Capture Your Grief - Day 13: Regrets and Triggers

The time we had with Elisa I did my best to enjoy every moment with her.  We talked to her we sang to her, we took her places.  It took every ounce of strength for me to continue to take our weekly baby bump pictures after her diagnosis, knowing we were likely taking them for a memorial book, rather than  a baby book,  But now that she is gone I am so glad I have them.  I am grateful and proud of everything that we did for her, so I am lucky to not have too many regrets.

Despite feeling at peace with the time we had with her, I do have two regrets:

1. Not telling people about our situation earlier

2. Not speaking up enough at the hospital about what I wanted

We were told Elisa had a 10% chance of making it to birth in November of last year.  We told immediate family and then slowly told friends.  It wasn't until weeks later, in January that we decided to tell "the general public" and make post on facebook. Less than a week after we told everyone...she was gone.  I regret not telling others earlier, so others could have known more about her, and we could have had more support, because once we did tell everyone, we felt so loved and supported.

The second regret is a little harder to talk about.  I am not ready to go in to depth here yet on our hospital and delivery experience.  What I will say is that our nurse was wonderful and our saving grace, but the on call Dr. was not compassionate, and complications in Elisa's delivery almost sent me to the O.R. and would have resulted in us never being able to have biological children.  Thankfully it did not end that way, but I don't think I will ever forget how distraught I felt in the moments we thought it was going to end that way.

So due to the chaos of the delivery, my wishes to how I wanted my daughter treated were not followed. Before she was born, I asked that when she was delivered, she be brought to me immediately and that Mark would cut the cord, just like we would do with any other child

After she was born, neither of those wishes were respected.  After she was born, they took her away to another table, and only brought her to me minutes later.  After carrying her for 7 months and not being separated from her, the minutes away felt like an an eternity.  And then to top it off , the Dr ignored our wishes and cut the cord himself.

To this day I still have nightmares reliving our delivery experience.  Not only the horrifying part which almost landed me in the OR, and unable to have more children, but reliving when she was taken away from me.  I wish so much that I could go back in time and insist that they follow our wishes, but it is something that I can't change.