My memories of the days leading up to my son's death are hazy, but I remember specifically a night or two (or three) before his heart stopped I was worried about his decreased movements. I wasn't extremely worried because for some reason everyone I spoke to loved telling me that his movements were going to decrease anyway leading up to labor, and that it's "normal." I used to obsessively google every symptom I had and read pages upon pages of info to know if anything and everything I felt was normal. I googled "decreased fetal movement 39 weeks" (I rounded from 38 weeks and some days) and I read dozens of mothers on message boards claiming it was normal. Then one article I came across was a story of a mother's stillbirth. She spoke of how she went into the hospital and they didn't find a heartbeat. I remember being stunned and appalled when I saw that link and turning my phone off. I thought there was no way that could happen to me, and how awful it would be. I turned my phone off. I decided I was being paranoid. In hindsight I was much MUCH more in tune with my body and my instincts than I realized. Around that time I started complaining to my husbands niece (who I'm very close with and had just given birth four months prior) that I was having cramping and I thought they were "the real thing," not Braxton hicks. She asked me if I've been timing them. I told her they were continuous cramps, it was impossible for me to time them, but they went away altogether after awhile. She believed it was normal but also said she was confused as to why I couldn't time them. I think to myself, in hindsight, that was probably pains leading to my concealed Abruption....

Just so many thoughts, so many regrets looking back, so many things I could have realized at the time or acted upon. And maybe I would have my baby in my arms today. If I had been a little more paranoid, a little more pessimistic. And I will admit, the midwives at the hospital made me feel like a stupid, paranoid first time mom. I used to go there for everything. I went for back pains that I thought could have been labor pains and one dismissive midwife made me feel silly. I wish I had chosen to go afterwards, for the cramping that couldn't be timed, or allowed myself to be truly afraid and panic when I saw that stillbirth article.

Hindsight is my biggest enemy through this grief process.

I feel as first time mom's they do treat us as stupid over reacting mom's. We went to the hospital the sat with Contractions and I believe my water had gushed twice early I the morning at 4 am. We went at 4pm to get checked out. They did the amniotic fluid test with the swab. Negative. Perfect nst. Told me I probably peed myself and everything looked fine and to go home. Our contractions were not strong enought and I was not dilated.... labour stopped and on monday we had no heartbeat.... I knew nothing was wrong. It crushed us....

As a first time mom I didn't know what to look for. Ask for. Now with the research I have done. I should have pushed for an us on the sat. Should have advocated more for myself. Been the squeaky wheel. But instead I trusted the dr and their years of experience and now I have no baby.

My regrets are the same. Why didn't I know then. why didn't they tell me what to look for. Why don't they have scans later in pregnancy to see if everything is ok? Why do we have to lose what is most precious to us before they tell us what to do. What to expect. We are first time mom's. Tell me before it happens!!!

It's bullshit I tell you. How this system is. Would have cost alot less money for me to have my baby girl then now living without her and trying again.

Hindsight is such a cruel thing. I still struggle with it and the guilt associated and it's been over 5 years since my son died of the same thing. I actually think I knew two days before I went in that something was terribly wrong. I had cramping, pitting edema in my legs, reduced movement, protein in my urine, etc. I had gone in two weeks prior to that with the same complaints and my OB completely dismissed my concerns and said everything was fine. He told me to come back if there was no movement. That's too late! I waited because I was so afraid of what they'd find and of being ridiculed for being a worrisome first time mom. I really wish they'd listen more to what our concerns are. They should never brush off a pregnant woman who feels something is wrong. Your gut feeling is always right. I've had to let some of this go though, otherwise it would eat me alive. I still have regrets and guilt about our son's death. That will never go away. I have learned to live with it and to accept that it was not all my fault. The OB and midwives can take some blame. It happened and I can't go back and change it. I CAN change how I let it affect my life and I refuse to let the guilt take me over. You will eventually figure out how to let the guilt be without letting it consume you. After about 5 months of struggling to do just that, I started seeing a counselor. I saw her weekly for about two years and throughout my entire second pregnancy. It helped me get to the frame of mind I can live with. Have you thought about seeking out something/someone similar? Wishing you much peace and hope in this difficult early stage of processing grief.

