My Son Died Five Days Before His Scheduled C-Section, and No One Seems to Understand That I Will Never Be OK Again

It has taken me a year to want to tell my story. I am telling it for all the grieving mothers: you are not alone. I am telling it in the hopes of shedding some light on why I will never be OK. I am telling it even though I have not overcome, but will always be going through.

Logan Max was my fifth pregnancy, but only the second that I publicized. I wasn’t in the habit of openly talking about my “almost” babies. My fourth pregnancy resulted in the birth of my sweet Joshua Jake, on August 22, 2017. Joshua’s pregnancy had been considered high risk due to my previous losses as well as my “advanced maternal age.” And while his pregnancy and delivery came with a variety of unique stressors, Joshua arrived healthy, happy, and loved.

When I took a positive pregnancy test a few weeks after Joshua’s first birthday, I was ecstatic. And then I began to hold my breath. As soon as I reached that eight-week mark and my OB showed me a viable pregnancy on the ultrasound, I breathed out and relaxed.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have.

There were things I was supposed to do because I was again “high risk.” I was supposed to be giving myself daily injections of a blood thinner due to an inherited gene mutation that made me more prone to blood clots. I was supposed to be getting monthly, then bi-monthly, then weekly ultrasounds with the Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialists. But because these things were expensive and tedious, my regular OB said she would do the ultrasounds and that it was ultimately my choice regarding the blood thinners. I was assured by the fact that Joshua was perfect. I remained confident, as at each ultrasound, Logan was on target for growth and active as hell.

Around 34 weeks, I became miserable. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy any second of either of my pregnancies, but this misery seemed worse. My OB reminded me that I had become miserable and whiny far earlier with Joshua. Friends and family all said the same thing: second pregnancies are harder; all pregnancies are different; late pregnancy is always uncomfortable, especially when you have a toddler to chase after. So I let it go, and I suffered in silence.

The last picture I of took of my ever-growing belly was the day before my 37-week ultrasound. I was miserable. I was in pain. I felt like Logan was trying to gnaw his way out, Twilight style. When I saw my OB that week, the first thing I said to her when she walked in the exam room was, “it absolutely cannot be normal for me to be in this much pain. This child is obviously trying to kill me. Get him out. Get him out now, trust me, he’s big enough.” My OB was aware of my penchant for drama. It amused much of the office staff as well. I’m sure she thought that’s all that was happening. But I was serious. I was in pain, I didn’t think it was normal, I was concerned about his heart rate (which had measured higher than usual that day), and I wanted him out. She told me that, even though she felt my pain, the hospital wouldn’t let her do a c-section before 38 weeks without it being a medical emergency. And she didn’t think anything was wrong.

May 18, 2019, was a pretty typical night at home, with one notable difference. Rob and I both remember that sometime after I put Joshua to bed, I sat down on the chaise and spread my legs out on either side of me and sighed in relief. I told Rob it was the first time I hadn’t been in pain in weeks. That moment now haunts both of us.

I woke up Sunday morning and knew something was wrong. Logan was typically kicking, stretching, and rolling before my feet even hit the floor, but that morning he was utterly still. I poked my belly. I drank a cup of coffee. I did all the things that generally annoyed Logan into performing acrobatics. Then I woke up Rob and called my OB’s after-hours line. Rob told me not to panic. The nurse on call told me to head to labor and delivery to get checked out and to bring my hospital bag in the event a c-section needed to be performed that day.

I drove myself to the hospital. Why drag Rob and Joshua when it was likely everything was all right? At least, that was our rationale. I checked in to Labor and Delivery. I put on a gown. I waited. A young, pretty, blonde nurse came in and placed a fetal monitor on my belly. Moved it. Moved it again. Made a face. Made an excuse about being bad at finding heartbeats on those monitors. Really, labor and delivery nurse? Really? I knew then, but it wouldn’t sink in for quite some time. The presumedly inept nurse went to get someone more proficient and told me I shouldn’t worry. In reality, she was calling for a portable ultrasound machine, ultrasound tech, and someone with an MD after their name. The ultrasound machine and tech arrived, along with a Grey’ sAnatomy-DoogieHowser-Scrubs looking doctor. He introduced himself (can’t recall his name, but I did receive a rather large bill from him later; for five minutes in a room giving me the most horrible news of my life ) and shook my hand. And then he wouldn’t let go of my hand. So he knew, too, and he figured I needed hand-holding because I was alone. I pulled my hand back as the ultrasound tech turned the screen away from me and circled the probe over my belly. I started to hear my own heartbeat, the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, doctors being paged in the background. Mingled among all that noise, I caught the words, “I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat,” and the tech was turning the monitor toward me and pointing to Logan’s unmoving chest. None of it made any sense. Three days ago, he was fine. 18 hours ago, he was fine. Now nothing was fine.

