Shaely Rose - forever in my heart

The last photo I snapped of myself with my baby girl alive inside me was only a day before her little heart stopped beating. In it, I'm happy - the epitomy of a glowing expectant mother. My blue top stretches over my bulging belly, threatening to ride up and expose my nipple-like belly botton. I was seven and half weeks away from meeting my little one and had never been more happy. I lived in on a beautiful island, was surrounded by good people, a loving husband, a house that we had recently moved into all to ourselves and a thriving plumbing business. Life was good.

I started feeling poorly around 11 that Tuesday morning. By around 3, I resigned myself to the couch with a blanket and my phone. The contractions didn't start til 5 but there was no gradual build-up like I had heard and read about. They began at two and a half to three and a half minutes apart. Being my first, I wasn't sure if this really could be labour. After calling my mom and my midwife for advice, I realized that I needed to get to the hospital. I called Jesse home from the dance lessons we were scheduled to teach that night and we hurried to catch the last ferry out. As we pulled up, it was just leaving the dock. I was in immense pain by this time and we went for plan b. Plan b ended up involving me being helicoptered off the island, prevailing against a wind storm that had kicked up. The paramedics told us that they couldn't risk taking Jesse with us and that he'd have to catch the next boat out in the morning.

The next few hours are hazy in my memory. I remember the doctors saying they couldn't find a heartbeat. I don't know if I knew deep down inside, but all I could think at the time was that their equipment must be broken or my baby was hiding behind my liver or something. They told me they had to perform a c-section to get her out as soon as possible. I cried as they wheeled me to OR. In my delirium of pain and drugs, I didn't really understand anything other than this was not how I had planned it. Neither was the outcome of the surgery when I woke up in the early hours of March 2nd.

"Where's my baby?" I asked. Nobody responded. I could see my mom, my midwife and a bunch of people in blue. I asked again and then a third time. Finally my midwife started to attempt to form words for me - words that I didn't comprehend. Then the doctor told me what I can only see now as a nightmare.

She had not been born breathing. They had worked on her and tried everything they could...

"Can I see her?" They brought her to me. She was surprising a good size for her age. I could see right away that she had my nose and Jesse's ears. Her little mouth hung open - no air passing through. Her chest did not rise and fall like I always imagined it would. She was still and growing cold as it had been over an hour since they had delivered her. Despite the obvious, I was confused. She couldn't actually be gone. If I held her to my chest, she'd feel my warmth and start breathing on her own. It must have been the tubes coming out of her mouth and nose that left me thinking she was being assisted in pumping her heart. I coaxed her to come back. I asked God to make her breath again. My thoughts then flashed to my husband, my Jesse who was still at home. I called him, waking him from an uneasy sleep.

"She's not breathing, Jesse. You have to pray that God brings her back."

Together we prayed, believing that our God could and would bring her back. It wasn't until about five hours later that I finally realized that He wasn't going to. She was in Heaven and I was left holding her bruised, precious little body.

It has been four weeks and two days since that nightmare of a day. And the nightmare continues. I wake up every morning, feeling broken and void. I wonder about all the "what ifs," about how I should still be pregnant, about how I want so much to hold my little Shaely Rose and nurse her but I never will. I miss her so much - miss her moving in me, miss that I won't ever get to watch her grow-up...I grieve for the life that I left behind, when I knew nothing of the pain there is in having your child die before you.