Where to begin...There's so much I want to say - I'm sure this first post (and probably many more) will jump all over the place. It's been a little over 48 hours since we got the news that our 40 week, 4 day old daughter in my belly was no longer alive and our precious Baby Ryan Elizabeth was born. We are now home from the hospital without the newborn we expected to bring home with us.
I had been thinking about doing a blog to keep all of our family and friends back home updated on our adventures living in Germany and had decided to start one last weekend but never got it going. While in the hospital recovering from surgery and grieving for our daughter, I knew I needed an outlet and I knew I wanted others to know and remember our beautiful Ryan. So that's what this blog is - an expression of our love, an outlet for grieving, and a way for others to know Ryan. And, especially as time goes on, a place for us to tell of our adventures living in Germany.
I guess I'll split this "first post" into several separate posts in an effort to keep it a little more coherent. I think I'll begin with the story of Ryan Elizabeth Watts. (This one is LONG.)
We started trying to have a second child soon after getting to Texas for Rob's internship last year. Just as with Natalie, we were delighted when we found out we were pregnant after just the first try. However, in late August when I started having bleeding around 11 weeks we knew it was probably not a good sign. I went to the doctor first thing Monday morning to get checked out and there was no heartbeat. It turned out there was never a baby. We were never told it was a blighted ovum but that was pretty much our conclusion - there was a conception but the genetic material did not match up properly to create a baby. Basically, there was an empty sac with a small tissue growth that made my body think I was pregnant, and in a way I was but without a baby. That was hard because we had been excited about having another child. We got through it and felt it was easier because we did not lose a child, just a pregnancy. We never saw or heard a heartbeat, felt a kick, or anything.
After a couple months, we were cleared to start trying again and this time it took a while. Every month we hoped but it just wasn't happening as easily. In January, I had a positive pregnancy test but within a couple of days had my period. Probably a very early miscarriage. We began to wonder if we'd ever be able to have another child. Then it finally happened. In March, I skipped the home test and waited until I was about a week late before going to the lab at BAMC to have a blood test. Rob & I sat upstairs in the transitional intern room checking for the results every few minutes. We knew it would come back positive, it had to but we weren't sure how far we would make it this time. When we saw the word "positive" show up under the results column, we were overjoyed. We were once again going to have a baby. We were still nervous until we had our first appointment around 11 weeks and got to see Ryan on the ultrasound with a healthy heartbeat. I think we finally began to relax after that.
We had the anatomy scan around 19 weeks, everything looked great and we found out we were going to have another girl - we now knew our baby Ryan was Ryan Elizabeth. Everything continued to go just as expected and between 30 & 31 weeks, we flew across the Atlantic for our big PCS to Germany. At 34 weeks, I was seen at the German hospital for the first time. They did a complete work up, including fetal monitoring and an ultrasound - everything looked great. They were more than agreeable to (even encouraging) our desire to have a VBAC. I continued to have check ups every 2 weeks until my due date and Ryan always got a perfect rating. She was active, just like Natalie, and often gave the nurses trouble when they were trying to find her heartbeat on the fetal heart monitor. But once they did, they always told us it was perfect.
Rob and I wanted Ryan to come just a little early. We were just so excited to finally meet her and the pregnancy was really starting to wear on my body. I was also anxious for the VBAC and wanted to avoid going in 7-10 days late for another c-section. Since we've been in Germany, I was experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions and they had been getting stronger and more regular. At 37+ weeks, Rob had to leave on a Monday for what was supposed to be 2 weeks of pre-deployment training. We had originally thought he would be able to come home sooner but they were now telling us he needed to stay until the training was complete, unless I was actively going into labor. On Tuesday I starting having more regular contractions and called Rob just to give him a heads up I may be calling him during the night. At that point, they decided it was best for Rob just to come back home. So Wednesday afternoon, he made it back to the Heidelberg area and I went to pick him up. I ran into a closed road leaving our little town and what should have been a 15-20 minute drive to pick him up turned into 40-45 minutes. Well, during that time I started having painful, regular contractions that felt similar to how I've heard true labor contractions feel. (I don't feel I had "true" labor contractions with Natalie.) When I finally made it to Rob, the first thing I said to him - we've got to go home and pack my bag now. I had been saying I needed to pack my bag but we had not done anything about it up until this point. On the way home, Rob kept asking me if we needed to go straight to the hospital because it seemed that real. Within a few minutes of making it back home, it wasn't that bad and in the end we started packing my bag but did not finish packing and did not have to go to the hospital. There were several more times over the next couple of weeks when we thought we would be heading to the hospital soon. Almost every night when we went to bed, we thought that could be the night. I prayed for it. I desperately wanted to labor and have this child on my own.
