Peter Ashton’s Story

One year ago at this moment (10:55pm) on January 9, 2014, I sat on the living room floor with my husband as we held our third child in our arms.  My friend, Elena, had come over to take pictures. If you just read these two sentences and didn’t know me, you might picture a cooing baby in my arms and smiles on our faces as we gazed into our child’s face. Instead, tears streamed down all of our faces as Nathan and I held our limp 13-week-old gestational baby in our arms, while Elena blinked away her tears to see well enough to photograph, while Nathan’s mom sat crying on our couch and holding the bloody Rubbermaid container that we had placed the baby in when my body expelled him, and while my mom went into protective mode and did what she does best in stressful situations – try to help tangibly. She was on the phone with the ER nurse trying to figure out if I needed an ambulance because of my profuse bleeding since I was on blood thinners.

Going back a few days…My husband had had back surgery on December 13, 2013, and was on his way to recovery. We spent about 3 weeks after his surgery ecstatic that it seemed to have worked and he was no longer in chronic pain all the time as he had been for almost 5 years. My pregnancy looked good, and life was good. Christmas was wonderful and happy. The week after Christmas, my retroverted uterus grew enough to start causing urinary retention as it had when I was pregnant with Adelaide, so I made several trips to the ER around the new year. About the fourth trip to the ER to be catheterized, the doctor convinced me that I should just keep a Foley catheter in rather than keep going into the ER to risk catching an infection. This was Thursday, January 2nd. The next day, I saw my OB and he said he thought I should leave the catheter in over the weekend so I wouldn’t have to go back to the ER again because he concurred with the ER doctor that the risk of catching something there was greater than the risk of anything happening because of the Foley. I dutifully obeyed and took it easy that weekend with the catheter in. Not a fun weekend. I saw my OB again on Monday in the office so they could take the catheter out. I had developed a foul odor and discharge over the weekend, and he took a swab to have it tested. I don’t recall if the test showed it was infected or not.

On Tuesday, I started to bleed lightly and called my OB’s office where the nurse told me it was probably just because I had a catheter in for 4 days, but she encouraged me to come in to the office to hear the heartbeat just in case. We did and the heartbeat was fine. The next day on Wednesday I started having light cramps and more bleeding, and called again only to have the nurse reassure me that it was because of the Foley but I again went in and heard the heartbeat, so we heard it 3 times within 3 days. On Thursday I started having stronger cramps but my husband said I was just being paranoid and so I didn’t call the doctor’s office that day or go in to hear the heartbeat. He said we had been in 3 days in a row and the baby was fine, and I needed to stop getting myself all worked up about it because they said I was fine.

Thursday evening after dinner I didn’t feel very well, so I rested in bed in the evening. I just felt “off” and like something was wrong. I had a feeling of dread, like my baby was going to die. I prayed that evening that if this baby had to die, too, that I at least wanted to see him or her and get some good pictures to remember by. About 9:30pm the feeling got so strong that I sent a facebook message to my photographer friend. At 9:49pm I wrote:
“Hey, I know this is weird to ask on fb, but there is a real chance I could lose this baby (continued bleeding, cramping has increased, and I’m really worried but trying not to). IF that happens and if I am allowed to deliver naturally, I’d love to have you come to the hospital and take some photos of the baby. Or if you think that you couldn’t handle it emotionally, maybe help me find out if there is anyone in Topeka who does Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep photography. HOPEFULLY that won’t ever be a need, but I’m really scared! I checked out the NILMDTS website and it says that generally they don’t provide services to people who lose babies less than 25 weeks. So anyway, just think about it and pray it doesn’t need to be a conversation we have.”

Elena replied back pretty soon after that that she would be willing to take pictures if that ever happened, and that she had been praying for me all evening ever since she saw my frightened post in a moms group on facebook of which we are both members. She also suggested that I call the next day to get in for a sonogram earlier than mid-February, which was the next time I was supposed to get a sonogram. I believe I had just had one appointment with the high-risk maternal fetal medicine doctor, and they only wanted to see me every 4-6 weeks. At 10:11pm I responded with:
“I have been seeing my OB every couple weeks, but the next time I will see the maternal fetal medicine specialist and get another detailed sonogram isn’t until February 10th. I just feel like if I could get in to see them soon, they might be able to tell what is causing all this intense pain via sonogram. Thanks, friend! I hope that we don’t have to ask you to do that for us. You don’t happen to have a fetal heartbeat home monitor, do you? I just want to know the baby is ok tonight.”

We continued to chat until 10:19pm when I said goodnight to her because I felt suddenly that I needed to go use the restroom.  Hopefully without sharing too much detail (since I tend to be a detail-oriented person), Peter was born in the bathroom about 10:25pm that night after I had three strong cramps right in a row and my water broke. I didn’t realize it was my water until later. I called out to Nathan for help because I couldn’t tell what was hanging between my legs. I was afraid it was the baby, but then my mind went back to Nathan’s reassurances that everything was OK and I was just being paranoid. Certainly this wasn’t my baby hanging between my legs that I couldn’t see. He came into the bathroom and immediately his face turned white and he almost passed out, so I knew it had happened. We disconnected Peter from my body and his little arms moved around for a few seconds before his body went limp. Although genitalia look the same at that age, we both felt that the baby was a boy and so we named him Peter.

