Holly's Story
To Brooke’s Blog Readers,
Brooke kindly asked me to share my story in honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day (Oct 15th). I lost my daughter Hollyday (Holly) on May 20th, 2017 at almost 34 weeks gestation. In the immediate aftermath, I desperately needed to hear other people’s stories and learn how they processed their grief. I wanted to know how they moved forward after a stillbirth. The openness and vulnerability of the parents I found was hugely beneficial to me. In turn, I feel compelled to share my experience in the hope that it helps other families going through this same loss.
Here is Holly’s story.
It was very late in the evening and I was struggling to sleep. Suddenly, I became acutely aware that I had not felt Holly move in quite some time. I remembered that putting something cold to my belly could kickstart movement. So, I went downstairs and placed a cold drink on my stomach and waited. Five minutes went by. Nothing. With my heart beating a little faster and my hands becoming clammy with sweat, I googled some more strategies. I tried drinking juice. Nothing.
By this point, 30 minutes had passed since I had become fixated on Holly’s lack of movement. I considered calling my doctor and immediately felt a tinge of embarrassment. After all, Holly was my third baby. I had been through multiple pregnancies already. I didn’t want to bother him late at night for a baby who’d had a perfectly healthy ultrasound the day before. But fear and instinct won out. So I called and explained that Holly was not moving. He suggested a few things that I had already tried. When he heard the panic in my voice, he calmly recommended that I come in - mostly so I could be reassured that everything was okay.
I went upstairs to tell my husband xDan that I was going to our hospital’s Labor & Delivery (L&D) ward to check on Holly. Just as my doctor had done with me, I assured Dan that there was nothing to worry about. I simply needed confirmation that things were fine. I went to L&D by myself; we had two kids sleeping at home and there was no need for both of us to go when it was probably nothing.
I kept a hand on my belly the entire drive to the hospital, willing Holly to make some movement so I could turn the car around. With every minute that passed, my sense of dread deepened. Despite that, once I arrived, I lightheartedly told the nurse that they must get panicked pregnant mothers in all the time. She laughed and said that everything is probably fine. And quickly followed up with “It’s better to be safe than sorry.” A mere five minutes later she put the Doppler to my belly and uttered, “I am so sorry. There is no heartbeat.”
I instantly went cold, started shaking and could not stop. I still remember the look on her face. She was young and seemed terrified; upon reflection, I wonder if that was her first experience delivering this type of news. She then used my phone to call Dan and give him our grim update.
As we waited for him to arrive, I repeatedly screamed “No!” as if that would undo everything. When Dan walked in, I was glad to have a partner in which to share this immense grief. But his presence also confirmed that this was really happening.
We waited for additional doctors and nurses from the OB team to consult with us. I did not want to touch my stomach. And even with the monitor strapped to me, I wanted to turn to my side. I willed myself not to think about what was happening inside me. It felt as if my body had betrayed me and Holly, and I didn’t want to have any connection with it.
As my OB team came into the room, I pleaded with them to take Holly out immediately, the fastest way possible. “I want a C-section,” I said repeatedly. It was this exact moment in which I first heard “stillbirth” used in reference to what happened with Holly.
The term sounded oddly foreign to me. Of course, I was familiar with the word. And intellectually I knew it meant a baby had died. But the notion of a stillbirth felt so far removed from me and my life. It was something I expected to have happened a century ago or perhaps in developing countries. Obviously that’s not the case. And what once was foreign is now sadly familiar. Indeed, now I can tell you anything you ever wanted to know about a stillbirth. That it’s defined as a pregnancy loss after 20 weeks of gestation, and that it currently affects 1 in 160 women across the world.
My doctor convinced me that the best option going forward was to deliver Holly vaginally. So Dan and I prepared to give birth. I had conditions: 1.) I wanted no description of her when I delivered - no hair color, size, etc. 2.) I did not want to see her afterwards. I had to completely dissociate with giving birth to my dead daughter in order to actually do it.
Delivering Holly was in many ways similar to the delivery of her sisters. When the contractions got too strong, as with her siblings, I was given an epidural. And like her sisters, Holly came relatively quickly with a few strong pushes. However, unlike my other kids, I can tell you the final push came from pure grief.
Following delivery, I wanted to leave the hospital as quickly as possible. I couldn’t be in the L&D wing where I knew other rooms were filled with women giving birth to living babies. It was just too much. Even though I had barely regained feeling following the epidural, I begged the doctors to allow me and Dan to leave. I kept my head down as we walked out. I did not want to see any newborns or pregnant women.
The post-delivery recovery was physically similar to my prior two. There was the bleeding, the milk coming in, and my uterus trying its best to contract to a smaller size. But I wanted nothing to do with these reminders that I had just given birth to a daughter who was never coming home.
Beyond the physical recovery, there were also the logistics that must be addressed when someone dies. We had to decide if we wanted an autopsy report. We did*. We had to pick up a death certificate instead of birth certificate. And we had to determine what to do with Holly’s body. We decided to have her cremated and planned to plant a dogwood tree in our yard to scatter her ashes around. Making these arrangements helped me come to terms with and accept that we really did have our daughter die.
Throughout the subsequent weeks, though my body recovered from delivery, my feelings of grief did not. Every basket of food, flowers, or kind notes of sympathy just made it worse. They were all reminders of what we lost. Picking up my older daughter at nursery school felt surreal. I climbed the stairs to her classroom, the same stairs that I had ascended for eight months as my belly grew larger and larger with Holly. I was now supposed to be going up to that room with a newborn snuggled in her car seat.
Similarly, throughout my pregnancy, I used to walk my dogs in the woods by our house with a friend and her dog. When that friend reached out to go for a walk after losing Holly, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. To walk without a baby strapped onto me would be too sad.
Slowly, the stifling aspects of grief subsided. I was able to pick up my daughter from nursery school without feeling the immense loss of Holly. I could hike with my dogs again and be okay. This all took time. And I realized those vague platitudes about grief that I’ve said to friends and family in mourning definitely had a kernel of truth to them. Time really does helps. Not to move on from the loss of Holly but to move forward. And the grief really does come in waves. Initially, those waves are big and overwhelming. Now they are smaller, but come up both expectedly (May 20th,) and unexpectedly (seeing a toddler that would be about Holly’s age on the playground, and wonder if Holly would also like the swings).
Ultimately, everyone is part of some grief community, whether it’s through the loss of parents, siblings, relatives, friends. And these communities are so vital because they allow you to share your experience and truly realize that you’re not alone. You can find a tribe of people living through similar circumstances who simply “get it.” And you can listen to each other’s stories and uncover different ways to take that next step and begin to heal.
This blog post is dedicated to Brooke, Emily, and Sam and their families who made up my grief community for this particular loss. Special thanks to Brooke for posting this and honoring Holly’s memory.
*The autopsy report could not identify a cause of death for Holly. This is true for about 1/3 of stillbirths.