I went to the emergency room with my mother, thinking my gall bladder was bad. I had been having pains in my side all week. We waited and waited, and much to my surprise, I was pregnant.
I couldn’t believe it. I was with my ex for 5 years, and we tried. We never had a positive pregnancy test. It tore us apart. So, when I met my now husband, I told him I was certain I couldn’t have children, and he believed the same. We were content with living alone together, forever.
I was certain we were doomed to miscarry. There was no way in the world we would get pregnant so soon, and be able to keep such a miracle. So we took it day by day.
Days turned in to weeks, and we found out we were having a girl. We couldn’t believe our luck. Slowly we started to accept that we just may have a living, healthy child.
Every test was perfect, every check up was great. Till 29 weeks, when my water broke.
We spent 3 weeks in the hospital on bed rest, waiting for Skylar to be born. Two stress tests a day, and one ultrasound every other, she still looked beautiful on every monitor. At 32 weeks on Thursday May 23, I started having contractions. I delivered Skylar via c-section at 3:05 pm.
I woke up to a nightmare. I never went to recovery, they took me straight to the NICU. They wheeled my hospital bed into a tiny room, where my daughter was on life support. Still groggy from the anesthesia, everyone watched me while the doctor explained several times why my daughter wouldn’t live.
“Is there anything you can do?” I asked.
“No, we can’t do surgery,” said the doctor.
“How long will she live?“
“Maybe an hour,” she replied.
I watched my daughter’s heart rate drop slowly, listening to the monitors alarm. I’m in the medical field, I know what it meant. I knew exactly what was going on.
She was born with a hernia, her intestines were in her chest. Left-sided Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia. It has a 50% survival rate. Sky was severely anemic, and she was dying from pulmonary hypertension. She wasn’t eligible for the hernia repair. There was nothing they could do.
So my husband and I took her off life support. It was the only thing we could do.
We had so much hope for a tiny miracle we never believed would happen, only for her to be taken away.
— Amanda
Photo credit: adapted from and.korn | Flickr
Comments are moderated before appearing. Please note: your comment here may show up on your Facebook Feed.
