My husband is far more of a gamer than I am. I have too short an attention span and get bored easily… so I tend to try everything and accomplish very little. I get bored randomly and just can’t be bothered with sitting there very long. But a hobby was needed, so I reactivated World of Warcraft to putz around. I think it’s one of the only times I may be very happy to be addicted to a game. It doesn’t involve babies at all. It is something to immerse myself in, to be mindless and obsessed with, that is completely and utterly separate from my state of pregnancy (or un-pregnancy), infertility, or parenthood. And I am thankful.

Of course getting invoved in things like this do lead to the inevitable “waking up” moment when I suddenly my brain looks around and remembers everything that’s happened this past year. As if I had forgotten for all of 5 minutes. But at least those rememberances don’t hit me like a ton of bricks… just a sinking of my spirits, like a huge weight is being re-applied.

I can’t emotionally afford to think about Devin all the time… thinking about him is so overwhelming. Not just that the feelings are so strong, but there’s so many of them I don’t even know what I think. There are regrets and fears and hopes and anger and hopelessness… and that’s just in the first three seconds. It’s exhausting. If I could just feel one thing at a time it would be much easier to handle.

I would write more tonight, but I spent too much time in the game and now I’m just too tired to write.

Something I never got around to mentioning here in my blog was that my best friend Kel had her baby boy, Daniel. Kel and I were due a day apart and she was not yet full term. She ended up with an emergency c-section due to a leak in her waters and the baby being breech, Daniel ended up in the NICU and has a pretty severe infection. It’s been a stressful time for her – and stressful for me too, since she is practically a sister to me and I just can’t handle more bad news in my life.

And it’s weird, because I would expect to really struggle with this. We were due so close together, our boys were going to be practically cousins. We don’t live close together, but it doesn’t matter to our relationship. It was so wonderful to share pregnancy together, to be looking forward to meeting our boys. We both expected to go a week or two overdue…. we were so sure. So now, with Devin gone… one of my big fears is that I would have to distance myself from her, from her new baby, to maintain my own sanity. Not that she would ever have a problem with that – I know the last thing she wants is to upset me in any way and if I had to avoid her blog, her pictures, her son, she’d understand. But I don’t want to have to avoid anything. I’ve lost enough already – the last thing I want is to lose my connection with my nephews too.

So far I have been okay. Kel and I observed that maybe it’s because Daniel isn’t a full-term healthy baby… he’s in the NICU… and it sounds totally aweful, but maybe that makes it “easier” for me to deal with. He looks a lot like Eric, Kel’s older son… which is good for me too, because he’s very different from Devin.

I am just so thankful that I have Kel in my life and that we are able to stay close and support each other. It’s such a relief to have one person you can say anything to and not worry about it.

…….. I just got a call from Dr. M….. the head honcho doc who was asked to review our findings and go over stuff with us. He got the pathology results back. So. We have our answer.

It seems there was a band of amniotic sac tissue wrapped around the cord….. like a little piece of tissue tore off from the inner sac and got wrapped around the cord like a piece of string. It cut off his blood flow, his oxygen. He strangled.

I had this strong feeling it was a cord accident…. though I thought it would be that it was wrapped around his neck (and it was – but it was loose… turns out that’s not what killed him).

He said this particular type of thing happens very very rarely. He said they see about 3,000-4,000 neonatal deaths a year…. and this particular issue comes up once every few years. So 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 20,000? Something like that? My baby died in a fucking freak accident that is totally against the odds. I am struggling to deal with that fact. Not only was it a cord accident it was a totally FREAK RANDOM ACCIDENT.

The good news is that it is totally non-reoccurring. He repeated that several times. Non-reoccurring. Will not be an issue next time. Of course now I’m very well acquainted with being on the wrong end of totally improbable odds so I’m never going to feel safe again…. light knows what can go wrong. But this particular thing, is not something you are “prone” to, not something that I’m at a higher risk for. Just fucking lighting out of the sky.

He also said that it’s not something I or they could have prevented… not something you can watch for. Reaffirms my belief that the Midwives did everything right.

That isn’t to say I couldn’t have saved him, though… not in my mind. If I had noticed he was struggling? I get the feeling it wasn’t just a sudden thing… it slowly got tighter. What if I had gone in when I noticed his movement changed? Could they have gotten him out in time? I’ll have to live with that the rest of my life.

I am doing research via Google on Amniotic Bands…. just reading.