Nada - I read and responded to another post of yours a little while ago when you first posted your story. This new post also spoke straight to my soul. Every day for the past six months I have wondered about signs I perhaps ignored, and some I feel I missed altogether b/c I was not paying attention or looking for things to go wrong so late into a "textbook," otherwise flawless pregnancy. I, too, like many of us, was told that decreased movements late in pregnancy were normal - that the baby runs out of room and the movements will change and feel less dramatic then. I don't know if my anterior placenta played a role in perhaps muffling movements, too. It's mystifying, this line about movements changing. Since it is SO common to hear it (I've been told it even now, with no baby, when I talk to medical professionals about what happened), I have to assume that providers are used to hearing this complaint from many, many women whose babies are totally fine. Otherwise I do not understand how it is such a common line... which makes the whole concept a really tricky, sneaky, cruel thing when things do go horribly wrong or when a decrease in movement perhaps was indeed a heads-up to distress, versus just one more sign of a typical, full-term pregnancy. As the first-time mother, you or I don't and can't know whether a random question mark in our mind is really nothing to worry about at all, or something that should send us racing to the hospital. And when everything else has been perfect for months and months, of course we've become conditioned to think weird things are actually normal, and things are still going fine. I have to talk these things out and try to rationalize and justify my own actions, or else I feel myself crumbling from the guilt of feeling like I was not attentive to my distressed, dying daughter's potential signs to me. I, too, saw a blog about a darling baby girl who died at birth, when I was very highly pregnant. I felt so awful for those parents and for that beautiful girl, but I also found comfort in thinking my pregnancy would never end that way. I assumed their baby must have had a genetic condition or some health issue that they knew about. I still did not think that these things can just happen, to anyone, out of nowhere. After it did happen to my baby, I later tried to find that blog again out of curiosity. I looked through my internet history but couldn't find it. No mother ever assumes this will happen to her. Statistically it's very rare, plus when you have a really great pregnancy otherwise, you don't even have any reason to think anything bad like this would happen. You're not being crazy; you're being realistic based upon a great pregnancy and great statistics, all in your favor, along with (at least in my case) no real-life stories of such an outcome happening to any of the many, many, many other babies and mothers I know. In my personal world, my outcome was unprecedented. I live near an airport, and low-flying planes pass over my house all day, every day. I know planes have crashed into houses before. I realize that the possibility exists for a plane to crash into mine. But I've lived here for two years and day after day, no planes crash. Am I crazy for thinking I'm probably safe here, even though technically I do know that a plane could crash someday? But the fetal movement thing... I struggle with it every day. I totally understand the anguish of wondering if you missed something. Was I too nervous about other things and not nervous enough about the baby's well-being? Did I trust "experts" too much? Was it a sign that a friend who was pregnant at the same time mentioned she thought HER baby was not moving as much (but ultimately she was fine)? Why was I so emotional in the four days leading up to the death? Did I misinterpret why I felt so uneasy? I blamed it all on labor/delivery, which seems like a valid thing to worry about anyway (either the baby comes out the old-fashioned way, or I'll end up in an unplanned surgery... either way sounds scary!). But was something else going on that had me feeling oddly, and I did not realize it was that the baby was maybe not moving as much as she should? Like you, I had some really rapid cramps. Tried timing them, but they were very continuous. I was thrown off by that, surprised at how quickly they were coming for early labor. We called both the hospital and my OB's office, and no one was that freaked out, though. I wasn't in agonizing pain yet (although it was super uncomfortable, and getting worse over time), and I think the ppl on the phone dismissed it. Should I have been the one to call, instead of my husband? Would they have asked me better questions? Would I have explained it differently? Would my voice have told them anything new? Would any of this have made a difference anyway? Had she already died before we even realized it was time to call? I don't know any of these answers and can't and never will. It's hard. I also think about how 18 days before her death, I told the OB that I thought movements had been a little weird... sometimes spastic and jerky, and then more recently kind of quiet. She wasn't that worried, and the truth is that I wasn't either. It did not ever TRULY occur to me that this child could die at this point. Perhaps I felt I was too immune to tragedy and that I had passed any danger zones. Was I crazy to think that? Maybe, maybe not. I wish I had been more paranoid and pessimistic, too... But even just seeing myself write that right now, it sounds crazy, you know? Who WANTS to be paranoid and pessimistic? OF COURSE we, ideally, want to be more hopeful and less stressed out during pregnancy. And when things seem to go really well, it only appears to reinforce that the laid-back attitude is working and to keep it up. Hindsight is my biggest enemy, too. I have a hard time "trusting my gut" now b/c my gut told me I'd be taking home a live baby. In hindsight I see things that I question, but I did not in my gut think that my baby was dead. That had not crossed my mind yet, even if I was beginning to feel more and more uneasy for various reasons. It's all so hard.

