Thursday, February 4, 2010
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Our Family...complete for but a moment.
Addison Sarah
Forever Our Daughter
About Me
- Rebecca
- I'm a 37-year-old transplant from Southern California to the Atlanta, Georgia area. I have a great husband Chris, an incredible 5-year-old son Calvin, and a perfect daughter Addison who lived for only a week. Addison was born 10/28/09, at 38 1/2 weeks, after I went to the hospital due to decreased fetal movement. She had an apparent cord injury that didn't kill her, but left her with severe hypoxic ischemic brain injury. She had no reflexes (dilation, suck, swallow) but was somehow able to breathe on her own. That's it. She was born into a coma-like state and remained that way until she died on 11/4/09. We went through the horrible ordeal of placing her in hospice, discontinuing IV fluids, pumping her full of pain meds (although we don't think her brain was capable of transmitting pain signals anyway) and watching her die. Our too-perfect life has been shattered, and I intend for this blog to be my outlet for all the crazy, scary, unthinkable ramblings in my brain. I'm just trying to figure out how to live [happily again] without her. Update: We welcomed a son, Ryder, on 3/2/11.
I had hoped that finding out something would bring you a sense of peace. I wish I had something wise or wonderful to say other than I'm sorry. It's not fair that a perfectly healthy baby should die because of something with her cord. Sending you hugs
ReplyDeleteThanks, Margaret. I feel like it could be worse. It could have been found that Chris and I have some clotting disorder that we genetically passed to her. Something that would likely come up in future pregnancies with no way to prevent. So in some small way, this is a relief. Her death was likely random, and I'm learning to deal with this sometimes shitty randomness of life.
ReplyDeleteMatilda's condition was genetic and has an occurrence rate of 1 in 14,000. 15% of cases are familial. When we got the phone call saying Matilda's case was most likely sporadic, it made me really sad. It was the result we were hoping for but it just made me so sad that Matilda just had this totally random, very rare mutation.
ReplyDeleteIt also made me realise no matter 'good' news we got regarding Matilda and impact on future pregnancies nothing is going to change the fact she's gone and not coming back.
Maddie x