After six years, lots of money, surgery, and two miscarriages, we found ourselves pregnant once again last March, 2007. We were so excited! We were happy and nervous at the same time - I was in a bad car accident just a week before we found out and our van had been totalled by some guy that t-boned us doing at least 40 mph. I also had progesterone issues which resulted in losing our babies #5 and #6 and was determined to get on suppositories immediately. Thankfully, we have a wonderful compound pharmacist right around the corner of us who got the suppositories for us quickly.
We were so relieved at six weeks to see her little heart beating and her jumping around doing the "worm" for us on the ultrasound. The nurse said chances of miscarriage goes way down once you see the heartbeat. We were thrilled!
Throughout the pregnancy, I had absolutely no problems, a little bit of "evening" sickness, but overall felt wonderful! It was such a relief to be feeling my baby kicking inside of me - a sure sign that she was healthy and strong and that the progesterone suppositories had done their job. When my feet starting to swell at the beginning of August I didn't think anything of it - it's been 95 degrees and I had been gaining weight - after all I was in my sixth month.
I had had pre-eclampsia with David (our third) and didn't have it just three months later when I got pregnant with Victoria. I was told that once you have it, it won't come back again, so don't worry about it. When my feet started to swell, I just elevated them more and drank more water to relieve the swelling. I also took my blood pressure each day, just to make sure everything was ok. The monitor assured me that everything was ok.
Up to this point, all my blood and urine tests were coming back great. We went to the local crisis pregnancy center, whom we support and Mark does web work for, and they allowed us to be a "guinea pig" for a new sonogram technician. We got to see Isabella doing all cute and wonderful things - I think back on this now and it was the only time we actually got to "interact" with our precious baby girl. She was sticking her tongue out and swallowing, waving and dancing around. The nurses doing the sonogram were laughing at all the cute things she was doing. They really blessed us and let us take quite a bit of time watching her perform for us. They told us that it looked like she was a girl, although they usually don't do late-term sonograms.
It was during this time that we decided to name her Isabella. Mark liked the name Elizabeth but I was totally unprepared for a girl since God told me He would be giving me a boy! We decided on the Italian variation of Elizabeth, Isabella - which means devoted to God, consecrated to God. And of course, her middle name had to be Love, since we have Cassandra Hope and Victoria Faith.
We went to a sonogram "boutique" to do a 3-D sonogram to confirm that she was a girl about a week later. The sonogram technician said she didn't like the way the placenta looked - that it was deteriorated in some places and she wanted me to contact our midwife and come back in two weeks to do a full diagnostic ultrasound.
A week later I woke up to extreme pain and cramping in my lower abdomen. I rested throughout the day in bed and when the pain had not ceased, decided to call the midwife early Sunday morning. She quickly came over and after an examination, found my blood pressure to have sky rocketed and protein in my urine - classic symptoms of pre-eclampsia. I couldn't believe it! My blood pressure monitor had been monitoring me for a week - but it was wrong! We quickly found out that my monitor (which wasn't a cheap one - it's an Omron electronic model) was off by 10 points on both diastolic and systolic numbers!
As she was examining me, I felt a swift kick and was relieved that little Isabella was ok. It was a reassuring kick, although she couldn't hear the heartbeat on the doppler, so we decided to go to the hospital immediately. Once there, the ER doctor tried listening for a heartbeat through her stethoscope and didn't hear anything. They brought us up to the OB floor and they hooked us up to the ultrasound machine. There, they told us that they saw her heart, but it was not beating. They said the baby has passed.
I couldn't possibly explain the emotions I felt - it was like a bad nightmare that I wanted to wake up from. I felt numb and wanting to die. Sunday evening they started the induction and by Monday morning our beautiful Baby Bella was born still on earth, alive in heaven with Jesus. We can't wait til the day comes when she's there with Jesus greeting us at Heaven's gate!
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