keeping me safe.
I never thought it was possible to love someone you'd never met, but I ache for her always. I miss you, Kylie Jeanne, may you rest in peace. 1*16*11
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