Time sped up and slowed down at the same time. I called Rob. He might be able to tell you how that conversation went, but all I remember saying was, “he’s gone.” At some point, a nurse came in — not the one who hadn’t been able to find his heartbeat on the monitor — but a more compassionate one. She introduced herself (Rachel? Emily? Megan? Molly, maybe. I should remember since I ended up spending a lot of time with her that day and the next. But I don’t.) She asked if I wanted company or wanted to be alone. I opted for alone but did call her a few times while I was waiting for Rob to show up. I remember asking her if I could get dressed. She brought me tissues and water. The OB on call from my practice came in, said a lot of words. Pitocin. C-section. Sooner rather than later. I remember asking, “What if I want my doctor to do it?” Time lapsed as it does in the movies, everyone a blur of speeding light as I sat still, caught in denial. The OB returned. My doctor was willing to let me go home and she would perform a c-section in the morning.

Rob and Joshua took a long time to get to the hospital because Rob had to call a cab. Rachel/Emily/Megan/Molly sat with me while I waited. She answered questions I don’t remember asking. Rob and Joshua arrived, and I remember thinking it was silly that they came at all, just to take me home. Rob called his mother; she had planned to come to take care of Joshua while Rob and I were in the hospital with Logan. A living Logan. Lucky for us, she had flown to McAllen early to spend time with Rob’s sister. They would drive to Austin that night.

We left the hospital with me carrying my dead baby. That was all I could think. My dead baby. I remember calling my mother. Again, she might be able to tell you what I said, but I can’t. I do remember putting a massive burden on my mother, though, not even taking into account her own grief, for both her grandchild and her child. I asked her to tell everyone else, and to ask them not to call, text, Facebook, or communicate with me in any way. I couldn’t handle anyone else’s emotions or consolations.

Joshua went to bed. Rob and I watched the series finale of Game of Thrones. Mother of Dragons. King in the North. Death. Destruction. Chaos. Rob’s mother and sister arrived. I’d asked Rob to tell them ahead of time not to hug me, touch me, say, “I’m sorry,” and definitely not to cry. I could barely manage the enormity of my own grief, I certainly could not deal with anyone else’s. I had always been a selfish person, but that day was the beginning of me not caring about anyone except Joshua. And it has cost me a lot.

There may have been some conversation. I think we talked about the plan for the next morning. Everyone went to bed. I laid awake, and Logan’s stillness was excruciating. Usually, I couldn’t get to sleep because he wouldn’t stop moving; now, I couldn’t sleep because he would never move again. I got out of bed and watched my favorite scenes from the Harry Potter movies until it was time to leave for the hospital.

I remember quite a bit about Joshua’s labor and delivery, it being my first. But once it was decided I was having a c-section, and the epidural was in, my memories get kind of fuzzy. It was not at all the same with Logan. I feel like I can remember every minute I was in the OR, from the epidural to the anesthesiologist who stood by my side and updated me every step of the way, even while I puked into a bag and sobbed. Rob held my hand the entire time. My OB let us know when she was about to take Logan out, and I held my breath. Rob and I were hoping for an apparent cause of death, so I didn’t spend the rest of my life wondering what I had done wrong. She told us that not only was the umbilical cord wrapped around Logan’s neck, it also had a very tight true knot. “It was nothing you did,” she said. But it didn’t matter; I blamed myself anyway.

The entire time I had been pregnant with Logan, I had agonized over how I was going to love him. Joshua had come into the world and consumed my entire heart, and I was terrified that I wasn’t going to be able to love another baby. How did that work? But when the nurse placed Logan in my arms, I took one look and him and thought “Oh. That’s how that works.” Because I instantaneously loved him. He filled my heart at the same time it was breaking into pieces, and a piece of me died at that moment. It was an important piece.

