Road Block

It has been over 14 weeks since Jonah was born.  During this time I've cried, smiled, melted down, laughed, wept, hugged, mourned, and healed a little bit.  Today I visited my fertility doctor, Shon Rowan, for the first time since shortly after I got pregnant.  While undergoing fertility treatments I  saw Dr. Rowan 35 times in 12 months.  I have gotten to know him quite well.....pulling my pants down for Dr. Rowan has become as casual as shaking his hand hand hello.  Lol.  He came into his office today and said how he'd been thinking about us a lot over the past few months and wanted to call, but didn't.  He played such a HUGE role in me getting pregnant.  After Jonah died I really wanted him to know what happened.  My midwife told him, but I never heard from the man who was somewhat responsible for Jonah's life.  That made me sad.  I'm glad to hear he was thinking about us though.....despite his lack of contact.  (No hard feelings Dr. Rowan if you're reading this)  

While I do not think I'm 100% ready to be pregnant again, I am ready to make a plan.  So that's why we met with Dr. Rowan today.  In my mind, it's been over three months....I'm feeling much more emotionally stable...I'm done pumping breast milk....I'm longing to be pregnant again.  I was in love with being pregnant.  While much of the time I felt like I had caught a permanent deadly flu bug, I still wouldn't have traded those 25 weeks for the world! I loved being pregnant with Jonah.  I loved that we had finally succeeded to conceive; I loved we were going to be parents; I loved watching my belly grow rounder and fuller each week; I loved feeling his little poking kicks; I loved the attention being pregnant brought me; I loved talking about being pregnant; I loved my thick hair and strong nails; I loved planning the baby shower and registering for the many many many baby items I was sure we would most certainly need. And the greatest thing about being pregnant - adorable, stretchy, comfy maternity clothes! At 25 weeks pregnant, I was finally starting to feel so good and I felt that glow that everyone said I had.  I was by no means ready to be done being pregnant, let alone mentally or physically prepared for what was to come.

So in my head I'm thinking 3, 4, 5 months seems like a reasonable time to wait before heading down the fertility path again.  I will never be "over" what happened, but I can continue to grieve the loss of Jonah while turning the page to the next chapter of my life.  After Jonah died we met with the head high risk OB/GYN, Dr. Holls (who delivered Jonah) to discuss the autopsy and talk about future pregnancies.  He said wait at least three months with three periods before trying to get pregnant.  This seemed reasonable in my mind.  Of course, with my Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, having three periods can be a feat in and of itself (that's another story).  Well today when we met with Dr. Rowan, (who in addition to being a fertility doctor is a high risk OB), he said that women who carry a baby over 20 weeks and deliver prematurely, who conceive again within less than 6 months time have a much much greater chance of miscarriage, preterm labor, infant death, stillbirth, and/or maternal death.  He recommended we wait one year, and at the very minimum six months before trying.  Statistics of the horror stories mentioned above aside, does he realize how much I want to have a baby?  When Jonah died my world SHATTERED and I've been trying to pick up the pieces ever since.  Part of picking up the pieces involves having another baby....moving forward on the path to be a mom....on Jonah's path.  Waiting a whole year to start the nightmare of fertility treatments again seems like an eternity....especially considering that we first started to try to get pregnant over two years ago.  If we wait till May 2013, it will have been nearly 3 years.  Oy.  And I'll be 31.  Not that that's old, but this biological clock is screaming TICK TOCK in my ears.  If it takes this many years to have ONE baby, how old will I be when our family is complete?  Ok, I shouldn't complain about my age....but when Jonah died it was like the universe was saying, "We're going to finally let you get pregnant and get super super excited about this bundle of joy, and then we're going to rip him from you and take him where you'll never get to touch him or see him again.  Oh and now that your baby is gone forever, we're going to make you wait a WHOLE year to even consider getting pregnant again."  Just seems like a giant slap in the face....or a kick in the heart.  Oh and to make it even harder, this Friday is his due date...August 24th....a date we so looked forward to.  Now it's just a giant reminder of the fact the Jonah is not here.  

