We Lost Silas

We lost Silas over the weekend.  He was delivered in Houston on Sunday night.  We are now back home. If you want to hear more of the details, you can continue to read….

I woke up on Friday morning with the feeling that something was wrong.  His movements had become very limited.  The doctor had told us that if we were ever concerned, we could go to the office to listen to the heartbeat on the Doppler, or stop by a hospital and they could do the same thing.  Stuart asked if I wanted to go, but I decided to give it a little more time.  Later that morning I felt a few little kicks, which brought some temporary relief. 

However by the next day, I had not felt any further movement and I started having some Braxton Hicks contractions.  We decided to go to our local Ennis Hospital on Saturday night to try to listen to the heartbeat and make sure everything was okay.  When we first got there, they found his heartbeat right away using the small fetal Doppler and they said it sounded fine.  I was honestly surprised….I really thought something was wrong and prepared myself for the fact that we had lost him. It then took a couple of more hours because they wanted to monitor me and were working on the discharge papers.  As we were getting ready to leave, we asked to hear the heartbeat one more time.  This time, the nurse could not find it.  She went to get the head nurse who had been a midwife for 35 years and had a lot more experience.  This nurse could not find it either.  It was hard to fathom the fact that I had already been prepared for the worst, but when we heard that heartbeat right away, we were relieved and happy that everything was okay.  Then just a couple of hours later on our way out of the door, they could not find the heartbeat.  The next step was to do a sonogram to try to see the heartbeat.  The sonogram technician let us know that he could not tell us anything and would have to give all of his results directly to the nurses.  It was maddening to lay there while he was doing the sonogram, taking some measurements, and doing whatever else he was doing.  I wanted to scream at him to just tell me if there was a heartbeat or not, but knew it would not do any good.  They wheeled me back to the hospital room and we waited for what seemed like forever for the nurses to come let us know something.  Finally Stuart went out to ask, and they let him know that they had called the “on call” doctor to come in (it was around 1am) and said that she would be there soon and did not live far.  At that point, we knew.

The doctor came in and finally let us know that they did not find a heartbeat and that the baby must have passed during the couple of hours that we were there.  Though we knew this could happen and were somewhat prepared for it, we were still stunned.  We then had to decide when and how we wanted to deliver.  The options were to wait until Monday morning (it was late Saturday night/Sunday am) and deliver at Baylor Dallas with my OB, stay at the small local hospital we were at, or go to Houston and deliver there.  In the end, we decided to go ahead and drive the 2.5 hours to Houston (even though it was the middle of the night) for a variety of reasons:  we had received such phenomenal care there and knew that we would continue to, we still wanted to help the CMV specialist there with her studies in any way possible, and my parents and sister were both already in Houston and could watch our kids while we were there.  We packed the kids in the car and got on the road to Houston around 3am.  Once there, we dropped Samantha and Sutton off at my sisters and checked into the hospital.  As expected, the care we received there was wonderful from start to finish.

They induced me right away early Sunday morning. Silas was delivered that evening at 7:17 pm on the 17^th of February.  We had made the decision that we did want to see him and say good-bye.  We got to hold him and tell him how sorry we were.  I think it helped to give us a little more closure. He was tiny of course – almost a pound and 9.5 inches.  We both thought he looked like Sutton.

It was definitely the most painful experience of our lives.  But we find our relief in knowing that he is now at peace and not suffering.  Our biggest prayer was that he would not suffer – ever, and we believe that God must have answered that prayer.

The hospital had a child life specialist that gave us advice about how to talk to Samantha and Sutton about what had happened.  It was a huge help for us because we were unsure how to handle that.  The kids came up to the hospital the next morning and we just honestly and openly talked about it with them.  We let them know that it was okay to ask any questions that they wanted and we could talk about it anytime.  We do not want it to be a taboo subject that we don’t talk about and we also did not want them to think that anytime that they (or someone else) got sick, that they would have to worry about dying.  We explained that this was very different and that his little body was just too small to fight the type of sickness that he had and it kept him from growing properly.  They seemed to really understand and be okay, which was a relief for us.  We showed them the prints of his little hands and feet and gave them the teddy bear that was provided by the hospital.

We plan to have just a small private ceremony at our church with the kids as soon as his ashes are ready.  Samantha has asked about it a couple of times and I think it will help her to have closure as well.

We cannot say enough about the amazing staff at Texas Children’s Hospital.  It seemed like every doctor, nurse, specialist and research assistant that we met during our time there came by to visit us and see how we were doing.  I have come to believe that some nurses and doctors must be angels – they are so good at what they do and we would have been lost without them.

We are also so thankful for our friends and family who have been on this journey with us. We know we have so many people who care about us and want to do anything they can to help. We love and appreciate you and want you to know that we will be okay. Our Silas could not be in a better place and we will see him again someday.