On my due date last Friday, I started going in every 2 days for monitoring. Friday and Sunday the fetal monitoring was perfect as usual and I even had several good contractions both times. Monday afternoon I started timing my contractions and for 2-3 hours was having contractions every 10 minutes, and eventually every 7-8 minutes. We thought this was going to be it! But again, it still wasn't time.
Tuesday Rob went to PT and work as usual. He came home for lunch so Natalie & I could go with him to take care of some things, drop Natalie off at a friends house, then we were going to the hospital for monitoring. We were planning to talk to the doctor to make a plan for Ryan's delivery if she did not come by the end of the week. We knew we would be going back on Thursday for monitoring but wanted to wait until Friday or Saturday to go ahead with a scheduled semi-elective c-section.
That's when everything changed. Everything seemed normal. Just as we had done on Sunday, we walked up the three flights of stairs to Labor & Delivery. We were trying to encourage those contractions. We walked into L&D and told them I was just there for post due date monitoring. They began to set up the monitor as usual - fetal heart rate monitor and the toco to measure contractions. It was even the same ladies that had been working on Sunday. That particular nurse midwife did not speak English but there was a student (like an OB resident) who had helped the doctor on Sunday who spoke English pretty well so she was taking care of it. She was having a hard time finding Ryan's heartbeat. We kind of laughed about how active she is and told her I could lay on my side because that helped when they had trouble finding it. She did hear a faint heartbeat a couple of times but it was too weak for the monitor to register. She finally got the nurse midwife (who has much more experience) to come help.
The midwife moved me from the chair in the hall to a bed in a room with another lady who was in for monitoring. The other lady's baby's heartbeat was going strong. It kind of made it even harder to tell what was going on. Being in the bed put me in a better position and they had me lay on my side. I went to my left side because that's how they always found it. When she still couldn't find it and had my turn to my right side, I honestly thought she just did not try hard enough and wouldn't find it on the other side for sure - mom knows best, right? Well - she didn't. They tried again with me on each side, my back, in between my back and each side and still nothing. The whole time they are speaking German about what is going on because that's what they speak, not because they were trying to hide anything. (Although, they made not have said as much had I been able to understand what they were saying.) At one point the student jokingly asked if I was sure the baby was still in there. I was already a little concerned at that point (it was starting to feel like it did when I went to the doctor with the miscarriage so I was definitely getting a bad feeling), so I didn't say anything. I do remember thinking, "Well - I know the baby is in there but whether or not she is okay, I don't know. I'd be more worried if you had not heard the faint heartbeat already." Then the midwife found the faint heartbeat a couple of times and I heard her tell the student something like, "Ist die mutter." I know enough German to know she was saying, that's the mother. It wasn't Ryan's heartbeat at all, it was me. At that point, I could feel my precious baby slipping from my arms. I was able to make brief eye contact with Rob and he just flashed a quick smile and kept focus. I thought that's not great but not the worse sign.
The student left and got the doctor to bring in an ultrasound. While they were setting it up, the midwife went and grabbed some instrument I had not seen before and used it a lot like a stethoscope. She pressed it against my belly and the other side to her ear, trying to listen for a heartbeat. She did it in several places and still could not hear anything. She would try to "wake" Ryan and nothing. At this point, I also realized that Ryan didn't seem to be moving when she did this, nor had I felt her move during this whole time. That was a little unusual but I had been that long without noticing her moving before, just not thinking about it. The doctor began doing the ultrasound on a pretty low resolution machine. Rob was so focused on that image. I couldn't see it and would not have been able to tell much anyway. Rob stayed so focus I knew it wasn't good. Then when I finally made eye contact with him, he looked away very quickly and with no quick smile this time. "This is DEFINITELY not good," I thought.
They wanted to take me over to the clinic (the next hallway over) to use the better ultrasound machine. While they were getting into the room and we were waiting for them to let us in, I asked Rob - she's gone, isn't she? I was teary-eyed but still not really letting myself believe it. Rob just told me, "You couldn't really see anything on that machine, let's just take another look." Again, I knew that wasn't good but I was glad he was still holding on to a little hope. It seemed like it took them forever to get my information into the ultrasound before they started the image and just as they did, the computer messed up and it wasn't working. They tried to grab the chief OB who was seeing an appointment next door but he didn't seem to be coming fast enough so they told me to come into the room on the other side - that there was another ultrasound in there.
I had not been into this room during my appointments. It kind of looked like the doctor's office with an ultrasound machine and instead of the "table" you lay on in the first room, it has a German exam chair (which are very different from what we are used to in the states). You are almost sitting straight up in it. This is were things get fuzzy in my memory. They started doing the image and Rob was standing next to me, looking at the image of course. I did not even try to look. I was just praying. Rob was just holding on to me. They weren't saying much. At one point, I heard them say they needed to get the chief Dr. I already knew she was gone, but at that point I knew my Ryan Elizabeth wasn't coming back.
