Loss

Nine weeks and three days

It took me more than two years to write any of this down. Not because the grief got smaller, but because saying it out loud made it a thing other people could hold, and I was not ready for that. Here is the story of the baby we named Khai, and what I believe happened to him.

A lot of women feel uncomfortable talking about this, I understand that. Believe me, it took me over two years to say any of it out loud, and I only started writing it down when writing was the only way left. I am writing this with tears. It helps. It is the healing process, and it is still going.

Some people believe a baby is not a human being until after birth. I know for a fact that they are human at conception, because that is when God begins forming them. This is the psalm I have read more than any other since:

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully [and] wonderfully made: marvellous [are] thy works; and [that] my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, [and] curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all [my] [members] were written, [which] in continuance were fashioned, when [as] [yet] there [was] none of them.”

Psalm 139:13–16

The holiday

I found out I was pregnant at a hotel on a two-week holiday, with every symptom you can possibly have. I also had an infection that made me very ill and kept me on bed rest. Partway through the trip we were on a ship, and I had to be taken to an emergency room in a port abroad. The doctors there confirmed that I was very pregnant, and they were concerned the infection would hurt the baby if I did not take the medication they prescribed.

If you know me, you know I am against putting anything toxic into the body. I had no choice and I took it. The doctors know how to apply pressure.

They scheduled an ultrasound for the next morning, and at that hospital we saw and heard our baby’s heartbeat at five weeks. A doctor told me that medically you cannot hear a heartbeat until six weeks, so we heard it a week early. God did the possible. It was an amazing thing to see. The nurse gave us a picture of our baby and we went on with our holiday.

The infection slowly went away, but I was still vomiting with the tiredness of early pregnancy. I slept more than half of every day, which made for a strange holiday. We came home and told family and friends straight away, because we could not keep it. We were thrilled. We named our baby Khai Bergman.

Nothing showed

We moved across the country for a job my husband had been offered. It was a hard living situation at first, until we found somewhere decent to live. Everything felt right. Then I got ill again — vomiting every day for weeks, unable to keep anything down.

Then came a night of back pain I had never had before. It felt like being stabbed over and over. I could hardly walk and I did not sleep. My husband took me to urgent care. They drew my blood, which came back fine, and told me the pain was my uterus expanding as the pregnancy grew, and that I would be all right. I was upset, because they did not understand how much pain I was in.

I did not know it then. I was already three weeks past the point where my baby had stopped growing, and my body had given me not one sign of it. I was still being sick. I still had every symptom. That is the part of a missed miscarriage that nobody tells you: your body can keep going as though nothing has happened, for weeks, with nothing wrong showing.

Half a centimetre

We went to my twelve-week ultrasound full of hope. We were about to hear the heartbeat again. The doctor was trying to listen for it, looking at us and at the nurse, and then she said she was sending us to a different clinic. We did not think much of it. We went along, still excited.

And there, on the screen, my baby. No heartbeat, and no growth at all in three weeks.

“I am so sorry, there is no heartbeat and your baby has not grown in three weeks — which means it is only nine weeks and three days.”

I said there was. I told her I had been vomiting out my guts for the whole pregnancy and had every symptom there is. She told me it was a missed miscarriage: my body knew there was a baby inside me, and it would not release it on its own. The doctors were worried about an infection that could become life threatening to me if the baby did not come.

Three choices

She gave me three ways to release my baby. I could take the pill. I could have surgery, a D&C. Or I could wait and hope he came out naturally. I chose the natural way. She did not agree with that, because he had begun to decompose if he stayed.

A week went by and nothing came. The pregnancy symptoms were still there, which made it harder, not easier. We booked another scan, which would have made me thirteen weeks pregnant. It confirmed what we already knew: no growth, no heartbeat, still sitting at nine weeks and three days.

The doctors were very worried and felt I should be emptied immediately. Three days later, on the morning of 22 July 2016, I went in at half past eight.

It was hard to take in and I felt numb. I had never had surgery on my body and never been under anaesthetic. I did not want to let go of my baby. By the time the day came I had not much to say. I just wanted it over with so that my body and my mind could heal. Part of me felt like it had died.

The room was strange: enormous grey machines, far taller than me, and an operating table in the middle of them. Afterwards I woke up to people leaning over me, saying my name, telling me to wake up, and being wheeled down a corridor.

The call ten days later

They said it had all gone smoothly and that my results would come in ten days. Ten days later the phone rang, and a woman told me that nothing was wrong with my baby. There were no abnormalities — as the world calls them. It was a perfectly healthy baby.

From that moment I knew God took him for a reason. He was not finished with him yet. He needed a soldier in Heaven. God has bigger plans for that child than I could ever dream of, and God knows what He is doing.

I am thankful that I was pregnant with my baby, even if only for a short time. I know now that we have a guardian angel watching over us, and I am looking forward to holding, loving and kissing my precious baby in Heaven one day.

I am thankful for a husband who never left my side, and for the people God put in my life to walk this journey with. Any loss of a child is devastating, however it happens. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Jeremiah 29:11