Theo's Story
I wanted to introduce myself. My name is Lauren and I am a mother of two. One lives with me here and the other in heaven.
My daughter Winslow is not my first child. I got pregnant in the spring of 2017 and was expecting my first child a week after Christmas. I had a healthy and uneventful pregnancy. I spent the 41 weeks of that pregnancy imagining and preparing for what my life would look like after pregnancy, raising my son. I bought him clothing, made a nursery, wrote him letters. I was ready for him and I couldn’t wait to meet him.
His due date came and went. I tried to be patient but every night went to bed hoping it would be the night that labor started and we could finally meet him. The night of January 9, 2018 I started having cramping that felt a lot like Braxton Hicks. I kept telling myself it was Braxton Hicks so I wouldn’t get too excited, as I had many false alarms up until that point. However, it became apparent that it was the start of labor and I labored throughout the night. We called our midwife and she said she would be heading over right away. I labored for a total of 16 hours with Theo’s vitals monitored every half hour, during and after contractions, and all indicators were that he was healthy and strong. When all the sudden, his vitals were taken at around 7pm on January 10 and they couldn’t find his heartbeat. Our midwife was confused and assumed her Doppler was defective so she switched to another one. Again, no heartbeat.
It was after this happened, that my memory goes black. I remember laboring. I don’t remember that they couldn’t find his heartbeat. It’s difficult to know what happened here but I think on some deep, subconscious level I knew in my heart that Theo died. I went into a state of trauma and blacked out. Brad describes it as though I wasn’t there, my eyes were blank, emotionless. I finally had an ultrasound and it was confirmed that our son was dead. Brad tells me I didn’t cry or react, just stared ahead.
Even though Theo had died, I still needed to give birth. I continued to labor for 6 hours before I had my first seizure, the first of three grand mal seizures. By the third, the doctors decided the seizures were getting too close together and too intense to allow labor to continue. Eclampsia (seizures during labor) is one of the leading causes of maternal death so I know they saved my life when they took me in, put me under general anesthesia and performed a c-section. I remained under general anesthesia for 27 hours so they could be sure I was stable.
This is where my memory returns. I was woken up at 8am on January 12 to the words, “Theo has died. Theo died.” I was groggy and thought I was dreaming. There was no way Theo died. Why were they saying this to me? Why am I dreaming about this?
As I came out of my medically induced sleep, I slowly became aware that yes, my perfect son who I had been overjoyed to meet, Theo, had died. My son that was kicking in my belly just a day before, was dead. I asked why, and what happened, and no one could explain. Brad asked me if I wanted to hold him and I said yes. I remember holding him for the first time; he was bruised and turning purple a bit, with dark purple lips as all stillborn babies have. I was still weak physically from everything that had happened and began to weep for my son. I remember I didn’t support his head well and it fell backwards. His nose started bleeding and I thought, what kind of a mother gives her son a bloody nose? Words can’t describe the agony I felt.
The days, weeks and months following his death were torture. Excruciating doesn’t begin to describe the pain. I heard it said that grief is like waves in the ocean. In the beginning, you are tossed around mercilessly, nearly drowning at every turn. However, eventually you learn to swim, you are a little more equipped to handle the waves. But those huge, merciless waves still come.
Unfortunately, for Brad and I, the doctors were never able to give us any answers. We met with the high-risk maternal fetal medicine practice at Albany Med and their best guess was that I had eclampsia. They called it “atypical eclampsia” since there were no indicators or other symptoms other than seizures after Theo died. Which basically meant they had no idea what happened or why he would die, but eclampsia is the closest to a diagnosis.
On Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I remember, mourn for and also celebrate my son Theo. I will never understand why he was taken from me so soon, why he didn’t survive labor. I can’t help but feel jealous every time I see a birth announcement on social media, and think why is it so easy for everyone else but me? The truth is, it’s not. It just seems like it is from the perspective of social media. 1 in every 4 pregnancies end in loss – so most of us have experienced it. I’ve found it helps to share my story, to know we are not alone.