December 9th

December 9th is the days our girls; Joy Elizabeth, Madeline Grace, and Anne Beatrice, were born and died.

"Those that we hold in our arms for a moment, we hold in our hearts forever." -unknown

To continue my story and remember the story of my girls on this day...


I was admitted to Labor and Delivery on December 8th. I was all alone, they didn't even call a wheelchair for me. I somehow made it and checked in. I got to my room and didn't know what to do next. I started making phone calls. I called George first and told him to come. He came right away and I started to get hooked up to meds that would hopefully lower my blood pressure. Nurses came in and brought me information on having a premature baby and told me I would have access to a laptop while I stayed there. Somehow I knew I wouldn't need any of this information. My doctor came to see me in the evening, they took blood work and told me to get a good night's sleep. I sent George home, he had to work in the morning and we were watching my parent's dog who needed to be let out. I can't remember if he came to see me the next morning but I remember waiting and waiting for the doctor to come and tell me what was happening. He finally came at 1pm and said my blood work wasn't good that he spent all morning making phone calls across the country (including top notch doctors at Stanford where he did his residency) looking for advice on my case. They all told him the same thing. Deliver the babies and deliver them fast or you would lose the mom as well. I'll never forget his face as he told me that I was going to have to deliver the babies. I quietly asked if they would survive already knowing the answer. He said no, that he was so sorry. He asked me if I wanted to wait for my husband to arrive before they induced me. I said no, start now. If it was inevitable and my life was at such high risk, it was pointless to wait for George. To discuss what? My fate was determined. They padded the sides of the bed in case of seizures and they put a blood pressure cuff on that went off every 5 minutes. I didn't know what to do at that point, I was going into labor, hearing my girls' heartbeats knowing they were going to die soon. I called the only person I knew who had gone through something like this. She was my neighbor and earlier that year she too lost a baby and had to deliver him. She told me that when my babies are born to hold them for as long as I can. I think I went into shock after that. By 6pm the nurse who also is the grief coordinator came in to talk to me. It was all happening so fast. Grief? But my girls were still living at that point, I wasn't ready for this. I wasn't ready for them to die. I started frantically looking at the window to see if it would open. If it did, I probably would have jumped out. The air felt so stiff in there, I felt like I couldn't breathe. The lights were dimmed and everything was dead quiet. My labor was progressing and I was in a lot of pain. My doctor came in and I practically screamed at him that I was having a panic attack, that I can't do this. He told the nurses to give me sleeping pills. And so I labored in and out of sleep. George rubbed my lower back, I was having horrible back labor. I started hallucinating that I could hear my babies crying, crying because they were going to die. George told me that they weren't crying that I was just imagining it. Now I realize it must have been my breathing and wheezing of my heart and lungs that were working overtime. The pain started to get so bad I asked for drugs, anything... They checked me and saw that I was ready to push, too late for anything. They called my doctor who lived next door to the hospital. He walked over and got ready to deliver my babies. By now it was close to 11pm. The room was dark and it seemed as if everyone was sitting down. No bustling around the room in preparation of a new baby. Joy was born very easily, she seemed to slip right out. They put her on my chest right away and I'll never forget that joy of seeing her (hence the name Joy after my mother whose parents named her for the same reason). I must have seen her move and I asked if she was alive. As if in almost slow motion the nurse put her stethoscope to her heart and listened. She never told me she was alive. She never answered my question. Silence, nothing but silence. I later found out that she was. It was almost like they didn't even want to check. I guess why would they, there was nothing they could do. The silence in that room after she was born will be something I'll never forget. It was silence that is now forever deafening in my ears. Eleven minutes passed until Madeline was born. It seemed like seconds between births so I have no recollection of what passed during those 11 minutes. I think we were all sitting in that silence staring at Joy. When Madeline came and she too was placed on my chest alongside Joy I was starting to feel the enormity of all this. The doctor asked if I wanted to wait to deliver the third right away or wait. I just wanted them all out. I wanted to be done with this, I wanted to get up and walk away from it all. It was too much to handle. Anne was so far up that I think the doctor had to push her down into the birth canal for me to push her out. At last I had all three of my girls on my chest. I never asked if the other two were alive. George later told me he saw Madeline move but never asked the nurses to check. I think he didn't want to upset me anymore. Joy was the only one we got a birth certificate for along with her death certificate. I'm sure they had to document it only because I asked. She obviously passed during those 11 minutes, I'll never know at what point but it's comforting to know that I was holding her. The strangest thing happened soon after delivery. I actually felt joyous and proud of having these babies. I almost felt like I was on a high. I asked the nurse to take them away so I could rest. They would come back in periodically and ask if we had names yet. George and I stayed up talking about what their names would be. I think I thought for a little while that we just delivered our babies, that the nurses were watching them, and that we were going to name them. I really don't think I realized they were dead until the nurse came in and showed me what she was working on...plaster footprints and she wanted to know their names so she could write them on there. That's when I realized that I wasn't bringing my babies home. I was just going to bring home plaster footprints. I started to cry for them to live, begging for them to breath again. They gave me sleeping pills to get me to stop screaming...


The pain in those days, weeks, months and years after that day were far more painful that the day itself. I have never felt so sad, so lost, so disappointed, and scared in my entire life. As I've mentioned before I did a lot of things to walk through the pain of our loss. It has been a struggle but four years later I've come a long way. We had worked so hard to get pregnant with our girls that to lose them made it all the harder. I felt like I had finally reached the summit on Mount Everest only for someone to poke their finger into my chest and push me off the mountain, back to the bottom were I would have to start that long and treacherous hike back up.


The crazy thing is that we did. And it was as long and treacherous as I knew it would be. It was two long years until we held Magnolia. You can't imagine the emotion we felt while were in China. Those first few days spent until we got her I spent wrought with emotion. I thought of the girls constantly and cried at the beauty of where they brought me. Halfway around the world to a little girl who needed a mommy almost as badly as I needed a baby. I think this day gets easier because I see the blessing in it all. Magnolia was our gift from the girls. Without the girls dying, we would never know Magnolia and that is an amazing thing.

So on this anniversary I feel so grateful for knowing my three girls and thankful for whatever short time I had with them. They have taught me so much. They have showed me so much pain and heartache and love that I have been able to see myself and this world in a different light. The have showed me how to love more and just how fragile life can be. And through the craziness of it all, they have showed me how to be happy again.