the nightmare

As long as I can remember, I've considered myself a storyteller. I wrote stories for fun as a kid; I grew up to be an editor, and writing became an everyday part of my job. But this is a story I never wanted to write, with a beginning I can't change.

I am writing this in June 2020. By the time this month rolled around, there were many, many memes about why it was the worst year of all time. Coronavirus. Murder hornets. Torrential floods. It feels like anything that could go wrong this year did. On June 3rd or 4th, I remember sharing a meme with my family and friends that made me laugh out loud: it was a bingo board titled "June 2020," with squares like "The Queen of England Dies" and "Firefly Season Two, But Terrible" or even just "Cthulthu." "Stop!" one of my friends wrote back. "You'll jinx it!"

If only.

The three months leading up to June had been - I thought - some of the hardest I could remember. They consisted of the entire last trimester of my fourth pregnancy, which happened to overlap with the explosive spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

I had thought being pregnant was hard when school was still a thing. Suddenly it seemed like all my parenting resources were gone at the time I needed them the most. The libraries and playgrounds we usually visited were closed. Playdates were a thing of the past. Even visiting my parents, who live a block away, was questionable. We did not see my grandparents (who live on the same block as we do).

I live in the Midwest, and the weather was dismal much of the time. My husband, who has always worked long, hard hours, found himself busier than ever, mostly working from the minute the kids got up to the minute they went to sleep again, often later. My 5 year old did not especially enjoy Zoom school; my 4 year old and 2 year old, who are usually home with me, didn't understand why we couldn't go any of the fun places we used to go every day.

And I did not enjoy being pregnant. It was hard to walk, to sit, to stand, to sleep. I didn't remember it being so hard with my first three. It seemed like I was always exhausted or nauseous and trapped alone in my house with three crazy children too young to understand why their lives had suddenly been turned upside down.

I am a planner. I must always know what comes next. For the first time in a long time, I had no idea what was coming, and it scared me. And I vented about it. A lot. To pretty much anyone who would listen.

On Facebook, in all my parenting groups, I posted about how hard it was to be 9 months pregnant with the summer coming up and no idea how to handle the children I had and a newborn in isolation. I googled coronavirus and labor and delivery policies daily. On WhatsApp, to my friends and my family, I fumed about how physically uncomfortable I was, how 2020 was the worst year to be pregnant ever, how much easier it all would have been if I wasn't having a baby. At home, to my husband, I questioned if we were really prepared to bring another child into a world so different from the one we had lived in 9 months ago. Would we have decided to expand our family if we had known what life would be like right now?

I made the same joke/nonjoke to everyone: my plan was to pray for camp to open, drop the kids off, then go to the hospital to deliver my baby. I just had to make it to June 22nd.

My grandmother said, "There's no way you'll last that long." And she was right.

June 3rd was a normal day. I remember feeling reasonably upbeat. The weather was warm. We had made it through Shavuot, what I thought of as the last major hurdle before the baby, the previous week. I had seen my doctor the previous week and everything looked good -- so good that I cancelled my appointment for the current week. "You've done this before," he said. "You know nothing really happens between now and labor anyway. Just call me if you notice any decrease in movements; otherwise I'll see you in labor and delivery."

June 4th was not normal, and it took me a long time to put my finger on why. It was hot; it was a Thursday, and I had Shabbos to plan. And, like every day, I had to figure out what to do with the kids. I dragged them out on a long walk in the sun to the grocery store to pick up a few things for Shabbos, then dragged them home. Everyone was sweaty and tired and whiny, including me. I think I went to Target - or was that the day before? I argued with my daughter about sitting through Zoom classes she did not want to attend, then argued with her about not hanging up in the middle of a gymnastics Zoom she had begged me to put on. I exercised - I was very determined to exercise at least four times a week, and I never made an exception - while my toddler sat on me and opened and closed my computer and my preschooler asked for at least three snacks. I made a dinner that no one ate. I lost my patience more than once. I did laundry. I watched a cooking show on Netflix while I washed dishes and cut up fruit for tomorrow's snack. And through it all I had a vague sense of unease. Something was wrong, but what? I bickered with my husband over nothing, then sat on my bed while he called in to a Zoom shiur, trying to figure out where this sense of dread was coming from.

