The phone rings for what seems like much longer than normal before I am greeted by the medical receptionist, who puts me through to the midwife on call. “I haven’t felt my baby move yet this morning,” I repeat. The gentle voice of the midwife speaks calmly into my ear.
“Hi Emma, this is Tess,” she begins. “Have you tried drinking some cold orange juice? Lying down for an hour?”
“Yes,” I lie. Not about the orange juice, but about the lying down; I’m not willing to wait an hour. I bounce up and down. “He usually moves as soon as I wake up. This has never happened before.”
Tess calmly tells us to come in to get monitored, assuring us that babies tend to slow down right before delivery. I hold on to those words as tightly as I can as I gather my things.
“Should we bring our hospital bags?” I ask Aaron, struggling with a toppling Ugg boot.
“No,” he answers, grabbing my shoe to steady it for me to step into. “If we need them, I can come back and get them. It’s not like the baby is coming right now, right?”
Aaron and I run out of the door and drive to the hospital, ten minutes away. We arrive at eleven thirty. As we walk through the Labor and Delivery doors for the first time, I keep thinking that this isn’t how it should be. I’m probably just over-worrying; there is nothing wrong with our boy. But by the time we reach Admitting my panic is rising—I still haven’t felt him move.
“What brings you in today?” A nurse greets us with a smile.
“I haven’t felt our baby move yet this morning,” I repeat for what feels like the hundredth time that day, but with more urgency. “I called ahead and spoke with the midwife on call, Tess.”
As the nurse shuffles through some papers my eyes lock with those of a woman down the hall. Her blond hair is pulled back tightly and the tops of her cheekbones catch the light just so. In one hand she holds a Starbucks cup and with the other she is rubbing the back of her laboring client, in a hospital gown beside her. A doula. I know it instantly.
“Are you with the birth program?” the woman asks.
I nod.
“Who’s your doula?” A slightly annoyed look crosses her face. “And where is she?”
“Jill,” I answer. “But I’m not in labor. So—”
The conversation stops there because the nurse is now directing us toward the registration desk. I look back at the doula and smile, as if to say, “thank you for caring.” Later, I’ll remember this. The last smile before.
The administrative worker asks me to sit, takes our information, and attaches a hospital band to my wrist. Another nurse brings us to the side and pulls out a Doppler. I read the name on her tag: Hilary. As she works on the machine I look up to study her. She is sweet, with strawberry-blond hair that frames her slender face in tight little waves. She keeps her lips pursed in a straight line.
She reaches for the jelly. As she shakes it onto the probe, she asks, “What position is baby usually in?”
“Head down, back along the left, feet up in my right ribs.” I rub the curve of his back down my side. “But maybe he’s moved?”
“Okay, let’s take a look,” she says. “Lift up your shirt.”
I fold the bottom of my black-and-gray-striped tee to the top of my belly and sit back in the chair. Hilary places the probe below my belly button, to the left, then glides it over my skin slowly, looking for the heartbeat. It must be only a minute, but it’s the longest minute of my life. I watch Hilary’s face the entire time, all the while clutching Aaron’s hand, and in those sixty seconds her expression goes from fresh and confident to very panicked. I know then that something is terribly wrong.
She switches off the machine. “You know what? These things break all the time. Let’s just get you into a room and hook you up to the better monitors.” We follow quickly behind her. In the room, she instructs me to get on the bed. Her hands tremble and she bites her lip as she fidgets to get the straps around my belly and hook up my own pulse monitor. Immediately, the monitor shows 130 bpm, which would be a relief were it not in sync with my own heart rate. This sets off the monitor’s alarms. Hilary tries to silence them, but they ring all around us. The rhythmic beating of my heart quickens, echoing out of the speakers. The monitors show 150 bpm. The alarms continue to sound.
Tess, the midwife I spoke to on the phone, appears. I am struggling to breathe.
“There, there,” she hushes. “What’s wrong?” She manages to turn off the alarms and takes my hand, trying to get me to calm down, but I can’t.
“They can’t find his heartbeat!” I gasp, and then start to sob.
“That sounds like one, doesn’t it? One fifty?” She turns to Hilary, who shakes her head.
“No, that’s hers,” she says.
Aaron meets my gaze and we hold it as a flurry of activity erupts around us. For that moment time stands still, just for a second, and we brace ourselves for what is to come.
“We’re going to do an ultrasound,” someone declares. “Just to check.”
A resident wheels in the portable ultrasound machine. She repeats what Hilary said earlier, that it will be much quicker at picking up his heartbeat. She turns on the screen, finds his heart, and pauses. I see that it is still.
I will his heart to start beating again. Just beat, one more time. The resident asks for the attending doctor, Dr. L., as she keeps the probe pressed firmly into my side. Dr. L. arrives, and the resident asks for confirmation that she has the ultrasound positioned on the heart.
“Yes,” he replies. And then, “Turn on the blood flow imaging.”
The screen doesn’t change. Dr. L. nods solemnly at the resident. And then she speaks the worst words I’ll ever hear:
“Okay. I have the ultrasound focused on his heart now. Do you see that?” She points to a spot in the middle of the screen. “It’s not moving. And there’s no red and blue to signify blood flow. I’m so sorry, but your baby is dead.”
Suddenly, it’s as if I’m removed from everything, a bystander on the outskirts of someone else’s trauma. I see us collapse into each other’s arms, breathless and sobbing. I see Aaron drape himself over my belly, hear him beg for a kick. I see the nurses and doctors that have been buzzing around us slowly trickle out of the room. All I can feel is my heart, how it threatens to escape my chest, and my throat, which houses foreign cries. Everything else seems to have fallen away.
I look at the clock and realize that it is almost one. I am supposed to be meeting my mom for our walk. Then the thought hits me that we’ll have to tell our families. I tell Aaron, and he takes my phone. I gather my hands in front of my face and whimper into the curves of them as he dials my mother’s number.
“Amanda? It’s Aaron.” He pauses. I can’t hear her, but I sense her confusion anyway.
“We’re at the hospital. I think you should come. They can’t find Reid’s heartbeat.” He uses our favorite of the names we chose for our baby. Then I hear the muffled panic of my mother’s raised voice.
“No. No,” he chokes. “They can’t find it. He’s gone.”
He makes more calls, each one breaking my heart into a million more pieces, each one constructing a new level of shock. I don’t think I can face the pain on our families’ faces, though I know I will need their support more than anything.
My mother bursts into the room with an air of authority and asks the nurse what is happening. She fixes things, my mother, and she is ready to fix this too. But she can’t, not now. I just wail in her arms and tell her that it’s too late, that