Things got a little hazy and jumbled after we got to the hospital, so everything from here on out might not be super accurate, but it’s how I remember it.

When we got to the hospital, they hooked me up to antibiotics and magnesium. Magnesium is used to both stop contractions and to help with blood flow to the baby’s brain if it does get delivered. Before that though, they gave me a shot of steroids to help with the baby’s lungs. If they know when a baby is coming they try to do 2 doses 48 hours before it’s born so it’s most effective. I got one dose in. When they told me about the magnesium, they said it was going to make me feel awful and extremely sick (hot flashes, nausea, etc). I could tell the second it kicked in. I started feeling like I was getting a severe chest cold with a fever and any time I tried to breathe during a contraction I’d cough because I was trying to breathe deeper to help manage pain.

The hope was the magnesium would slow contractions down enough that I could make it at least a few days longer. It only worked well enough to slow it down from 3 or 4 minutes intervals to 4 or 5. So…not well. The contractions got so painful that I couldn’t even focus on anything. All I remember is the nurse telling me to take it slow and easy and breathe. She was Irish and I don’t know why, but I just wanted to tell her to keep talking to me because her accent was helping me through things. It was silly, but if it helps, it helps, right? The second I’d slow my breathing down she’d say, “Good girl” or “You’re doing great”. Either her or Matt (or both) would push on my knees to help me get through it. Matt kept asking if it even helped, and I honestly don’t know if it helped with pain, but it kept me grounded, which I think was even more important. Having that physical touch helped me not panic and kept me sane.

They thought I’d be in labor for a while so they gave me fentanyl instead of an epidural at first and said when it was time for more they’d reevaluate and see if they should do an epidural instead. They just wanted to make sure the baby wouldn’t be born with fentanyl in my system cause then it’d be in the baby’s too, and that can make it harder for it’s lungs to work.

They kept checking how dilated I was and when I first got there, my cervix was just barely opening, which is why they didn’t think I would be delivering it until the next afternoon, so my doctor actually went home. This is where the timeline gets really hazy for me, but at some point it was just me and Matt in the room and I remember waking up feeling so sick that I was just trying to breathe without throwing up. I couldn’t move or talk because it was so bad, but I wound up throwing up all over myself and the bed anyways. I just remember lying on my back when it happened and being in so much pain that it didn’t occur to me to roll to my side, so instead I was just choking and couldn’t breathe. Matt either rolled me over or told me to roll over, because at some point I was on my side. He called the nurse in and they somehow managed to change my gown and the sheets without having to get me out of the bed.

Matt says the fentanyl wore off around 3am and by 3:30 I was 1 cm dilated so they decided to do an epidural. It felt like it took forever for the anesthesiologist to get there. The time between the fentanyl wearing off and the epidural kicking in was the most painful experience of my life. I knew I’d forget just how bad it was, so I remember telling Matt that I can’t ever go through this again. Getting the epidural sucked, but I think a big part of it was that it felt like it took a while, so I had to sit up while having things shoved in my back, all while having contractions. Matt would push on my knees while the nurse put pressure on my hips. The hips actually hurt and didn’t help, but I was in so much pain I couldn’t speak to tell her.

After that, everything happened so fast it was shocking. So at 3:30 am I was 1 cm dilated, at 4:30 am I was at 4 cm. They called my doctor to let her know she needed to prepare to come in, but by 4:45 I was at 8 cm. They called the attending laborist just in case my doctor wouldn’t make it. At 5 am I was at 10 cm. They called my doctor again (later she said she never received a call when I was at 8 cm. Only at 4 cm and at 10 cm, which is why she didn’t make it in time), and called down to the attending laborist to tell him to hurry. At 5:07 am our baby was born. I remember them telling me to push and me asking, “How?” because I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down and it didn’t seem like anything I could do would make a difference. I don’t know how long it actually took, but from the time they told me to push to the time I was done felt like 30 seconds max, if that. I was able to sit up for a minute to see them pull the baby away (I got to see little legs and arms kicking) and have Matt cut the umbilical cord, but then they immediately took the baby to the NICU. I can’t remember who said it, but someone mentioned Matt was a paramedic (so he understands the situation and wouldn’t cause problems) and that they should let him go to the NICU, so he did.

My doctor got there right after Matt and the baby left. While they were gone, she started to get the placenta out. It wouldn’t come out on its own and kept breaking into pieces. I could tell she was worried about it. She wound up having to do what’s called a D&C (Dilation and Curettage). She used a long, metal rod with a hollow “O” on the end to try and pull pieces out while the nurse pushed extremely hard on my abdomen to try and break it off from where it was attached to the uterus. They wound up using an ultrasound machine to see where things were. Eventually she felt like she got it all and I was cleaned up. It was after this that she asked if it was boy or a girl and we all realized that we still didn’t know because it happened so fast no one looked. My doctor said she’d go check while the nursed finished cleaning up. I was super in and out of it so I only remember her coming back in and saying it was a girl but things didn’t look good. I didn’t even register the last part because all I could think was, “I knew it” and it just felt so right that we had a daughter.

