Avery's Birth Story

This is our firstborn, our daughter Avery's birth story.

While I believe every birth story is beautifully full of pain and joy, I understand that this might be hard for some people to read, so I wanted to just give a heads up:

This includes beautiful photos of our little girl, who was stillborn.

I am going to share the details of her birth, which even for living children, can be a bit much for some to read.
It's written haltingly, in mere facts; my thoughts and commentary may come in other posts, but this is mainly to tell a story.

This is a story of life and death.
This is the story of an immense love, a profound loss, and a good God. Yes, He is good even in this.

Avery Michelle.

I was 29 weeks pregnant.
My pregnancy had been relatively normal.
I have Ulcerative Colitis, which had flared up at 5 weeks pregnant, and I had been pretty sick off and on during the 6+ months I was carrying our baby. We had been nursing my UC with prednisone and enemas to keep things under control.
Everything else about my pregnancy was relatively normal.
At our anatomy ultrasound at 19 weeks, our baby was defined as "textbook."

At 29 weeks pregnant, we were having a normal day. We were staying with my husband's parents in Willow, Alaska, and I had been feeling fine, perhaps just slightly on the moody side. We had a big dinner with his parents and a friend of theirs, baby gave me two giant kicks after I had eaten so much I was stuffed. We went and chilled for the evening, Karl playing video games, and I decided to read a birth book a friend had given me. I read the chapters on labor, the stages of labor, and everything about the process of birth. We watched some tv and went to bed at about midnight.

I wasn't feeling well. I had what felt like period cramps and a slight back ache. I thought perhaps it was my stomach, so I got up and used the bathroom. Going back to bed, the cramps weren't going away and I couldn't sleep. I googled my symptoms (not always a good idea). My research was inconclusive. I woke up Karl trying to let him know that these cramps weren't going away and I was nervous. He listened, but there wasn't anything that seemed so intense that we should do anything about it.

At 2am, I felt a rush of fluid.

Blood.

We gathered a few items, called the hospital, shoved a rag between my legs to catch the gushing fluid, and raced to the ER.

It was pitch black and pouring rain. The hospital was 45 minutes away. Our new car had terrible windshield wipers. We were on the two lane highway with deep ruts filled with water. Karl was trying to drive as fast as he safely could while the car sporadically hydroplaned in the intense rain.

My pain had increased immensely, my body was shaking. It was silent.

I didn't know what to say in prayer, what to do, but there was a prayerful peace in my spirit. An unspoken knowledge that the Lord knew, even though I couldn't put my fears or thoughts into any coherent prayer. I texted my parents, in a time zone 4 hours ahead of us, telling them we were headed to the ER and asked for prayer.

40ish minutes later, we get to the ER.

I check in, Karl parks the car, I sit down to wait, throw up in the trash can in the lobby. The waiting room is empty.

The pain is increasing.

We get in and speak with a nurse. She was the younger sister of Karl's childhood friend.

They take me in a wheel chair to the OB wing; I'm in too much pain to walk. My body continues to shake.

They get me changed into a gown, out of my blood-soaked pants.

They get the doppler and start looking for the baby's heartbeat. They give Karl a bunch of paperwork to fill out. This isn't the hospital we planned on being at.

I am writhing in pain at this point; it hurts so much to lay down on my back. I ask the nurse if she has to press so hard. She explains she is trying to find a heartbeat. I start to realize something is really wrong.

A few minutes later the on-call doctor arrives. She performs an ultrasound. She's taking a while. I don't look at the screen.

Karl does.

She looks at me, with tears in her eyes, and says, "I'm sorry."

It hits.

We lost our baby.

Karl lays on me and we weep.

I ask, "what now?"

With a pain soaked face the doctor begins to explain what will follow. They will have to induce me. This reality hit like a strong aftershock. I now have to go through the most painful experience of a woman's life, without the hope of taking home our baby to get me through.

They ask if we know the sex of the baby. We don't. We had been waiting to be surprised. This might have been one of the more painful parts. We would find out in the midst of meeting our dead child, if they were a boy or girl.

I sob.

They advise me to have an epidural before they even induce me. It doesn't take much time for me to decide I want that. The emotional pain was enough, the epidural seemed like a grace to make this more bearable.

The nurse asks what we do for work; we explain we are going into Christian ministry.

She tells us she is a pastor at a local church and offers to pray for us.

We are taken to a private room, the labor pains have subsided quite a bit. My body is still shaking.

At about 5am, I get the epidural, and at 6am they start the induction.

The overnight nurse leaves, letting us know the nurse taking over is a Christian as well, and will take great care of us.

The nurse continues to take care of us, changing the bed often, as I continue to bleed, a lot, the whole time.

We know we have to tell our family. Karl's parents are going to be awake soon and realize we are gone.

We tell his parents. They drive in to see us.

I call my parents. They are at the hospital with my grandmother who is dying.

Karl's sister video calls him to say hi, unaware of what is going on. Our nephews are being cute and wanting to talk with us. He tells her.

We decide we don't have it in us to call everyone else, so I text my three siblings and their spouses.

The hospital offers to have a professional photographer come take pictures. At first we are put off by the thought. The nurse explains a bit more about the photographer: she had gone through this, and had no one to take pictures for her. She offers her services to families that lose their little ones. We decide to take the offer.

There is no guide book for what you do when your baby dies.
Everything seems unreal and weird.

The epidural kicks in well. I can push a button every 15 minutes for more pain killers if I need it. The induction is pretty effective.