Neither Rob nor I had any idea what was going to happen next. I had thought that I was going to get to see him and hold him in the OR, and that was going to be it. But we were told that he was our baby, and we got to decide, and he could be with us up until I was discharged. So when my surgery was complete, Logan was brought back to my room in Labor and Delivery. I didn’t go to Postpartum, because the sights and sounds of all the new, living, crying, babies would just be cruel. I got settled into my room, and the nurse handed me my baby boy. My doctor had prepared us for what he might look like; he had been without oxygen and trapped inside me for several days. But I didn’t see the results of that. I didn’t see the bruises on his face, the dark red blood pooled in his lips, the blue fingernails, and toenails, the peeling skin. I saw my son, Logan Max, and he was perfect. He was beautiful. He was everything I wanted, and I couldn’t believe I had ever worried for one second about being able to love him.

Rob and I spent the day with Logan. We had asked enough questions to know that the longer he was with us, the more he would deteriorate. They could place him in cold storage for periods to slow the process, but it was going to happen. So we decided that we would spend the day with him and say our goodbyes when I was ready to sleep that night.

I pulled out every ounce of strength that I had to not spend the day merely sobbing. That was not how I wanted to spend the day with my son. I wanted to love him, and I wanted him to know about his family. We told him stories, and we sang to him, and we told him jokes, and we tried to impart some wisdom. We took pictures, and we attempted to memorize him. In between those beautiful moments, we had to meet with a Social worker. We needed to make some decisions, and learn things that no parent should ever have to know about when a baby dies.

At ten o clock that night, Rob and I said our final goodbyes to Logan Max. Rob went home to Joshua, and I fell into a drug-induced sleep.

I was discharged from the hospital the next day. My 41st birthday. It is not typical to be released so quickly after major surgery, but my doctor knew I wasn’t going to be able to handle another night in the hospital. She made sure I could stand on my own, long enough to shower, and then she gave me some prescriptions, and we said a tearful goodbye. I let her hug me. Maybe she understood, just a little. I once again waited for Rob. As we were signing discharge papers, one of the nurses brought me a memory box containing Logan’s hospital bracelets, the outfit he had been dressed in for the day, pictures the hospital staff had taken, and a few other keepsakes which would never be enough. We would later discover that the hospital had lost the baby blanket Rob’s mother had knitted for Logan. It is with him in some photos, but it was a shock to learn that it was gone. It was a painful thing to do: leave the hospital without Logan. I knew that he was somewhere in the building, cold and alone. The thought practically broke me.

The next 13 days were absolute hell. I could barely keep myself upright; my arms ached to be holding and feeding Logan. I was taking antidepressants, painkillers, sedatives, sleeping pills, and I was drinking heavily. I couldn’t pick up Joshua because even though I hadn’t brought home a baby, I was still recovering from major surgery. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I turned further inward. I had nightmares about Logan, lost and alone, crying for his mama. I thoroughly planned my own suicide in the event that something happened to Joshua, because he was the only reason I was still breathing.

I would spend a lot of time researching cord knots over the next few weeks. They happen early on in the pregnancy when the baby is small enough to acrobatically loop himself through the cord. As the baby grows, the knot gets tighter and tighter, slowly cutting off oxygen, almost always resulting in death between 37 and 38 weeks of pregnancy. Cord blood flow and position is not something routinely documented during an ultrasound, mainly because it is not covered by insurance. Even if an ultrasound detected a suspected knot in the cord, you could never be absolutely sure from the scan, because it could just be the cord folded over itself.

At some point, Rob and I drove to the funeral home and met with a funeral director. We were given too many decisions to make and kept asking for moments alone so we could just be with each other and cry. We opted for no sort of memorial, a simple casket, nothing in it with him, and deferred choosing an urn. Yes, we wanted to see him and sit with him and hold him one last time before the cremation. Yes, I wanted to witness the cremation. I was outraged when we found out it would be more than a week before the cremation would happen.

On June 3, 2019, Logan Max was cremated. Rob and I arrived at the funeral home early. We had left Joshua at home with Rob’s mom and sister. There had been an assumption that everyone would be attending the cremation, but the new, cold, callous me shut that down quickly. I wanted to keep Logan to myself, and I didn’t wish to have Joshua exposed to such a nightmare. At the funeral home we found ourselves, again, on woefully ignorant ground. We signed paperwork. We were walked through what would happen next. To be clear, it was all very formal and scripted. The funeral staff seemed to lack sympathy and the ability to make eye contact. I asked if we would be taking him home right away. The answer was no. Who knew that it takes three hours to cremate a seven-pound body? Three hours. It’s better if you don’t think about it.

