Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Hannah

Mom to Everett Lee Miles Harris

Born into Heaven March 1st, 2009

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

On February 28th, 2009 (37 weeks pregnant) around 7:00 pm I began to feel contractions with my second child. My husband was working that night, so my daughter and I settled down to watch a movie, as I was not feeling very well. I was back and forth in the bathroom for hours, reading pregnancy books and I had ALL the labor symptoms listed in the book...YAY!!  My husband came home at 9pm. Excited that the baby could possibly join us that night, we called the doctor at 10:30pm, we thought labor was progressing. As I was on the phone with the doctor he was asking about contractions and timing them and I then realized that the contractions weren't going away...they were actually one BIG contraction. He told us to come on in to the hospital. We woke our daughter up and were planning on dropping her off at a friend's house but I could barely breath, huffing and puffing and serious pain but not the pain of labor. We called the friend and told her to come to the hospital. 

We arrived at the hospital at 11:45 pm. When I got to the labor and delivery floor, the nurses were bickering about what room I should go in. I changed into a gown and laid down on the table at 12 midnight. The nurses put the digital stethoscope on my belly and instantaneously the mood in the room changed. The nurses took turns looking for the baby’s heartbeat, nurse after nurse poured into room. At that point, we knew we might have lost our baby. I only heard one heartbeat. My husband was still standing their with my daughter as the friend was having a hard time locating us in the hospital, So he ran downstairs to pass her off to the babysitter, the last thing I said to him was, don't leave me. I was so scared.  Those words echo in my head. 

They catheterized me and gave me an IV and I was rushed into the operating room. A nurse came to tell Dale that they were performing an emergency c-section. He waited. As they were putting me under, I remember asking the nurse if my husband was in the room, she said, Yes. It was a comforting lie. Baby Everett was born at 12:17 am with no signs of life. It only took them 17 minutes from the time I laid down on the table for him to be born. The doctors worked on resuscitation. Twenty-five minutes later, the nurse returned to my husband to tell him that our baby was gone. I was still under, so once I woke up, my husband had to tell me about 80 times what had happened. I kept falling asleep and waking up wondering what happened and we would sob all over again. My husband waited until I was lucid and then they brought our son to us. His skin had a blue tint and he was still warm. He still had his breathing tube in his mouth and we were told that it needed to stay if we wanted to do an autopsy. I didn't want to see him like that, so they took it out and we were able to hold him without the tubes. 

Later we would learn that we lost Everett due to a Concealed Placenta Abruption. The placenta had separated from the uterus, denying Everett oxygen. The typical warning signs that the placenta separated didn’t happen – no one, including the doctors, suspected that something was seriously wrong. 

We had a check-up the day before and everything was perfect – he was fully formed, had a strong heart beat and chubby cheeks. The doctors could not tell us what caused the placenta to pull away. They assured us it was not the result of my diabetes. I didn’t have high blood pressure. His death was just an accident – the probability of a Concealed Placenta Abruption happening is only one percent of one percent. 

We kept Everett with us in the hospital for a day and a half. We held him and cried with him and sang him songs. His big sister got to meet him and hold him. We held a funeral service five days later where all of our dearest family and friends joined us. 

As we travel this road of grief, we know that God is still good and pray that He will use our story to encourage others. Our world and hearts have forever been changed by our son Everett.

 Hannah blogs at http://daleandhannah.com/blog/our-son-everett/ 
You can contact her at hsquared99@gmail.com