I know a year goes by so quickly, and Dr. Rowan said that if we wait at least until November, which will be 6 months, we should be fine to start trying again (especially considering how many months it took us to get pregnant before).  This path just seems SO long.  The first three months after Jonah's birth and death I threw myself into pumping and donating breast milk.  That focus helped the weeks to pass by so quickly.  Now that focus is gone and  I need to draw my patience from somewhere....I recently started taking yoga.  Not sure I'm a yoga kind of girl, but I need to be.  Jonah's path is bumpy and I need some tranquility along the way to get me through these next few months.      

Heading Down Jonah's Path

In January 2011, I started my first (of many) fertility treatments.  After being diagnosed with poly cystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), I was hurdled into a blur of fertility drugs, ultrasounds, hormone injections, counting of follicles, doctor appointments....devastation....SILENCE.  While I shared the details of this experience with my closest family and friends, most people did not know I was going through this.  Infertility and trying to get pregnant is supposed to be a SECRET.  Not sure why this is....heck, so many other health problems are shared out in the open - heart disease, cancer....but find out your infertile and you might as well tape your mouth shut and pretend that life is hunky dory.  Meanwhile, you are living through a personal hell - all while watching your best friends, co-workers, neighbors, and complete strangers conceiving eight billion babies.  That totally sucks.  And you can't even complain about it on Facebook because YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT IT.

Anyway....after an entire YEAR of fertility treatments in a last ditch effort, we tried one LAST round of fertility treatments in November 2011.  This involved injecting a drug called Follistim every day into my stomach for weeks and weeks, which caused the follicles in the ovaries to mature to the perfect size to be released for ovulation.  Then I stuck myself with a hefty dose of HCG to release the gorgeous egg (or eggs in my case) and headed into the fertility center to have the very sexy insemination.  While I always imagined Deva getting me pregnant, I never pictured a 70 something nurse practitioner shooting the sperm up in there.  Despite the unromanticness of it all, it still was an incredibly special moment for us.  Deva held my hand and like three seconds later it was all said and done.

After an excruciating two weeks wait, I had a BIG FAT POSITIVE on the lovely pregnancy test.  I screamed, "Oh my freaking G-d!!!" and went on to have an amazing pregnancy with my first child.  It was so surreal....sticking myself day after day with crazy hormones actually worked!! I was so relieved to be done with infertility and onto becoming a mommy!

My dreams and hopes of having a healthy baby boy in late summer came to a SCREECHING halt on May 11th when I went into sudden unstoppable preterm labor at 25 weeks.  Our precious baby, Jonah Henry, was born at 6:31 pm on Saturday May 12, 2012.  He was delivered naturally, in the breach position, in his amniotic sac.....2 lbs, 1 ounce and 14 inches long.  Jonah was immediately rushed to the NICU.  There was no putting him on my chest to have that first mother and child embrace.  There were no pictures being taken.  There was joy.  There was a sense of accomplishment.  But there was intense fear.  He was so little.  He was so early.

After many hours, we were finally allowed to visit our tiny son.  I loved him even before he was born, but I loved him more than I've ever loved anyone or anything else the moment I saw him.  My eyes were completely blind to the ventilator, to the tubes, to the monitors, to his size.  He was perfect in my eyes.

While we knew he had a long battle ahead of him, we were assured that he had a 90% chance of surviving.  His entrance into the world was not what we had planned, but we could handle it.  We could be the type of parents who go to the NICU every day to visit our baby and watch him grow.  We were strong and our strength would rub off on Jonah too.

Sadly, and unexpectantly,  Jonah's health took a turn for the worse on the second night of his life.  By morning we were told we'd have to say goodbye to our precious baby, as his little body could not win the fight for his life.  Devastation beyond words filled our entire bodies.  How could we say goodbye to him? We just said hello.  That day we held our son and cuddled him for the first and only time.  It was the best moment and the worst moment of our lives all wrapped into one.  We changed his diaper, and bathed him, and watched helplessly and numbly as the doctors and nurses removed the ventilator.  I cannot describe what this was like....you can't even imagine our pain.

The days that followed involved things no parent ever wants to do....plan a funeral....hold a funeral.....visit his grave site.....cry......melt down.....cry.....  We worked so hard to conceive him.  Infertility felt like hell.  This was the real hell.