Just a general article: Amniotic Bands and Sheets

An article from a 1953 Medical Journal about a similar incident: Neonatal Death due to Ligation of Umbilical Cord by an Amniotic Band

From the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine: Strangulation of the Umbilical Cord by Amniotic Band

From PubMed: Strangulation of the umbilical cord by amniotic bands: report of 6 cases and literature review

There’s so much more in those articles. Like these bands, they more often cause physical abnormalities by entangling limbs. There is also some mention of ultrasound identifying these bands, but I would imagine that would depend highly on how many there are, where they’re located, how much amniotic fluid is there, how big the baby is, etc etc etc. (No I still don’t blame anyone for this. Just making mental notes.)

It is so… weird… to have a definitive answer. I refused to google anything before this…. there were too many maybes and I didn’t want to drive myself crazy. So it’s weird to know, to look it up and know that’s what killed my baby. Another adjustment to my new reality.

::

Den’s having a rough time coming to terms with the results. We are both extremely relieved that there is nothing that will put me at higher risk the next pregnancy… but at the same time he is so angry right now. When I told him about the doctor’s call and what they had found and what a freak accident it was he just kind of sagged down to sit on the baby gate and looked at me with a dazed expression and said, very calmly, “I am really fucking angry.” He’s been back and forth between wrenching grief and anger all evening.

I’m just glad I can be here for him. I know men – at least my man – always feel this need to be the protector… to be the strong one and hold things together. I mean, while Den was crying tonight he looked at me and said, “I’m sorry I can’t be there for you.” And I asked him what he was talking about, because he’s always there for me. He replied that he meant right at that moment. He felt guilty for needing me to hold him tight, because that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But what he doesn’t get is that it’s nice for me to be able to be the strong one once in a while… it makes me feel a little relieved, that I’m not the only one needing support. I can do something for him once in a while. Light knows I feel so useless sometimes, watching him be hurt and angry and knowing there’s absolutely nothing I can do.

I am feeling a lot more calm about things today. Yesterday really knocked me for a loop. I didn’t fall apart or anything, I only cried a little, but my head was just spinning. Today I have a little bit more of a grip on things.

I am still struggling to understand how in the hell we could be that 1 in 50,000 or whatever the number may be (different articles give different rates for amniotic bands so it’s hard to get a solid number). That’s the part that has me most stunned right now. I had a strong feeling it was going to come down to a cord accident, but I expected a run-of-the-mill cord accident: nuchal cord, or just that it got trapped. Horrible things to think about, but from my reading it does happen with alarming frequency. When a baby is stillborn a lot of the time it comes down to one of those things. So it really threw me for a loop to be told that it was indeed a form of cord accident, but it was this really freakishly rare thing that they rarely ever see.

It just feels like I fell into a new alternate reality again. We are not unusual people. I always liked to think I was “different” and to stand out in some way, but we live normal lives under the radar, we are “different” and yet unremarkable. We struggled with infertility, but so does over 10% of the population. I found comfort in finding so many infertiles online. I found comfort in talking to others who have suffered stillbirths. And now I feel like I stand alone, stand apart. And I know it doesn’t mean anything in the end, it doesn’t change anything, but it feels so strange to be so incredibly unique.

And I keep asking, why us? I don’t expect an answer. I don’t believe in any grand plan, I don’t believe we were “selected.” But the question hangs in the air anyway. Why? How? There were 49,999 chances Devin would be fine. How the hell did we land on that one black square in the overwhelming sea of white? And, moreover, why us after all we struggled through? That keeps running through my head… the thought that we paid our dues, we struggled through adversity to get pregnant. Stillbirth after infertility feels like the cruelest joke fate could have played on anyone. At least for most people after a stillbirth their only question is when do we feel ready to get pregnant again? For us that question is not nearly as important as when we will be able to… and what we are going to have to do to achieve it.

But at the same time I feel tremendously relieved. I swear, when I thought it was a “normal” cord accident the thought of going to sleep each night while pregnant was terrifying – and I’m not pregnant yet, so I’m sure the fear would be ten times stronger once I was. I realized today that a lot of my anxiety about my next pregnancy has been lifted. Knowing that this was such a rare, freaky thing… well it helps reassure me that next time will be okay. There’s really no sense worrying in something that is such a completely freak accident…. it’s like worrying that my husband will get struck by lightning while walking the dogs. I’ll still worry…. still be anxious as all hell… but some things are just beyond predicting in any rational sense. And I hope that in my next pregnancy I can still find some part of the joy and contentment that I had with Devin. I do not want to live 9 months in utter fear.

Of course the more pressing issue is still getting pregnant.