Still0517, Ejb, NM, thank you all for your kind words. I feel like you can truly relate to me and it gives me some sort of peace through all of this.

Still0517, it really is bullshit. I constantly wonder why all our pregnancies shouldn't just be treated like high-risk automatically as a precaution. We should have had more screens, ultrasounds, NSTs, whatever. It's inhumane that, unless we have something medically wrong with us at conception, we just get treated as a low-risk pregnancy and our concerns as first time moms get waved away as being paranoid. I agree with you one hundred thousand percent. It is absolutely unfair. I, too, trusted my doctors completely. My doctors were very laid-back and nice in nature, and I felt like I could connect with them at the time because I felt less stressful around them. But that's when we all assumed nothing was wrong, I was perfectly healthy, and so was baby, and the pregnancy would be a breeze until the end...now I am demanding a high risk OB.

Ejb, I started to see a counselor yesterday. I found that she also thought it was illogical for me to blame myself, and she started to assure me in terms of things I could have done, that throughout her pregnancies, her babies DID "move less," she had cramping, etc, and her children were fine. So there was no logical reason for me, or for you, to actually suspect something was wrong to the point of going to L&D and demanding intervention. I am sorry that you still feel guilty five years out, I know that guilt will stick with me too but I am hoping counseling will alleviate some of it for me as well. "I CAN change how I let it affect my life and I refuse to let the guilt take me over." Those words help me to read...it reminds me of a quote I saw that states that so much in life is out of our control, but what we can control is our reaction. I also swelled a lot before my son passed, but I truly thought my cramps and pains at the time were normal contractions, and--I don't even have the energy to keep typing those thoughts out. Reflecting back on what I could have done and should have done, is indeed all-consuming and just exhausting.

NM, thank you so much for your response. It is really comforting. You are right, all of our symptoms were so text-book for a normal pregnancy. So many women have had babies that have turned out fine with similar symptoms to us. My mother even told me that with all of her kids, she never paid attention to their movements, and I was very quiet in the womb, and I turned out fine. And yes, what happened to us was so rare, how could it have ever crossed our minds that it would actually occur. Especially since we had no prior risk factors or knowledge of anything medically wrong that could cause stillbirth. My OB never even MENTIONED stillbirth. He did mention coming into L&D for severe cramping, less movement, etc., but it feels almost glossed over, something that was briefly mentioned for the sake of mentioning it.
It's interesting that you talk about being emotional before the death, because the morning around the time that my son died, I was VERY emotional. I also felt stressed several days before he died and I couldn't pinpoint why. The morning before I noticed his lack of movement, I started to cry very randomly. I never cried my entire pregnancy. I felt overwhelmed and upset, though I couldn't figure out exactly why--I chalked it up to just being stressed about preparing to be a new mother, and the lifestyle changes that would accompany it. My husband thought it was odd that I was crying, and so did I. And, a moment I will always regret--he asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital, if the baby was okay. I said, flippantly, yes, the baby is fine, he's good, I just heard his heartbeat yesterday. It is crazy how these things happen...that my husband just threw the question out there but I, too, had no actual gut feeling or indication he was dead. And by then it was probably too late anyway.

I could write pages about guilt - three years out and I still feel it so strongly at times. Learning to live with it and not let it take over has been an ongoing task for me. The one thing I truly believe though, is that we can only know what we know at the time, and we can only act how we act at the time.

What we perceive as our 'choices' are simply actions based on our knowledge, our genetics, our previous experiences, our personalities - all of which are shaped by multiple forces over which have no control at all. What we do or do not do in any given moment is simply the sum of these things, nothing more. In the same circumstances, we would do the same thing again and again.

It's not our fault.

There was never a choice. If there was, then our babies would be here.

I don't believe there are alternate realities and this really should dissolve all my 'what-ifs' (though of course it is easier said than done).

*TRIGGER*
If I may mention my rainbow pregnancy, two years later, I was OBSESSED with movement and eating none of the wrong foods (the two sources of my guilt, whether rational or irrational). And I realised that if I had known to do the same with the daughter I lost, then I would have. Because, there I was, banging in the door or the maternity unit when baby was less active for even a short couple of hours. I basically lived there!

But I didn't know before.

And the other thing is that I made new mistakes in my subsequent pregnancy (regarding medication and health treatments that could have endangered my rainbow and also inadvertently eating other 'banned' foods) and all was well. Now, either I'm a total idiot who should not be allowed to reproduce, or the truth is we just can't know everything. We know far less and have far less control than we realise - and most of the time, babies live anyway.

Sending you love and wishing you peace