My Story

October 24, 2011.  Routine prenatal 13 week checkup.  My mom and 4-year-old son are with for the visit.  We're going to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time!  How exciting!  This is our 3rd baby.  We tried and tried for almost 2 years to conceive it, and when we had finally just decided it might not happen, BAM! Positive pregnancy test.  We were so excited.  We told everyone.  Why shouldn't we?  We had 2 beautiful, healthy babies before with no issues.  That kind of stuff only happens to other people.  Not us.  There was no hiding the pregnancy anyway.  I immediately started having morning sickness and was throwing up constantly.  So, when I went in for my appointment that day, I just figured we would be hearing the baby's heartbeat for the first time, all would be good and we'd go home.  Except there was no heartbeat.  My doctor couldn't find it anywhere.

"Don't worry.  It could be hiding or your dates could be off and it's too soon to hear.  We will schedule an ultrasound.  I'm sure everything is fine."

In my heart, I knew.  I just knew everything wasn't fine.  We scheduled an ultrasound for two days later.  The next 48 hours are a complete blur.  I don't remember much except standing at the kitchen sink at one point and screaming and crying.  Everyone kept telling me it was going to be fine.  But a mother knows.  I had had a very early miscarriage 2 years before that only very close friends knew about.  Those friends told me not to worry.  This time was different.  I was a lot further along-into my second trimester already, and those things don't happen this late.

October 26, 2011.  This time, my mother-in-law and my 4-year-old son are with.  I couldn't do this alone.  We went back to the ultrasound room.  The tech immediately found the baby.  I looked at the screen and thought it was way too small for 13 weeks.  He didn't say anything for what seemed like an eternity.  Then he asked if I had been having any cramping or bleeding.  I hadn't.  When he pulled up the heartbeat monitor on the screen and I saw a flat, green line, I knew.  That was it.  He didn't say anything and neither did I.  He took us back out to the waiting room.  I went back to the exam room by myself.

In the exam room on the corner of the little desk, there was a blank ultrasound print out.  In the corner, the tech wrote, "Nonviable pregnancy.  Patient in waiting area."  Those words will haunt me for the rest of my life.  I was sent home to miscarry naturally.

I spent the next several days screaming, crying, curled up in the fetal position in my bed, on the couch, in my bath tub.  I had to pull myself together for a few hours at one point for my oldest daughter's 6th birthday party and again the following day to take the kids trick-or-treating.  Finally, on November 1, 2011, after pleading with God to either let the doctors be wrong or to let my body just let go, I started having contractions around noon.  By 6 pm, I had miscarried.  I got to hold my tiny little baby.  Let me tell you, those were the longest and worst 6 days of my life.  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

On the way home from the clinic the day I found out she was gone, I saw a pink butterfly.  I have never ever seen a pink butterfly in my whole life, and I've never seen butterflies in Minnesota a week before Halloween.  I really truly believe that was God telling me my baby girl was okay.

We named her McKenna Rose.  We buried her in a stained glass box with a pink butterfly on top in our yard, and I have since planted a beautiful memorial garden around her with pink roses and pink and white tulips that were ironically called Angel's Wings tulips.