Every day I send out a “prayer” to the world, pleading to please please let me get pregnant. I still don’t believe in any form of god so I really have no idea what I’m “praying” to. It’s kind of like writing here in my blog… I just put it out there. I’ve never even been a believer in the whole “positive energy” thing, but I feel the need to do it anyways.

Please, please, please let me get pregnant soon. I NEED that. And damnit, after all I’ve been through, I deserve that much.

Yesterday – Saturday – I went out shopping with pregnant SIL. You might think I’m crazy for doing that. And yes… it can put a lump in my throat when I see her with her getting-larger belly. But I look past that and I’m pretty okay with it. I think it’s one of those things where the anticipation and thinking-about-it feels a whole lot worse than if I just face it head-on, take a breath, and get on with it. Most of all I think I’m okay with it because SIL understands where we’re at. She’s understanding and compassionate, and yet she doesn’t get all awkward about Devin. When I talk about my pregnancy with him I feel connected to him.

We went to Costco and I felt fine. Even when I saw people with young kids or even baby carriers I had that lump in my throat but I turned my head and kept walking. The only problem I hit was the baby clothes section. I always used to stop there to see if there was anything cute worth buying for Devin and Daniel, and for some reason I felt the urge to walk over there, the idea of it didn’t bother me. Looking at the little girls dresses was totally fine, I was thinking about SIL’s baby and how cute she’d look in them, and even wondering if our next child will be a girl. But when I looked at the baby boys’ clothing… they had the cutest little clothes with turtles on them, and for a tiny tiny split second I got excited and wanted to buy them, they were so cute, so perfect for Devin…. and then it all hit me and I choked up and almost started crying. I had to rush out of there and take some deep breaths. (Just writing about it I’m starting to cry.) I swear the only thing keeping me together is the knowledge that someday we will have a baby to wear those cute clothes we have sitting in a bin in our basement.

We also visited SIL’s parents, who have a new puppy. And puppies? They make everything okay. Gosh I love puppies! (But oh do they ever have sharp little teeth!)

::

Today Den and I went and looked at trees to plant for Devin. We had decided on getting a flowering cherry tree of some kind, but we didn’t know what type to get. The lawn & garden place had weeping cherry trees and kwanzan cherry trees, both of which are non-fruit-bearing and quite pretty when they bloom. But Den really wanted a fruit-bearing cherry tree, of which they had several varieties. It was a pain in the ass, because the fruit trees had only pictures of the fruit, none of what the tree will look like when in bloom. How annoying. We ended up with a Danube. It’s actually a tart cherry, which I wasn’t aware of until we got it home, but I like it because the color of the actual tree is reddish and very nice… our other option had a yellowish tree bark and just wasn’t as pretty. And they all bloom so… oh well.

We are planning a…. well, we’re not really sure what to call it… for next Sunday. It’ll be a memorial for Devin. We are inviting over Den’s extensive list of immediate family members, and my mom will be here as well. We are going to plant the tree, maybe say a few words, and have some food. I’m going to have Devin’s framed hand/footprints out, his certificate of life, and hopefully his photo nicely printed and framed. The reason we’re not sure what to call it, though, is that it’s not like it’s going to be a formal memorial service. We’re not going to all stand around in black, weeping. It’s not going to be a joyous occassion, either, obviously. But I see it as an occassion to remember, to say goodbye… and, yes, to celebrate the beautiful little baby that he was.

The reason we chose next weekend to do this was because it will be the one-month mark since his birth, as well as being my due date. Honestly though, when I think about my upcoming due date I don’t feel the overwhelming grief and panic that I’ve seen many others mention. I don’t really know how I’ll feel on that day, but right now I’m actually looking forward to the memorial tree planting and being around family. I’m also looking forward to putting my due date behind me, because having babies be born right around this time is emotionally hard on me… all the people I went through pregnancy with, they are having their babies and I just kind of need to squint and look the other way and wait for it all to pass. There is only one group of pregnant ladies that I am still actively following along with, since I feel closer to them than anyone, more invested. The rest I have had to unsubscribe from for the moment – forums and blogs.

I will be sure to get photos of everything. I plan to take photos of the tree every year when it blooms… it brings a smile to my face to know that Devin’s scrapbook will never be finished, there will be something to add to it.

A girl on one of my forums who lost twins is currently pregnant with another child. She wrote today about the new baby’s nursery and their plans for it. One of the things she said was that among the mural that is getting painting they are adding in something to symbolize the twins they lost and how they are looking down on the new baby. That really touched me, it feels so right. We will most definitely have to do that in our baby’s room.