At some point everyone left and there was some time between then and when they came back in because it was just me and a nurse in the room for a minute. She was kind and offered to find my phone for me so I could text Matt while he was in the NICU. I didn’t text him because I didn’t want to disturb him and knew it was unlikely he’d even look at his phone, but it was nice to have it. At some point I remembered that my doctor mentioned it didn’t look good, but I still felt oddly grounded. There was no fear in me, only anticipation, which, looking back, was really weird given the situation.

The next thing I remember is the door opening. The air felt different before anyone even came in. I heard the squeaking wheels of the cart and had the thought that if she were alive they wouldn’t be bringing her back here cause she would have needed intensive care, so I knew before I even saw Matt that she hadn’t made it. All those thoughts happened in less than a second before I saw Matt’s face as he walked in next to the cart that held our baby girl.

Everything felt like it was going in slow motion, yet so fast at the same time. They came and placed her in my arms and I just remember looking at her thinking this is to soon and it shouldn’t have happened yet. She was supposed to survive. It didn’t seem real. When they gave her to me she moved a little and opened her mouth, which was just leftover involuntary movement from the adrenaline, but it made it seem even more surreal. The NICU doctor came in and declared the time of death at 6:13 after listening for a heartbeat one last time. He then talked to us about what they did and what had happened and expressed his condolences. He said what we knew by then to be the case. Her lungs were just under-developed from the low amniotic fluid, so even once they got the tube in, there just wasn’t enough tissue for it to work and for her to survive. It was one of those cases that even if everything had been done perfectly, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

The NICU team left and at some point our nurse (who was now from the day shift) came in and measured and weighed her. We named her Ellen Virginia Bateman and she was 13 inches long and weighed 2 lbs 6 oz.

They took stamps of her feet and hands for us to have. I know my doctor came back in once or twice to speak with us as well. She was having a hard time and had to not speak often. She expressed her sorrow that she couldn’t have done more and that she wished this didn’t have to happen to us. We told her we couldn’t have had a better doctor and we were so grateful for everything. After (or before, or during…I have no idea when anything happened at this point), we just held our baby daughter. She was so beautiful. Her hands were incredibly perfect and tiny and sweet, and she had arms that looked like they could win an arm wrestle. She was so soft. Her skin felt like velvet and her face was perfect. Her head was bruised so it looked like she had dark hair, but if you looked closer you could see that it was blonde. Her bottom lip was bruised as well from them trying to place the tube, but her lips were perfectly formed. She had my nose.

We took turns holding her, but I remember thinking almost every time that I held her that I just wanted Matt to hold her because when I saw him holding her, I could feel the love that we had for her so strong. When I did hold her, her weight felt so good and right in my arms that I wanted to just stay there forever. She was wrapped up in a blanket and felt warm and alive, but looking at her you knew she wasn’t. Regardless, I loved looking at her. We had a nurse and our doctor both tell us that we should take a lot of pictures because, even though we might not want them now, at some point we would. I’m so glad they told us that because it was so true. I felt like we took a lot of pictures at the time, but now I wish we could take even more.

There is a group called “Share” that’s made up of moms who have lost babies and they provide keepsake boxes. Our nurse gave us one and let us know that a member would be stopping by to talk to us and to take casts of her hands and feet if we wanted them. I don’t remember the name of the lady who came, but she was so kind. She took Ellen to get the casts done and when she brought her back in she had wrapped her up in a fuzzy purple blanket with a headband that had a purple flower on it. She also had a bracelet, a ring (that was just set there cause it was to big), and a little teddy bear. I thought it would bother me to have her dressed up, but I’m so grateful they did. We got some of the best pictures after that and I will forever view purple and white as her colors. It just fit.

We were able to hold her (minus the time she was weighed and getting casts done) from 6:10 am to about 10:30 am, which was when we had the mortuary come and take her. I feel like I could have held her forever, but at some point she started getting cold and stiff and it no longer felt right to keep her. Her spirit was no longer there and it felt like it was time. We went through Lindquist Mortuary in Ogden just because it’s the only one we really knew of and it’s only a few blocks from our house. They came, expressed their condolences, said some other stuff I don’t remember, and took her away.

The hospital gave us the option to stay basically as long as we felt like we needed to, but I was given the go-ahead to leave once my legs worked enough to go to the bathroom by myself. we stayed until 5 or 5:30, but then left so we would be able to pick up my pain meds from the pharmacy before they closed.

I’m grateful for the room we had at the hospital because when we opened the curtains it was bright and warm and felt peaceful. We didn’t really want to leave. Being home was a lot harder because there were so many things that, only the day before, I was thinking I needed to get done before we brought a baby into the house that no longer mattered. Now they were just a reminder of what we didn’t have. We had some baby stuff that my mom came and picked up just so we wouldn’t have to see it. I don’t remember exactly what we did when we got home, but we went to bed fairly early. I asked Matt if he wanted to turn on a movie so we had some noise, but I didn’t want to watch anything that was stupid or crude. I wanted something good. We wound up turning on Beauty and the Beast (the original, not the remake) and just watched through that twice. I don’t know how I slept, but I did.

It felt like time had stopped for us. It was the weirdest feeling to know that your world had ended but everyone else’s was still going. Our home became different. It felt different that night in particular, for me. It felt like Matt and I were the only people left on the planet. Ii didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time, but even with the sorrow and intense grief, there was an underlying feeling of unity and peace in our home. We would get through this together and come out all the better for it, despite it not seeming so at the time.