Dr. Gerka (that's not how it's spelled...I don't remember at all right now so I spelled it phonetically), came in. I remember him saying, "We have some sad, sad news." I started crying more. After what seemed like a long pause, someone (I don't even know who it was) told us the baby was no longer alive. They gave us a little time to process and then Dr. Gerka started talking to us about what's next. He said they wanted to keep me there and asked if we wanted to deliver the baby today or tomorrow. I couldn't even get the words out. I just nodded at Rob, he knew what I meant and told them today. The doctor began talking about inducing labor. I just said no and shook my head. Again, Rob knew. (I had already decided not to be induced if Ryan did not come on her own. I definitely wasn't going to do it now.) Rob again spoke for us and told them we wanted a c-section, that I had already had one in the past (they knew this already). Again, this part is a little fuzzy but they took me back over to L&D. Dr. Rapp (the one who had been doing the ultrasounds) came in and said the OR would be ready in 20-30 minutes if we were ready. I said yes.
They started prepping me for surgery and the anesthesiologist came in to do the paperwork and talk to us. I started losing track of who some of the people were but I think Rob had a better grasp. I think they were two anesthesiologists, I think the guy may have been a resident. He was going over all the risks and it was hard to understand his English at times, you could tell he was struggling a little. The paperwork was in English, we had done this before, and Rob's knows all this anyway so it wasn't a big deal.
We called our friend Leanne who was watching Natalie during what we thought was just going to be monitoring to let her know what was going on. She told us not to worry about Natalie, they had her and would take good care of her. At some point, while waiting for surgery, it hit me - we are in Germany, what am I going to do with my child? I cannot leave her here. I broke down and asked Rob, what are we going to do with her? He was great and told me it would be okay, we would figure it out but did not have to worry about that right now. At some point, I thought about the dogs because it was soon going to be feeding time for them. When Rob got a chance, he called a friend to ask him to feed the dogs for us. While he was on the phone, they came to take me to the OR. I was trying to tell them Rob would be off the phone soon. I didn't want to leave his side. (I knew I'd have to at some point so he could get into scrubs, but still didn't want to.) They said they would bring him to the OR soon.
They wheeled me to the OR and starting prepping for surgery. It was so much like Natalie's delivery but yet so different. The German hospital and OR were just different, even the operating table was very different. The nurses were hugging me and visibly grieving with me. But mostly it was different because I knew I would not hear Ryan cry, she would not take her first breath, I would not wait in recovery to nurse my newborn. They began working on the anesthesia and soon my legs began to tingle. They put in the catheter which was a relief because I had been feeling like my bladder was going to explode for a while. Around this time Rob walked in wearing scrubs. It was a relief to have him by my side. I'm not sure when they actually began the surgery but I remember them telling me they were going to give me something to relax. Well, it pretty much knocked me out. I don't remember much else. It seemed to be just a minute and Rob was telling me that were about done. I wasn't su
re if he meant they about had Ryan out or about had me stitched up. I hadn't felt them pulling her out like I remember with Natalie. I was a little more "with it" with Natalie because they were just about finished with everything. I vaguely have a memory of them showing Ryan to us but it is more of a dream.
Ryan Elizabeth was born at 16:43 on 23 November weighing 3400 grams and 54 cm long.
Once the surgery was over, they took me back to my room. The doctor came in after a while and told us she thought she knew what happened and asked if we wanted to know. Of course, we said yes. She told us the cord was wrapped around her ankle about 4 times, tight enough that it cut off the blood flow of the cord so she was not receiving blood and oxygen from the cord - she basically suffocated. She also said that it probably happened sometime Monday based on Ryan's appearance.
After a while, they brought Ryan to us and we were able to hold her. I could not even sit up from the surgery. But I held her and told her how much I love her, how much I wanted her, and how much I would miss her. I found her little hand swaddled in the blanket and gave her my finger to hold. It felt like she was really holding my finger. Rob talked to her, we kissed her, she held his finger. Rob held her next. We were in such disbelief. It was our daughter. She just seemed to be sleeping, so peacefully. We recited Natalie's bedtime story to her, told her goodbye, and gave her kisses again. She was gone and we were so sad. We cried. We talked about what we should be doing - nursing her, calming her cries and how our lives would never be the same. We vowed to never forget her, she would always be our baby girl, our angel, and
always a part of our family, a part of our lives. Again, we were in disbelief.
We love you Ryan Elizabeth.