Hormones, I thought. I'm exhausted. I'm 37 weeks pregnant and I've just had it. But then came another thought, a much worse thought: I can't feel the baby.

Like my other children, this baby had always been incredibly active. My big kids used to watch my tummy jiggle on Shabbos mornings and laugh in delight. Just last week my OB had joked about having to chase the baby all over my abdomen with his transducer. I had never felt the need to do kick counts because an hour rarely passed without her poking her elbows around or stretching or dancing or doing whatever it is babies do in there. Sometimes I even woke in the middle of the night because of it.

But usually the biggest production of the day was after I ate supper, when I was sitting down (sometimes for the first time) and could relax. And I didn't remember her dancing that night.

Why am I winding myself up at 9 pm? I thought. This is ridiculous. I'm sure I felt her this morning. She's probably sleeping. I'll feel her move later. Nothing is wrong.

So I laid down on my bed and waited, staring at the clock. Ten minutes passed. Nothing.

Drink something, I told myself. If you call the doctor they'll tell you to drink juice and lie down. I had been down this road before, with my first pregnancy, back when I had time to worry about things like this. You drink the juice, you come in for a non-stress test, etc, etc, everything's fine. Everything is always fine.

I went downstairs. I drank juice. I laid down on my bed. Nothing.

I texted my sister: Hey, if I had to go into the hospital tonight just to check something quickly, could you stay with my kids for a little bit?

Then I called my OB.

"It's probably nothing," he agreed, "but better safe than sorry. I'll order a non-stress test. You know the drill."

I texted my husband (still on his Zoom shiur, totally oblivious to any of the increasingly alarming conclusions I'd jumped to in the last half hour): We need to go to the hospital for a non-stress test. Right now.

Figuring I'd be there for at least an hour, maybe longer, I grabbed a book, changed out of my pajamas, and tried to tell myself that I was being unbelievably dramatic, this was my fourth baby, I was at 37 weeks, I was too experienced a mom to be driving to a hospital for a non-stress test at 10 pm when everything was definitely fine.

My two college-aged sisters both came, bewildered ("So are you having the baby? You're not having the baby? Is everything okay? What's going on?"). My husband ended his Zoom shiur and escorted me to the car, equally bewildered ("What are we doing? Are you in labor? You're not in labor? What's going on?") I waited to feel the baby move and didn't. A sick, sick feeling started creeping up my spine.

Since this was the beginning of June 2020, our route to the hospital was complicated by protests over police brutality, making a long drive even longer. The first song that came up on my husband's phone was "Goodbye, Baby."

"We should probably skip that one," he joked. I tried to laugh.

As we drove, he asked me, still trying to get his head around where we were going and why: "Are you really so worried? What are they going to do with you when we get there?"

I explained to him that they'd probably hook me up to a monitor just to watch the baby's heartbeat for a half hour or so, which was why I'd brought the book. We debated whether they'd let him sit with me, because of COVID concerns. Then he said something like: "What's the worst case scenario?"

"Well, you hear about cord accidents and things like that," I said. "Babies being in real trouble." I sound crazy, I thought. This is my fourth kid. I can't believe I'm even thinking this.

"But you had an appointment last week," he said. "And everything was fine."

"Everything was fine," I agreed. "Hopefully it's nothing. Better safe than sorry. Although I know I'm ruining a good night's sleep for us both, and I'm sorry about that. I wouldn't have slept anyway."

"No, better safe than sorry," he said.

We arrived at the hospital. My husband wasn't sure if he would be allowed inside. "Call me or text me and let me know if I can come up," he said. Then he dropped me off at the front and turned around to park.

Well, I thought, looking up at the sign that said "Birth Center," let's hope this isn't a night that will change my life forever.

But it had been hours since I could clearly remember the baby moving, and I knew that wasn't normal. By the time I found the Labor and Delivery unit, I was already crying. They told me my husband was allowed up; I can't remember if I texted him.