We sleep. By the good grace of God, we sleep.

Around 1pm or so, I decide to lay on my side for a bit, planning to switch to the other side after about 30 minutes (my sister-in-law had mentioned before, that she made the mistake of laying on one side for too long with her epidural and lost some feeling for a few months on that side). I threw up a couple more times.

The pain increases; I can tell all the epidural meds have flowed to my left side that I am laying on.

I reposition to my back. The pain is not subsiding. I feel a new, different pressure they were saying I would feel when it was close to time. I'm dilated to about 9cm. It's time.

The epidural has flowed entirely to my left side. My left leg is completely numb and swollen. I can feel my right, and can feel the contractions now, which I had barely felt before.

They had turned the lights down.

It was the doctor, the nurse, Karl and I.

I remember saying to Karl: "It's ok. I'm not scared at all"

I had just read the chapter on birth.

There was a "peace that surpasses all understanding."

I'm a VERY fearful person. I wasn't scared at all.

Karl held my hand. The room was dead silent.

I pushed for about 15 minutes. By the grace of God, I felt it. I'm so glad I could feel the pain of this part. I felt our baby leave my body.

We have a little girl.

The room is silent.

They ask if we want to see her, to hold her. I do, emphatically. Karl wasn't ready to hold her yet.

She was born at 2:25pm. She weighed 3lbs 1 oz, and was 15.5 inches long.

They hand me the most beautiful little baby girl that I have ever seen. She is small, but so much bigger and fully formed than we had imagined.

We sob.

I hold her in my arms, staring at her, trying to soak up every detail. I feel the most intense love I've ever felt, and the most pain I've ever felt, simultaneously.

We hadn't picked her name before this. As I hold her, and we stare at her perfect little body, we both look at each other and say "Avery. Avery Michelle" There was no doubt that's who she was.

Karl felt ready to hold her.

I will never forget this beautiful, and heart-shattering image. My husband, tall, strong, manly, held the tiniest, most beautiful girl in his arms, his daughter. He turned toward the wall, to hold her by himself, and his shoulders shook with sobs. I think my heart broke a second time.

They gave us as much time as we wanted with her. We stared at her. Stared at her perfect little nose, her long fingers and toes, her long legs. She had my tear drop lips. She had dark curly hair, my curls and his color. Her eyelashes were still blonde.

She was perfect. There was no deformity, nothing lacking in beauty.

Karl's mom came to meet her. We showed off her beautiful features, with as much pride as any parent. But are we parents?

The photographer came to take her pictures. She held Avery with such tenderness. She helped the nurse give Avery a bath. She helped the nurse take Avery's hand and footprints.

We spent a little more time with her before her body was starting to get more stiff. We wrapped her in the one blanket Karl's parents had brought for us and they took her to the nursery.

A lady from the crematory came and met with us. We signed paperwork. They offer a free service to those who go through infant loss. It all felt unreal.

There is no guide book for what you do when your baby dies.

We were making decisions about death that no parent should have to make.

The lady was ready to take Avery's body to the crematory. Karl suggests we see Avery one more time. I sob, overwhelmed with the thought. I don't know what to do.

There is no guide book for how much time you should spend with your baby when they die.

There was a tension in our hearts; to hold her as long as we could, and yet also to protect our hearts from the immense pain of holding her, as it was just her body, her soul was already with Jesus.

We hold her one more time. We keep her blanket, the only thing we had that she was wrapped in. We say goodbye, kissing her cold brow one last time.

She is gone.

It's just Karl and I again. Just the two of us. No more baby belly kicks. No more looking and dreaming of the future with our child.

It hurts.

We feel profound peace. That can only be known in the most painful places, from the most loving God.

The epidural is removed, they bring us food, the photographer brings us the finished photos.

We text our close friends. They text us love, prayers, and grieve with us.

We feel profound peace. We cry together. We listen to worship music. We read the psalms. We cry.

We sleep. For 12 hours.

The next morning, we gather our things, trying to make sense of our new reality.

The doctor debriefs us, offering us the kindest care anyone could in such a delicate situation. I continue to try to wrap my mind around what happened, the medical why. We are only told it was a placental abruption, usually only occurring in intense trauma such as car wrecks or drug overdoses. We are advised what to possibly test for genetically with our OB doctor when we see her.

We collect our things.

We walk out of the maternity ward with our belongings, Avery's blanket, and a pamphlet on infant loss. My postpartum body aching, our hearts even more deeply aching. We walk out past families in the lobby, awaiting news of their new little loved ones. Instead, our empty arms seem to be screaming our pain to the room as we try to keep our eyes straight ahead and make our way out of the hospital.

That hospital room was the only place we met our daughter, and the place we had to say goodbye. It was also the place where God met us, in a new way, a way that can only come through deep suffering.

There is no hesitation that meeting her was the most beautiful experience of our lives.  Yes, we don't know that love without being mingled with profound pain. But it was all so worth it, to hold her, to see her, to have her. And to hand her back to the greatest Father. The Father who cares for her better than we ever could.

She is living more fully than we can even imagine, than we could have ever offered her.

Fully alive in the presence of Christ, free of pain and sorrow.

We miss Avery with an unspeakable depth, but she's always only been our Lord's. We are ever so thankful we got to have her for the short time we did. May her brief life bring others to know our good God, who gave us a good gift of our firstborn daughter.

Avery Michelle Thistle

"Who is wise like our God?"

August 21, 2018