Five years ago today, I woke up at 4 am. I sat straight up in bed as my heart sunk and my stomach turned to knots. I felt her go.

I just stayed in bed until Mike was ready to leave for work. I was practically in tears at that time, telling him something was wrong. I was worried about the baby. He assured me everything was fine, gave me a kiss and left.

I got up and took a shower. No movement.

I drank a glass of ice water. No movement.

At 10:00, I called my doctor asking if I could come in. They tried to calm my nerves by telling me babies just have sleepy days, don’t worry about it. The triage nurse told me to take a bag of frozen veggies from the freezer and lay it on my belly to get her to move. She said to rub my belly a lot and try to stimulate her.

I massaged my belly. No movement.

I tried frozen peas on my belly for half an hour. Still nothing.

An hour later I called them back and said I still felt nothing. They told me to come in at 1:00. I called Mike at work and asked him to come home to take me to the doctor. He was irritated and said he would see what he could do. I called my Dad to see if he could take me, but he couldn’t. I called Tyrus, and he said he would try to make it.

I waited.

12:45 showed and neither Mike or Tyrus had arrived. I grabbed my bag and locked the house. As I started to walk the 15 or so blocks to the doctor’s office, finally Mike pulled up, with Tyrus behind him. We told Tyrus he could go home and off we went.

We waited.

We were a write-in, so I waited in the waiting room for an hour before I could see my doctor. I finally got in. Hopped up on the exam table and waited to hear that sound coming from the doppler.

Static.

Wait, there’s a heartbeat! My doctor grabbed my wrist, and it matched my pulse. It was just my heartbeat. After a few minutes, nothing but static and my own heartbeat. He made a call to the hospital in Carbondale to get me in for an emergency ultrasound. We left, knowing our hopes and dreams had died.

We got to the hospital, checked in and got back to Imaging. Ultrasound Room #2. This room would bring me bad news later on as well. The ultrasound technician moved the screen so that I could not see it. Everything happened so fast. She took a few pictures and said she would be right back. I sat up, and saw the screen. It had all my information on it, but it was black. It was ominous, foreboding.

She brought a portable phone back into the room and told me that my doctor would call, to answer it when it rings. I did, and at that moment, it was final.

I talked to my doctor, he gave us the news that our baby had died. He told me that I had two options, to be induced that day or wait to go into labor on my own. I had no idea what to do, so I asked him what would be better. He said that it would be easier on my body to wait to go into labor on my own, so I decided on that.

The technician came back into the room, she put her hand on my back as we left the room and told me she was sorry. She pointed us to an exit where we wouldn’t have to go back through the hospital.

We got into our car and just sat there, stunned. How could this have happened? This was the worst news we could ever hear. It was a long, solemn drive home.

We got home and called immediate family members to tell them the news. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t really remember anything past that, we were both in shock.