My husband and I weren’t really planning to get pregnant. Late 2021, I stopped taking my birth control, and we figured we’d see what happens. We were freshly married, doing well in our careers and in our first home. So, we were open to whatever came our way.
May of 2022 we were surprised by a positive pregnancy test and due in January of 2023. On our anniversary (10 years together and 1 year married) we found out we were expecting a baby boy. We named him Matthias, which means ‘Gift of God.’ But in November 2022, I noticed one morning that I couldn’t get him to move during his usual wake window. We went to the hospital, and after every test they could do, they told us the words no parent should ever have to hear.
At the ER, they said he had a stroke. The ultrasound showed no sign of a cord accident, and my placenta seemed to be in perfect health. We started induction. After just over 24 hours of labor and 10 minutes of pushing, he came out with his cord around his neck, just tight enough to give the doctor the idea that’s what happened.
At 6 months postpartum, I was cleared to start trying again and got pregnant almost immediately. I had a doctor’s appointment to make sure this pregnancy wasn’t ectopic, but miscarried just a day prior. They determined that my body detected something was wrong when implantation was beginning and naturally flushed it out. We waited a month to let my body heal from the miscarriage, then began trying again.
We found out we were pregnant in November of 2023, just a week before Matthias’s first birthday. We are now 38 weeks along with our rainbow baby, Jonah. Jonah means dove, and my husband suggested it without even knowing that a dove is what brought a leaf to Noah after the flood—a symbol of hope after a great storm.
The pregnancy is going well but is considered very high risk since we don’t have a definitive cause of death for our firstborn. The high risk doctors and my OB are split on the cause since we did not consent to an autopsy—one thinks it was a stroke, another believes it was the cord, and another suspects that my having COVID in September 2022 affected my placenta, leading to complications. I’m constantly anxious about Jonah’s health and movements due to the not knowing his brothers cause of death. But soon we will be holding our rainbow as I have a planned induction for Wednesday July 17th
Photos taken by Kirsti Dean of Willow and Co Photography.
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