After we cried together and held our baby and got over the frantic shock, we called both of our mothers who came over immediately, and I also called Elena hysterically crying and asked her to also come, which she immediately did. It was surreal the timing of God having me message her to communicate the request for photography so that my phone call to her didn’t come without any warning whatsoever. He was faithful to my two prayer requests – that I would get to see this baby and hold him, and that I would get beautiful pictures. It’s a shame that many people in our world would view those pictures and call it “gory” or “disgusting.” I’ve known people on facebook who have shared pictures of their miscarried babies and who have been reported to facebook for inappropriate content. It is because of those people without a compassionate heart for my situation that I refuse to share those pictures in this public forum, but if you are curious about what Peter looked like when he was born, you can look at a similar gestation picture at the following website and by clicking on the word “photo,” if you so choose: http://www.stillbirthday.com/2011/07/25/13-week-gestational-baby/ Peter’s body looked different than this picture in that his ribs, eyes, ears, mouth, and nose were more clearly formed, and he was longer. His body looked more like the 15-week-old gestation picture. I am happy to share a picture of Peter in person with friends and family, so just let me know if you ever want to see one. I am not ashamed of my baby, even if society is. I just need to protect my baby from the comments of thoughtless people.

How can people think abortion is not murder when my 13-week-old baby lived outside my body and moved his arms, no matter how briefly? Why does it matter whether he was inside my body or out? Six inches of vagina does not define personhood; it begins with the sperm meeting the egg and becoming one entity, by the creative grace of God. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder!!! I just get so IRATE when I think about abortion, especially now that I’ve had 3 babies die beyond my control. It makes my blood boil and it makes me so sick to my stomach that I sometimes literally throw up. How can all of these people in the world think it’s OK and their “choice” and a “woman’s right?” I’m sorry if you’re reading this and you have had an abortion. I am sure you feel horrible enough as it is without reading this rant. I’ve met a few women who have had abortions, and none of them have been happy that they chose that route afterwards. They deal with guilt and shame for the rest of their lives, because we all feel guilt and shame when we have sinned. That is the innate remorse that God created in us when we do wrong. If we don’t feel that, then we have disconnected from God to the point of not knowing right from wrong anymore. Abortion does nothing but destroy lives, both of the baby and the mother and others who care for them. OK, end of pro-life rant.

Anyway, back to Peter’s story. Elena finished taking pictures and then Nathan took me to the hospital because I was still bleeding heavily. They wanted to check me out to make sure I had passed all the “tissue” (another term that makes me irate – it was my BABY, not bodily tissue!). When the doctor examined me, he found several huge blood clots up near my cervix, and he said he needed to get them out. He used a metal thing to ratchet me open while he used a scraping instrument to scrape the clots out. I screamed bloody murder in the ER for all the world to see, not only because it hurt like hell, but because my dead baby was lying on the countertop in the Rubbermaid container next to me while this doctor was getting the clots out. This was the same doctor who introduced himself for the first time by saying, “I understand you may have miscarried the tissue?” I replied angrily with, “I KNOW I miscarried my BABY, and here he is. Would you like to see the proof since you don’t believe my story?” His name was Dr. Rothenburg or something like that, but it doesn’t really matter except that he was a jerk about it. I still to this day don’t understand why he had to do that procedure while I was awake, and why he couldn’t just wait until they did my D&C surgery a few hours later. We waited all night in the ER until my surgery around 5am. I ended up needing surgery because the placenta had not come out. That was the traumatic night from hell. I recovered in the post-operative area until about 8am, and then they sent me home. Home to the rest of the hell we still had to work through emotionally. But we had been through it before 3 years earlier, so we sort of knew what to expect. And that is what scared me.

When I called my doctor’s office and spoke to nurse Mary, who had always been so kind, I was angry with her. She had reassured me 3 times that week that everything was fine, and she was wrong. When I told her I was mad at her for not listening to my concerns, she said, “You weren’t far enough along for us to be able to do anything for you anyway.” She probably also said I’m sorry, but those were the words that slapped me in the face. They are words of truth, but not what I needed to hear in that moment. When I went for my 6-week postpartum checkup with my doctor, he referred me to see an infertility specialist in Kansas City because multiple losses fall under the auspices of infertility treatment, and this was our second loss. He also said that “there was probably something genetically wrong with this baby and so it’s a good thing it didn’t have to live and face a lifetime of struggles and disability.” What he said may have been true, but also was a very insensitive thing to say to my grieving heart. I WOULDN’T HAVE CARED IF MY BABY HAD NO LIMBS AND NEVER OPENED HIS EYES. HE WAS MY BABY AND ALL I WANTED WAS FOR HIM TO BE WITH ME. I work with kids all the time in my music therapy job who have disabilities and who are the most beautiful, light-giving children I have ever met in my life! How dare he say that! I changed doctors after that appointment, and I’m really glad I did.

My doctor during this time of Hannah’s story has been the most supportive doctor I could have ever asked for. She was my doctor when we lost Elijah (our first baby that I miscarried), and although I didn’t have anything against her or her practice, I just needed a change after we lost him. I thought things would be different with a different doctor, and they were. Adelaide was born next and she was fine. So I stayed with the doctor for Peter’s pregnancy, and I ended up regretting  that decision for the above reasons. I guess doctors feel like they need to have answers to all their patients’ questions, and that was his best answer when I asked him why Peter had died. My current doctor understands that it’s ok to not have all the answers, and that’s what makes her such a fantastic doctor – her humility and compassion.

Peter Ashton Cochrane, Happy First Birthday in Heaven. I don’t say this lightly, for I know you are truly happy and playing with your two siblings. Oh how my heart aches to see the three of you playing with your sister, Adelaide. Her arms reach out empty-handed to hold her baby sister, and all she has to hold is her puppy with which she has become inseparable. My heart cries for her to have a living sibling someday, but at this point I just don’t think Nathan or I are strong enough to risk this heartache again, even to give her a sibling. It breaks my heart to think of ending my childbearing years on this sad note, and so I’ll also end this blog on this sad note. Thank you to all of you who read my words and cry with my heartache. That’s all I can ask of anyone – for a little compassion and love to get me through these dark days.