On Tuesday, August 20th 2019 we lost our twin babies. It has been a doomed pregnancy from the start from the first time that my wife started bleeding and asked me what I thought about it. From the beginning I always tried to cling to hope and reassure her that there was a plausible explanation. A brief Google search would quickly lend to the idea that this was a normal thing that most women go through in the 1st trimester. However, after a few more bouts of bleeding I found myself sitting in class one night when I got a frantic text that my wife needed to go to the ER now!!!
I drove 30 minutes as quickly as I could not knowing what was going on, called my neighbor to go check on her, and ripped into the driveway. In the back of my mind, I was hoping that this wasn’t her just making things up but of course I would never go there. Our neighbor offered to watch our 1 year old son since he had already gone to bed for the night and we quickly headed out to the hospital that was only 5 minutes away. What followed was five hours of questions, tests, ultrasounds, and waiting followed by the much anticipated answer that… everything pointed to the twins not making it. It was the scariest place for a parent to be. I knew immediately that we were in for a rough journey.
The next day, my wife called her doctor’s office and they brought her in to take another ultrasound and lend their opinion which was strict bed rest. We also had a follow up appointment with a specialist shortly after that and got some better news that there was a chance the babies could make it after all. We of course wanted the best outcome possible and placed our worries aside. For three weeks, my wife laid in bed only getting up to use the bathroom and to shower. I did all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and watched our 1 year old as he learned to walk and quickly began to wander all over the house on two legs. It was the best of times… it was the worst of times.
Then came August 20th. We woke up early that morning because we had to be at the doctors appointment by 8am. We left the house a little late, ran into traffic, and ended up getting to the office 20 min late. In most cases, we would expect the doctor to stick around, knowing that this was an extremely high risk pregnancy and this was her first real checkup with her assigned OBGYN. Imagine our surprise when we were told she had already left and we would have to either come back 4 hours later or a week from then. We chose to wait in town… a decision that I will wonder about for the rest of my life. The hours went by somewhat quickly, we shopped, we ate, we enjoyed time out of the house. I dropped my wife off at the doctors office yet again and took our son across town to nap.
1.5 hours after her appointment was supposed to begin, I got frantically texted that I had to come help her immediately. I called to see what was going on and my worst fears were realized, she was going into labor. Being that she was at a doctors office, I had the opinion that there would be something that they could do, whether it be comforting her, preventing shock, or at the worst calling an ambulance but of course they chose to do nothing. I somehow got across town in record time, dropping our son off at my sisters who miraculously lived nearby. I then raced into the parking lot, up the stairs and brushed past the reception to find my wife. There she was white as a ghost in an exam room, shaking like a leaf, screaming, and bleeding all at once. I got her to lay down, turned the AC off and ran all around the room looking for a blanket to throw over her. I then ran out of the room to get people to do something, and although I raised my voice and made everybody in the office aware of the situation, nobody cared. That was something I will never understand. Finally, after causing a stir, a nurse practitioner came into her exam room, laughed at me, did a brief exam to see if her cervix was closed and then told me I needed to load my wife in the car and take her to the ER 20 min away through peak rush hour traffic to do a mere “stress test” and see why my wife was freaking out. At no time did I feel that we were being taken seriously or that anybody cared that we were about to lose our twins.
So there we went, me driving as quickly as I could, making very slow progress and trying to keep my head clear while my wife screamed in agony. Finally, after waiting at a traffic light for what felt like ages, and seeing blood and parts of her placenta come pouring out, I knew that things had kicked into high gear and I needed to call reinforcements. I pulled into a parking lot and called 9-1-1. The phone took forever to place the call and the ringer dialed for a minute before anybody answered. By the time I got through, my wife was screaming at the top of her lungs over and over and I was afraid to look inside the car to see what was going on. I could barely get through a sentence without sobbing, knowing that this was it for the babies, that we wouldn’t be having them early next year and hearing my wife panicking as she tried not to embrace what was about to happen.
