In honor of Bereaved Parents Month and my sweet girls 6th birthday, I am going to share the story of the stillbirth of my daughter. I debated for some time about sharing her birth story and my place in the loss world. And ultimately decided that by not sharing our story, I’m leaving out such a vital part of what has shaped me immensely as the birth worker I am and not allowing my clients to truly know me. And also— birth stories that result in loss still deserve to take up space. They still deserve to be honored, seen, and respected as sometimes birth ends in loss. And it fucking sucks, but it is one of the many fragilities of pregnancy and birth.

While I’ve never been a fan of trigger warnings and even more so after the stillbirth of my oldest child, Nona, I do want to allow my very vulnerable friends the opportunity to skip over this blog post if you are not in the place to receive this kind of birth story. We are all responsible for our own triggers and we all have the right to move past content that might not be for us in this season of life.

Sending love and light to anyone who might need to move past this blog post and I’ll see you on the next one. <3

`It’s actually so jarring seeing this version of myself. Freshly twenty one. So innocent. So full of life— figuratively and literally. And an entirely different human being than the one I morphed into after the stillbirth of my girl.`

*Here is our story <3*

I knew after I peed on that stick and the word “pregnant” appeared that my life would never be the same

It’s kind of hard to clearly remember the time from before Nona so please bare with me as I do my best. I was 21. Alejandro 22. Both truly still babies. And so unbelievable in love. But the kind of love that two very traumatized young adults were capable of. And still when we found we were pregnant, our entire worlds shifted. We knew we would do everything it took to heal, grow, and become the kind of people and parents who could provide a childhood to our baby that they wouldn’t have to heal from. We wanted our child to be lightyears ahead of us at our age than we were. I remember it was just like any other weekend. We woke up, and were planning on doing something like going to the mall or whatever it was that the young kids were doing at that time. And I felt like I should take a pregnancy test. I had been waking up in the middle of the night to pee a lot the last week and my breasts were feeling super tender. I didnt think too much of the fact that I hadnt menstruated because my periods have always been super irregular. (Which I would later find out was due to PCOS) So, Alejandro went to Walgreens to get a pregnancy test and I went into the bathroom and peed on it. I walked out out of the bathroom nodding my head with tears in my eyes and Alejandro instantly began crying and wrapped his arms around me. We were going to be parents.

From that moment forward our lives were shaped around knowing that we were bringing a human being into this world. We worked overtime trying to make sure any outstanding debt we had was paid off before our “due date”. We were in therapy. We were working on the cracks in our relationship that needed repair. And we were learning everything we possibly could about pregnancy and birth. I knew early on that I wanted to experience birth outside of the hospital space. I also knew that I wanted as little intervention and as close to a physiological birth as possible. So I sought care with an awesome midwifery team at a local freestanding birth center. And I became obsessed with all things pregnancy and birth. I wanted to learn as much as possible and was truly captivated with this model of care and the true magic that was pregnancy and birth. As a young person in our society, I knew very few people who were pregnant and even fewer who could understand why on earth I would want to have give birth unmedicated AND out of the hospital. Every single person I told this to looked at me as if I grew a second head and constantly reminded me of how painful childbirth was and it was okay if I wanted to get an epidural. But I knew from the depths of my soul that I wanted this. More than I’d ever wanted anything else before.

My pregnancy was totally textbook! And honestly, I felt like I was one of the lucky ones. I had minimal nausea. I never once vomited. To be completely honest, I LOVED being pregnant. And as nervous as I was to give birth I was equally excited.

At 36 weeks and 2 days gestation we completed our very last natural childbirth class at our birth center. We went home that night and quickly went to sleep. The next day I was so happy to have my best friend home with me as she planned to stay for the last few weeks of my pregnancy and hopefully be able to photograph the birth of our girl! We ran some errands, ate a yummy lunch, when I noticed that I couldnt recall the last time I felt Nona move. After calling my midwives, they quickly encouraged me to come in for an ultrasound and NST. At that point, I still never in a million years wouldve thought that she was dead. Never. Because there’s no way that babies can die that far along in pregnancy… right? The worst case scenario my brain could come up with was her potentially needing to come a little early and maybe needing some time in the NICU. I called my husband to let him know that I was going in to get checked out and quickly reassured him that I was sure everything would be fine and to stay at work. Besides, there was no reason to stress about something that could’ve turned out to be absolutely nothing. 6 years ago today on July 9th, 2019 I sat down in an ultrasound chair and waited as my midwife searched for my daughters heartbeat. Still, after what felt like an eternity, nothing in me thought that she was… gone?

So I waited. I waited for her to find it and let me know that everything looked great. But she didn’t. Instead she searched and searched and in hindsight was probably waiting for me to realize that there was no heartbeat. Finally, she expresses not seeing any cardiac activity and tells me she is going to have a couple other midwives come in to see if they can find anything. Now after the fact, I know this was probably her way of leaning on her team to share the news with me. At that point, my best friend clutches my hand and fear coursed through my body. Fear of what… I’m not entirely sure. Because surely, they would come in and find her heartbeat. She was fine. After just a few moments, the previous midwife and two others walk into the room and the 3 of them search for my daughter’s heartbeat… but the image on the ultrasound monitor was still. And I’m not sure if it actually happened this way or if my traumatized brain has conjured up this memory, but I recall all three midwives turning and looking at me and waiting a moment… several seconds… an eternity… waiting… for me to understand what was happening. But still… I did not. And then they said it. Those 5 words that would forever split my life in two. Before. And After.