It has now been 12 weeks since our Jonah was born.  These weeks have brought us sadness and comfort.  Depression and inspiration.  If you haven't already, please take a moment to read my post called "Jonah's Milk." (http://jonahspath.blogspot.com/2012/08/jonahs-milk.html?zx=49a95759c50bdc5b) Long story short - In the weeks following Jonah's birth and death, I pumped and donated over 1300 ounces of breast milk - Jonah's milk - to the Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio.  More details are in that post. 

Jonah's birth and untimely death started us down a path....a path we never knew we'd be on.  This is the path of learning how to be parents of a baby who died.  This is the path of grieving while trying to go about our lives.  This is Jonah's path - without him we would not be on it.  And at this point, his path has lead us back to a place we visited nearly two years ago......infertility.  It is a path I didn't want to be on again so soon, but I cannot change reality.  And having the taste of motherhood, no matter how short it was, has lit my desire to try again.  It's not an easy path but I'm ready to head down it.   
         

 

Jonah's Milk

This was written for a Facebook Note.  I thought I'd share it here too.  

Jonah’s Milk
by Heidi L. Solomon
September 3, 2012

After a long battle with infertility, my husband, Deva, and I were thrilled to be expecting our first child.  We spent our days dreaming about our son to be and happily anticipating his arrival in late August.  I planned to nurse him and greatly looked forward to breastfeeding. 

What was a perfect pregnancy ended abruptly at 25 weeks when I went into sudden preterm labor.  Our baby boy, Jonah Henry, was born weighing 2 pounds, 1 ounce, a good size for 25 weeks.  He was immediately whisked away to the NICU.  I felt so helpless - unable to hold or even touch him at first.  Upon his birth, the nurse and lactation consultant got me started with pumping.  They said the best thing I could do for Jonah was to pump breast milk for him, which would be given to him on his second or third day of life.  So I began pumping and I felt so good doing something that could actually help him. 

Sadly, Jonah passed away in our arms after only two days of life.  We were completely devastated.   Within the hour of his passing, I was discharged from the hospital…heading home with empty arms.  Because my milk had already come in and I was pumping every couple of hours in the hospital, I needed to quickly come up with a plan for what to do with Jonah’s milk.  Should I stop cold turkey?  Should I gradually cut back?  What would I do with the milk?  It was for Jonah but now our baby was gone.  Emotionally and physically drained, I called a friend who is a lactation consultant hoping she would have the answers.  Not only did she give me a plan to cut back pumping and gradually stop, she also told me I could continue pumping and donate my milk, if that was something I wanted to do.  

I continued pumping during the next day and did some soul searching about my options.  At that point my milk had really come in and I was getting about ten ounces a day.  I was so sad that I could not help Jonah by giving him my breast milk, but I realized that I could help other babies.  I learned that when you have a preterm baby, your body creates special nutrients for whatever gestational age the baby is born.  So my breast milk was specially formulated for a 25 week baby and those nutrients could actually save a preemie’s life.  Plus, breast milk helps protect preemies from life-threatening diseases and infections and allows them to spend fewer days in the hospital.  It gave me such comfort to know that other preemies could benefit from Jonah’s milk.   

With the decision to donate, pumping breast milk for sick babies became my focus for the weeks and months following Jonah’s death.  Every four hours I watched the white milk fill the little bottles and got such joy thinking about how Jonah’s milk could save another baby’s life.  I have now pumped for over 3 months, which yielded well over 1300 ounces of liquid gold.  On July 23rd I shipped two giant coolers filled with Jonah’s milk (36 pounds!!) to the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio in Columbus.  Jonah’s milk will be going to the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital and other area hospitals to benefit preemie babies in their NICUs.  In addition to donating breast milk to the Milk Bank, I have also been able to donate to three close friends’ babies and actually got to feed Jonah’s milk to each of them.  Feeding Jonah’s milk to babies Callie, Payton, and Noah was incredibly bittersweet – my heart ached for the chance to feed that milk to Jonah, but in the reality of his loss, I was overjoyed to feed his milk to the babies of three friends I love so much. 

I continue to grieve the loss of my pregnancy, the loss of my baby boy, and the loss of my chance to nurse him.  But I celebrate giving birth to Jonah.  I celebrate his life.  And I celebrate the chance to give Jonah’s milk to babies in need.  Sometimes beautiful things come out of the saddest of tragedies.