Where I had pulled over happened to be a mile away from a really good hospital and it had never occurred to me to take my wife there, since the nurse had made it seem like things were fine and we had just been over-exaggerating. The ambulance and a firetruck showed up and I was asked question after question that I tried to answer as quickly as possible. They put her on a stretcher still screaming, contractions were coming in less then a minute, and I was doing my best not to lose it. The ambulance pulled away and I tried to follow but ended up hitting every single red light along the way. When I got to the hospital, I was in a daze… I called my parents at some point to get their prayers and support and then I went into the ER to find her. I was confronted by a nurse and told I needed to talk to security who not realizing the extremes of the situation told me to wait in the lobby. After a few seconds, someone came and told the security guard to get me in there right away and he personally escorted me back. I am sure that they told him something because he rushed me to my wife’s side, grabbed my shoulder and told me to be strong.
When I arrived in the trauma room, the air was filled with the screams of my wife as she continued to not only experience the full pain of child birth but also was on the edge of losing not one baby but two. These screams were so much louder and filled with emotion then the screams she had uttered when she had birthed our son a year before. I took my place at her side, held her hand and did my best not to cry and to calm her. She was administered copious amounts of medication of multiple kinds and the doctor somewhat abruptly informed us that she was having a miscarriage. As calmly as the doctor said it, there was no assurance that this was such a routine thing for parents to experience (1-4 pregnancies). We were losing our children and there was no turning back.
Little less then five minutes passed by and the ER doc placed himself in between my wife’s legs with the foreceps he would use to pull our lifeless twins and the placenta from the birth canal. My wife settled into the drug haze and now calmly told the hospital staff that she couldn’t watch and didn’t want to know what was happening (although this is standard procedure). I had to watch, there was no way I could tear myself from this moment and the desire to catch a glimpse of what could have been our sons or daughters. Out came a very red, three inch long body with perfect fingers and toes. This small being was attached to what looked like a silver string, that made up the very young umbilical cord. If it hadn’t been our child and the fact that it was dead, this moment would have been awe inspiring. A wave of emotion and also peace spread throughout my mind and body. It was over, but we would live on. The doctor asked if I wanted to hold the bodies and I did, I spread my hands and the nurse placed one of the twins on them. My wife stirred and decided that she wanted to look after all. I remember her admiring the toes, the fingers, and the ears among others things and how tiny they were. Shortly after this she started weeping uncontrollably and saying she was sorry over and over. I told her that it wasn’t her fault and we couldn’t have prevented this. The nurses were crying at this point and the doctor admitted that it was hard for him because his wife was pregnant as well at the time. The nurses took the bodies out of sight and we settled in to a long night of recovery.
Eventually I went out into the lobby where my parents were and recounted what had happened earlier in the day. They comforted me as best they could, arranged to pickup and take care of our 1 year old for a couple days, and hugged me goodbye. When I returned to my wife, she was much more composed and I asked her if I could have her best friend come to keep us company and console her. She said yes and I summoned her. Her friend Kim spent nearly five hours by the bedside asking us how we were, speaking words of encouragement, and getting us much needed items for our hospital stay. It was nearly midnight when we were finally taken to the main hospital and given a room to stay in. We quickly fell asleep and slept most of the night. I woke up at 5am to finally start the grieving process and to clear my head. For over an hour I cried and cried, listened to songs that people had written about losing their child, and wishing that things had turned out different. The next day was long but we finally got to go home around 10pm. It was when we had gotten home that my wife finally broke down and also started grieving.
It has now been a little over three months since we lost them. We are so much more concerned about the well fare of our family and each other and so much less concerned about thing external to this. I hope that in time we will have another child, and I hope that the journey won’t be so scary or that we will have a similar result. I don’t think that either of us could bear that honestly. However, there is great potential that through this pain we can grow stronger, help others have have gone through it, and share our story with anyone who will listen. Somehow I know things will get better
