Dear Baby Boy Wall

March 3rd and 4th, 2012 were spent joyfully painting stripes on walls in our nursery for our to-be little boy. We had just purchased and moved into our first house, full of dreams and hopes for what the future would look like, and after what seemed like forever, we were finally pregnant with our little guy, happy to share our joy with the world.

Someone said to me at one point that I had a lovely home that was to be admired by many because I didn’t have a family to care for. While this was true, this comment caught me a little off-guard, and my immediate reaction was to be offended. Yes, I'd had the freedom of not having a family with my loving Jim for 10 years. Meanwhile we had built a life for ourselves, but our desire to have a family of our own had been present for a very long time. We loved our home, but despite it being nicely decorated and filled with love and our own menagerie of fur-children, it's still somehow felt e-m-p-t-y. We wanted a family for so long; not having a family hadn't been for lack of trying.

And finally, we were going to be a family of three. A whole weekend was spent taping, painting and cutting in the stripes in our little boy’s nursery as my husband, Jim, and his friends worked on landscaping our brand-new backyard. Our dreams were coming to fruition by evidence of the work our hands were doing.

That Sunday evening, after all our friends had gone, I sat down on the toilet and noticed for the first time that my abdomen felt tight, not thinking much other than I had possibly over exerted myself in my efforts, until I noticed blood on the toilet paper. It wasn’t just a spot, either. Something was wrong.

Doctors’ offices were closed for the weekend, so I called my doula, whom we had only interviewed and decided to hire one week prior, and had not even managed to send our deposit for her services. In a panic, I listened to her calm and reassuring voice telling me to lay down and rest for a moment. We discussed what I had been working on over the weekend; my activity level, and the amount of blood I was noticing as well as any other physical symptoms. What she heard prompted her to say “you need to go to the ER, now. I will meet you there.”

I recall Jim driving with so much urgency that it felt reckless as we sped down the road to our local hospital. Shortly after we were checked into the emergency room, we were taken up for an ultrasound, and as we all know, the techs are not allowed to share any information. What seemed like decades later, the OB on call visited our bed, completed a physical examination, discovered and explained that my cervix had dilated 4 cm and my bags were visibly bulging, which was confirmed also by the ultrasound. Our baby boy was still in great health, but something was decidedly wrong. The doctor called it an ‘incompetent cervix’. At about 1:30 in the morning I was admitted to Labor & Delivery.

Rest on an incline with my head pointed down and feet up was prescribed, and I was to avoid moving as much as possible. We - Jim, our doula, and now one of our close friends - were told to sleep as much as we could and we would see what our plan of action would be in the morning.

After a sleepless night which was interrupted by laboring mamas in the next room, it was Monday. My parents joined us at the hospital having been on vacation which they came back from as soon as we gave word. We discussed our options there at the local hospital, and the OB revealed he had looked at our charts and had spoken with Dr. Tabish whom we had briefly seen a few weeks prior for our level 2 ultrasound.

Our options were put very plainly: terminate the pregnancy or be on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy. Those options were not good enough, and we asked to be transferred to UCLA Medical center under the care of Dr. Tabish. At 19 weeks and 6 days, could simply not accept that the first option for us would be to have a D&C and move on. This little boy was growing and alive inside of me, and perhaps a different facility and doctor would open more options for us.

After an ambulance ride with sirens blaring, we were admitted to UCLA West under Dr. Tabish’s care. Truthfully, the next day is a blur of emotions. Deeply confusing, hard emotions. The number of options did not increase as we hoped for, however they were better explained:

If we chose to continue with this pregnancy, I would remain on inverted bedrest in the hospital for at least the next 10 weeks, risking infection and a bevy of health problems for me, not to mention all the risk of complications from giving birth to a significantly premature baby boy. Since, at now 20 weeks, he was not viable (meaning: able to breathe on his own), it would be imperative for him to remain in utero for at least another 8 weeks to even have a fighting chance, and even then, it wasn’t a guarantee.

The other option: proceed with what had already biologically started – a pre-term birth or termination and a D&C to remove the placenta.

We. Were. Heartbroken.

How could there not be a third, miracle option?

With heavy hearts, we weighed each of the risks and decided that jeopardizing my life was not an option, and made the most difficult decision we’ll ever be faced with – the decision to proceed with the birth (and ultimately) the death of our now thriving son.

I felt like I had failed him. My body was failing him. He was so strong, fighting to stay, to live, and yet we could not continue like this.

