I spent the evenings painting murals in her nursery knowing that I needed to be working on a nursery, even if she never came home to see it. We chose to decorate with Pooh bear, believing that if we had other children we would share their sister’s spirit with them through the image of the rolly polly bear. Our OB offered us the option of bringing her home to her nursery after she was born, whether she entered the world living or not. She explained that many people need the closure of at least bringing their baby home, so they could say goodbye in privacy and see the baby in the nursery. Although we continued to plan for the inevitable, we tried very hard to live in the moment. We wanted to enjoy the few days that she was alive and with us, as we knew that there would be years of time that she would only be a memory. We worked hard to be in the present. Weekly we watched her on ultrasound, seeing her pushing and wiggling in her tight sack. Doctors continued to estimate her weight and growth, thinking that she would be a little over a pound if she lived to term.
As the summer came to a close, I sunk into autoimmune failure on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. I ended up at the ER and was told that now my choices were very limited as this was a direct and immediate threat to my own life. We had refused induction up to this point, but now I was told that I had no choice and this additional stress would surely end our baby’s life quickly. We also found out our OB was out of town for the long weekend; her partner contacted her, and she offered to come home for the delivery, but we decided to steal these last couple days and wait for her to return Monday and be induced to deliver then. They agreed to let us wait as long as we returned each day to the ER for me to have labs and be monitored. We called our family to tell them our journey was now coming to an end. Then we talked about what we wanted to do with our child’s last 48 hours on earth. We realized that although we were devastated as time came closer to saying goodbye, we knew that it was vital for us to continue to celebrate her time here on this earth. We spent the last two days doing what she would love: we took her to the zoo, so she could hear and smell the animals. We went to the Conservatory, so she could smell the flowers. We went to the park and called a priest to come for the delivery so that she could be baptized if she was born alive. I had handmade a christening dress and knit a layette set for her to be buried in. Both Todd and I spent hours writing her letters that could be with her on her journey, and we went to buy a pooh bear to connect the link between her and any future sibling’s she may have.