We were brought to a viewing room and given privacy. I took one look at Logan, in his tiny white coffin, and I became a cliche by throwing myself across his body. Suddenly all of Rob’s objections to cremation made sense. I could not let him go. I could not destroy his body. Why couldn’t I just take him home? He didn’t look like Logan anymore. After two weeks in cold he was bloated, discolored, stiff. I had planned to hold him one last time, to give myself that final comfort, but I feared that he would snap like a twig if I attempted to remove him from his coffin. So we ended up spending less time with him than we had planned. He wasn’t there. We needed to let him go. We were walked to the cremation viewing room and once again walked through the process. They would raise the blinds separating us from the cremation room, bring Logan to the window, put him in the entrance to the cremation unit, and lower the blinds for the final steps. In the end, Rob couldn’t do it. I understood; I no longer wanted to either. But I had to. I had to know that it was Logan being created, and I had to be there with him for that awful final moment. I don’t regret it, but those final images haunt me.

Three hours later, we drove back to the funeral home to pick up Logan’s ashes. We were astounded by the tiny, tiny box. After a few days, Logan was transferred to his permanent urn, which now sits at my bedside. I talk to him every day.

As the weeks went on, I was enveloped by darkness that slowly became a part of me. Joshua was the only thing I didn’t hate. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I pushed everyone away. I had regular panic attacks. I had a hard time leaving the house. I couldn’t be around babies; I would begin to howl like a wounded animal at the sight of an infant. I barely let Joshua out of view because I was terrified he was going to be taken from me too. I continued taking all the prescriptions, even though I was strongly advised to try and get through without them. When Joshua went to bed, I kept drinking until I was numb and simply passed out. I saw four different psychologists, and the only one that didn’t piss me off was the one I couldn’t afford to keep seeing because she didn’t take my insurance. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I hated the doctor who attempted to get me through cognitive processing therapy; there was no way I was going to “reshape the trauma” of losing my child. I quit after three sessions. I started to push Rob away, too. I made decisions that are still having repercussions a year later.

I don’t remember when I started functioning more normally. It was gradual. I started talking to my parents, and then my sister. I was able to enjoy Joshua’s second birthday, though I did weep because he had been robbed of a brother to share in his joy. I took Joshua trick or treating and delighted in dressing him up as Iron Man. I decorated our Christmas tree all in blue for Logan. Blue Christmas. Again, I was able to enjoy the holiday but mourned deeply for the one who was missing.

In January, Joshua started saying the alphabet, recognizing and saying colors and numbers, counting, repeating sounds, and identifying animals. He played more interactively. He invented games for us to play. He giggled a lot. He took a lot of risks and got a lot of bumps and bruises. He climbs in my lap often and still falls asleep in my arms every night. He pulled me from the darkness and began to heal me.

I continue to have panic attacks. I still don’t leave the house much; COVID19 has done an excellent job enabling my PTSD and introversion. I don’t talk to many people or much at all. I am extremely quick to anger. The world kept turning for everyone else. And yes, bad things happened to them, and amazing things happened to them, and they wanted to share those things with their friend. They didn’t realize that their friend, at least the part of her that cared about such things, died when she heard the words “I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat,” and they may want to grieve the loss of her and accept her for who she is now.

Understand that you will never understand. Know that there are no words. So when you want to say things like “everything happens for a reason,” “He’s in a better place,” “At least you still have Joshua,” “You need to find a way to rise above, there are people who need you,” — Don’t. Don’t tell her you cry for her every day. Don’t tell her you know how she feels. Don’t tell her that it will get better. It does not get better. It gets different. The best thing you can do for a grieving mother is be quiet, save space, and allow her never to be OK again.

It will always hurt. Every single day there is an ache, and a sense that something isn’t quite right. I often cry when I watch Joshua play, because he should be playing with his brother, who would about now be starting to crawl, babble, walk, and be more fun. Often it occurs to me that he should be playing with four other siblings; Logan and the “almost” babies.

You don’t get over it, but you can get through it.

For the babies we should have had:

• December 2015
• December 2016
• May 2019
• November 2020

And for all the babies gone too soon.