I ate for the first time in 48+ hours (it still is the best sandwich I’ve EVER eaten), and we slept as much as we could to prepare ourselves for the day to come.

…

The following morning I was administered cytotek, and contractions began within an hour or so. I labored, transitioned, experienced the rush of hormones as my water broke, and gave birth to our tiny, 11 oz. son early that afternoon.

My parents were there to meet him, and I could not have gone through that process, wholly unprepared to give birth 20 weeks before I was expecting to, without the loving support, guidance and generosity (who never accepted a penny for her help) of my doula.

When our son was born, we grieved, hard. We were all sobbing. We kissed and held him. Saw his tiny hands that matched his fathers; saw his tiny jaw that matched his fathers; felt his tiny heart beating. I kissed him and laid him on my chest and told him how much I loved him and how I would always be his mama before I was whisked away for the D&C. Jim held our son even his heart stopped beating.

…

We were released from the hospital late that night, empty. We each took several weeks off work after that to grieve and process all that had been lost. Our dreams for our son and his life were torn from us, and we had a difficult time processing all that had occurred during those three days, but with the love and support of our family and friends, we were never alone.

We chose to not name our son as it felt disingenuous to select one when we had not yet done so before his birth. He was never able to take a breath of air, he never opened his eyes, he never cried his first tears.

Baby Boy Wall was born Tuesday, March 6, 2012.

I was a mother without her child.

…

My precious baby boy, this is my letter to you:

Dearest Son,

I will never forget the brief moments we shared together.

The instant I saw you, I loved you, unconditionally. I felt your heart beat; I held your tiny hands, saw and kissed your face that strikingly resembled your father's. As you lay on my chest, close as you could be to my heart, I wept. I wept for the moments we will never have together, I wept for the relationship with you I had dreamed of, I wept because my heart could not contain the love I felt instantaneously for you.

My darling son, I know you are in heaven, observing your father and me grieve the loss of our first-born, grieving the fact that we are parents and cannot hold our child. The one reassurance we have during these sad moments is the promise from God that one day we will be reunited.

from This Side of Heaven

We will have a chance to sit and laugh together,

To take a walk, hand in hand.

I'll kiss your face and tell you that I love you.

And I might just shed a tear to hear you say

That you love me, too.

There isn't anything I wouldn't give to have you here.

To touch your cheek, tickle your toes

Bounce you on my knee, wipe your nose.

I longed to hear your first laugh and first words.

To see you take your first step.

To calm all your fears and wipe away any tears.

You will remain forever perfect in my eyes, and somehow, some way, I will find the strength by the grace of God to move on, never forgetting, but learning how to live this life again, happy, without you.

I love you. Always.

Mommy

…

Truth be told, there were serious pangs of jealousy in the year to come. We still wanted our family which felt especially incomplete. Having faced the pre-term birth of our son, and many, many cycles of no plus sign on the stick, I had honestly begun to lose hope that as a 32-year-old woman, I would ever conceive and carry a child to full-term. I'd witnessed so many families grow in love over the years, and I couldn't help but be a little jealous of their luck.

But in December of 2013, the day after meeting up with a dear friend to enjoy drinks and dinner celebrating our birthdays, I decided that I’d been feeling weird for too many days, and without telling Jim, I went to the drug store during my lunch break to purchase a pregnancy test. When I got home I fumbled with the packaging, followed all the steps, and then I immediately went to occupy myself elsewhere. I tried to make dinner but my hands were shaking. Even though I knew the symptoms I was feeling were familiar, I had convinced myself so many other times that similar feelings meant I was pregnant, only to have the test (and later, mother nature) confirm otherwise. Nervous as I was, I looked down, and there were the words "Pregnant".

The rest of the hours I waited for Jim to come home were a blur. I know I cried in disbelief, and I recall trying to come up with a clever way of sharing the news with Jim. I settled on not saying a word, but walking him straight into the bathroom to see the results for himself as soon as he walked in the door. He knew I had been feeling "off", but I think when he found out he was still in shock. It took both of us months to calm to the point where we believed this pregnancy was actually going to stick, and weeks later, a surgery to have a cerclage (a cervical stitch) put in place finally gave us the assurance we felt we needed to let ourselves be excited about this pregnancy.

Claire Louise Wall, our rainbow baby, was born Tuesday, August 26, 2015.

And we were overjoyed.