Our Story
We were having a normal pregnancy. We were having regular ultrasound exams and checkups. We were excited about being parents. We had just bought a new house and started getting ready to receive our first child around Labor Day 2008. We had our baby showers and were setting up her room with a classic Winnie the Pooh theme. We agreed to name our baby Katelyn Grace. We always had her middle name picked out which means a gift from God. But, until we picked her first name we called her “Gracie”. Two and a half weeks before delivery we finally agreed on her first name. We shared it with our parents and they loved it. Everyone loved it!!
Our last scheduled doctor visit on Monday, August 11th confirmed that everything was normal. My wife was in great health and Katelyn was moving around as expected with a strong and steady heartbeat. Mom was anxious to deliver. I was freaking out a little as the thought of being a dad scared me. Now I would need to care for this little wonder. I was ready even though I often said otherwise.
The next morning, my wife woke up with a really bad cold and some bleeding. She called the doctor’s office and was told that it was a normal “post exam” reaction. As the day continued, her cold got worse. She spent the later part of the day resting until I started barbequing dinner. When I came back inside the kitchen, my wife put my hand on her stomach so that I could feel Katelyn kick. She was moving all over the place. You could actually see my wife’s stomach moving. We joked that she must really like chicken and could probably smell it!
On Wednesday, my wife’s cold worsened but she did not think much of it since the nurse told her the day before that this was normal. She did not feel Katelyn moving much, but she assumed she just didn’t notice because she was coughing and sneezing so much which was already moving her stomach around a lot.
Thursday morning, when my wife could not feel Katelyn’s movements either before or after breakfast, she started to get worried. She was very sick at this point and went home from work that afternoon to get some rest. She woke up around 4:00 pm and could not coax Katelyn into moving at all. She tried everything the doctor’s had previously told her to do in order to get Katelyn to move. Nothing happened. She called the doctor’s office and they told her to come in as soon as she could get there. My wife called me and calmly stated that she scheduled a quick appointment and was on her way to the doctor’s office. She did not want to worry me even though she was very much concerned. I stated, “I am about to leave work for the day, do you want me to go with?” She said, “No, I’ll see you when I get home and we’ll finish cleaning the garage. I am sure it is nothing, but I want the doctor to check everything out.” No real alarms went off for me since we had been through this a month earlier. Only my wife knew what was going on inside of her.
Our story begins that afternoon, on August 14, 2008. My wife arrived at the doctor’s office around 4:30pm. She was told to sit in the waiting room. As time passed, she was more and more nervous, but no one called her back to the examination rooms. She finally got up and asked the receptionist when they would see her and then a nurse came and got her. She laid back as one of the nurses searched all over for Katelyn’s heartbeat. She couldn’t find one. Another nurse came in and soon the room was filled with nurses and assistants. Ten minutes went by. No one could find Katelyn’s heartbeat. My wife was frantically moving around, I can only imagine how frightened. She kept asking for the doctor to no avail. Finally, the doctor came in and took her to the ultrasound room, handed her over to the technician and then left.
My wife was told to lie back on the bed in the ultrasound room. All was quiet. The technician was silent as she kept moving the wand around on my wife’s stomach to get the images and find Katelyn’s heartbeat. The image of Katelyn appeared, but there was no movement in her heart. The normally chatty technician remained silent. My wife tried to sit up to see the monitor and the tech turned it away from her sight. “What’s going on?” she choked out “Is everything ok?” When she did not receive an answer, she quickly sat up and looked at the monitor. It showed Katelyn’s heart with no movement. “Is she dead?” my wife asked. The tech shook her head and walked out of the room, leaving my wife alone as she broke down in hysterics. The doctor walked in and not only confirmed that this horrible fear was real but she also told my wife that she would need to go to the hospital and go through the entire birthing process to deliver her dead baby. My wife broke out weeping and was escorted to a different part of the doctor’s office, in a room away from everyone else. She was told that she was “disturbing the other patients”. Imagine that. You are just told that the baby inside of you is dead and yet you are basically chided for potentially upsetting other patients. Where was the compassion? Unfortunately, there was none to be found in that office. I started getting several phone calls and messages to call my wife. Each message said “It is an emergency!!” I called my wife and hysterically she cried out, “Scott…she’s dead. She’s dead!” I drove to the doctor’s office with tears in my eyes. I ran up to the doctor’s office to meet my wife. I ran into the exam room and bent down to give her a hug. We both broke down. How could this happen? Everything was fine just 2 days earlier.
We were told again by the doctor to go to the hospital. We drove to the hospital to deliver Katelyn. On the way we placed several phone calls. The reality was now very clear. Katelyn Grace died with only two weeks to go in the term. We would be delivering our first child and leaving the hospital without our precious baby girl.
