Matt's Birth Day Memories

I'd like to share some of my memories of the delivery day. I've gone back and forth many times wondering if I should share the memories because they're not all happy as some of the more unexpected focused on Elsa. However I treasure each of those memories and will forever be thankful for them.

It took two days of induction for Melissa to get started and it obviously went very slowly. We were both very happy it took two days because the day before induction neither of us slept very long or well. Because Melissa was in the hospital for two months, we missed all of our baby and birthing classes. So we watched a very short video on C-section and vaginal delivery on the hospital's tv (we didn't know what method would be used for delivery). When Melissa started to have more significant contractions, one of the integrated medicine staff and a nurse helped show me what I should be doing during contractions.

Melissa had been dilated a small amount for quite a while. At the end of the second afternoon she was still at 1 cm. I'll never forget the look on Nurse Betsy's face when she checked Melissa again and found Melissa was dilated to 8 cm. Her eyes and mouth opened fully and she said Melissa was ready. She started throwing stuff and cables off the bed, throwing furniture around the room and was pushing the bed out of the room in just seconds. She yelled at another nurse to help her and told her she never called the Operating Room to tell them we were coming to get a room ready. They just pushed Melissa down the hall as fast as they could and knocked on the first OR door they came to. The nurse prepping for surgery also had a surprised look on her face when they just pushed Melissa on her bed into the room.

Melissa delivered within 17 minutes of arrival at the OR. I'll never forget seeing Bea's head slowly emerge, until the whole head was out. I was yelling at Melissa "It's a Head!, It's a Head!" like some little school boy. Bea let out a big cry and we cheered for her well developed lungs. What an amazing sound. We were so worried her lungs would be immature and that she'd need a respiratory tube or oxygen.

Immediately after Bea came out and the doctor was handing her to Melissa, a nurse lunged at Melissa and caught something from falling onto the operating room floor, later I would realize it was Elsa. Melissa held onto Bea for a little bit until they wisked her into an adjoining room to assess her. After a few minutes they gave the thumbs up that she was doing great. With great relief I turned to look back in the operating room where Melissa was and saw she was holding Elsa in a little pretty blanket on her chest and was all out balling. We were told we might not even recognize Elsa and that she might be lost in the placenta. That's when I first recognized Elsa.

Then they indicated that Bea would be going to the Special Care Nursery (SCN) and not the NICU! I ran into the operating room to tell Melissa the great news. There Melissa's mother and several nurses were all crying with Melissa over Elsa. We took pictures together with Elsa.

I ran back into the assessment room to watch Bea being weighed for the first time and I was able to hold her for a little bit in the assessment room. I (or another staff member, I can't remember) brought Bea to Melissa again and we took pictures with her and with Elsa. Those were our only pictures as a full family of four. As mentioned previously, Elsa looked so beautiful and just like a little baby. She was very well developed and had her arms folded up with her hands under her head like she was sleeping soundly and peacefully. And to think we weren't sure if we would even recognize her.

I went with Bea up into the SCN and eventually Melissa's parents and my parents came up to see her. After a while I went back to the room where Melissa was and saw her holding Elsa again. She was able to hold Elsa alone for a while. It was late evening by then and my parents went home and Melissa's parents took her up to the SCN to see Bea. That allowed me to spend some precious time holding Elsa alone.

The nurse indicated we needed to transport Elsa from Abbott to the Children's Hospital and that a transport person would come and get Elsa. They would put her in a "plastic bag". There is a tunnel connecting the two facilities and it's a two block walk that's dark and dreary in the middle of the day. I said I wasn't going to put my daughter in a plastic bag and give her to a transport person. I would walk her over to Children's.

It took a couple of hours to fill out the paperwork, we had to fill out preliminary birth and death certificate papers. The transport person came with a black duffel bag. We wrapped Elsa in a pretty and very small baby blanket that was donated and placed her in the bag. We kept the baby blanket my mother made (a smaller matching version of Bea's) as a momento. I carried the bag along side a transport person who was carrying two closed buckets with "bio hazard" all over them that were about two gallons in size each. The buckets contained placentas.

The transport person was a very nice woman who had several children. She said it was easier to see teenage children die then babies. The older kids were able to enjoy life for a while she indicated. I immediately realized I don't want to work at Children's.

It's always a really long walk in the tunnel and we saw no one in there or at Children's until we got to the huge lab. We had to look all over the lab for someone to receive Elsa. When the person asked what I was carrying in the bag, I just said "my daughter". The check in room was basically a room with a bunch of refrigerators. When I pulled Elsa out of the bag the lab worker was startled and said "jeeze louise" as she stared at a little girl wrapped in a pretty blanket. I had to check Elsa in by writing down her name and other information including my name as the transport person. Thankfully when I looked up the lab woman had already placed Elsa in the refrigerator and I never watched her going in there. The nice transport woman was crying freely in the corner of the room as she watched me checking Elsa in.

I left Children's Hospital in the middle of the night through the tunnel with the transport person. I left the hospital thinking I never invisioned dropping Elsa off at Children's (in the middle of the night none the less). I had prepared myself to be going there with Bea who ended up at the SCN at Abbott (Northwestern Hospital). We walked through the very long and dark tunnel and right before we arrived at Abbott we passed a mother who was being wheeled on her bed to presumably the NICU to see her child for possibly the first time. I recognized the father next to her as the one next to me in the assessment room next to the operating rooms at Abbott. His child didn't check out as well as Bea and was transferred to the NICU. I passed them very quickly thinking that could be Melissa and me, and that I expected it to be Melissa and me.

What an amazing and surreal day. Later that night and the next day Melissa and I wondered if what had actually happened was real. She no longer had any babies inside her (who we had obsessed over for months). We had one daughter in the SCN and another in a refrigerator at Children's.

Over the next two days we finished the paper work for both Bea and Elsa. We also needed to arrange for the cremation society to pick up Elsa at Children's and get her cremated. There was some confusion by then which caused great anxiety by me that they would mess something up. While the vast majority of the next few days and would be spent rejoicing Bea, Melissa would also have some severe anxiety about Elsa. After Melissa was discharged from the hospital the cremation society left us a voicemail asking to clarify some things about Elsa before they cremated her. I thought she said she'd call them back and she thought I was calling them back. Two nights later we realized neither of us had called and Melissa proceeded to dream that night that the two of us, Bea, Elsa (who was a live and a child in the dream), and Bullet went for a bike ride. Then she woke up and realized none of it was real.

Bea's birth and first few weeks have been unbelievably exciting and fulfilling. We're very lucky to have such a healthy little girl, especially considering where we were a few weeks and months before. While the past few weeks have been primarily focused on the wonders of Bea, every now and then we'll have instances that reminds us of Elsa and how much we miss her and the future we had anticipated with her and Bea as a family. We'll stop and get choked up for a few moments, then move on to the next task at hand.

I don't think those intermittent and entirely spontaneous moments of thoughts and sadness (with joy too) about Elsa will ever go away. I'm reminded with my new role as a father that until it happens to you, you just don't get it. I have a little better understanding of what it's like for other people to lose precious family members and specifically babies. I also know that there are a lot of people who are worse off then we are. We've got a beautiful, happy and healthy little girl, and that's amazing and I'm so grateful. I can hear her in the other room making little noises as I type. I think it's time for a bath.