"Right, you're the non-stress test," the nurses said when they saw me. The unit was quiet; it was a quiet night. One led me to a room which she called my "birth suite," and pulled out her doppler. "First things first," she said, "Let's find this little one."

I laid on the table, closed my eyes, and, as I have every time, for every ultrasound, I prayed. Except this time, I really prayed.

There was silence. A silence that grew and grew.

"Can you turn on your side?" the nurse said.

I turned. I was really crying now. The silence was deafening. It went on and on.

"Maybe try the other side," the nurse said.

Oh my God, I thought. This is a nightmare. This is a bad dream. I am going to wake up in my bed and this will all have been a bad, bad dream that I never have to go back to.

One of the other nurses came and held my hand, and I realized that I was moaning. I was moaning the same thing over and over again: "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, please no."

The nurse--a young, very pretty nurse--paged my OB. There were three in the room with me - maybe they had all heard me weeping from the desk? I sobbed, "It's not there, is it? If there was a heartbeat to find, you would have found it already. Is my baby dead?"

"Shhh," she said. "I don't know. We have to wait for the doctor."

But she knew. Everyone in that room knew. Nobody wanted to be the one to tell me.

I think about then my husband showed up. We didn't have any gas in the car; I'd told him before that there was plenty of time for him to go get some and come back for me. But he'd decided to check what was happening with me first.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to walk in on that scene.

My OB came in with an ultrasound machine. The room swam in front of me. I fought an overwhelming urge to vomit, turning my head from side to side. My husband held my hand and made hushing noises at me while the OB moved the transducer all around my abdomen in that silence that I now knew I was going to hear for the rest of my life. This isn't happening, I thought. This isn't my life. My baby is alive. It's June. She is due in June. I made it all this way. My baby is just around the corner. My baby girl. I have the car seat, I went through the baby clothes, everything's all set. This is just a bad dream. This is a nightmare that I'm going to wake up from. I just have to wake myself up.

The nurse handed me a vomit bag.

"I'm sorry guys," my OB said. "I can't find a heartbeat. And before I can say what I'm going to say next I'm going to need a radiologist to take a look here too, but you can be sure that I would never have said this to you if I was not 100 percent confident that this baby has passed away."

I cried some more. A lot more. I tried to throw up and couldn't. I shivered and shook, and all the while there were decisions to make, information I was supposed to be listening to.

The radiologist came and confirmed there was no heartbeat. The baby's measurements were perfect. Everything looked perfect. If there had been a heartbeat she would have been perfectly healthy, the perfect baby.

But there wasn't.

"I'll just do a cervical check to see where we're starting from," my OB said.

I must have looked at him like he had two heads.

"I'm not sending you home for the weekend in this state," he said. "I think the next step will be delivering the baby. But we have to see if you've dilated at all before we can start Pitocin."

"Pitocin?" I said. I was shivering so much my teeth were chattering. "But...do you mean...do I have to go through a whole labor? Can't we just do a C-section? Can't I be unconscious?"

"You could, but I don't recommend it," he said grimly. "C-sections are major abdominal surgery which would have ramifications for any future pregnancies you guys may want to have. If you insist on it I'll do it, but you've had three successful vaginal deliveries, and that's the best path to a healthy pregnancy and delivery next time."

Next time? I thought. But...this time isn't over yet! This is a healthy pregnancy. It's been a healthy pregnancy for 9 months. I want *this* baby...what about *this* baby? I was so cold, and so nauseous, and so sure I would wake up any minute, any minute.

He did the cervical check. I wasn't dilated. It was midnight. "We'll give you one dose of Cytotek now, one at 3 am, then start Pitocin around 7," he said. "Try to get some sleep."

"Can you put me to sleep?" I begged. "Can you give me something to make me sleep through the whole thing?"

He agreed to an Ambien. I called my mother to tell her the baby had died (am I really having this conversation? Am I really saying these words?) and explain why I needed my sisters to stay with my other kids until my husband could get home.

"Perel, no!" she said, and she sounded like she didn't believe me. "That can't be right! Are they sure? What happened?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't think they know. Can you deal with the girls...and the kids...I don't know what tomorrow is going to look like..."

It took some time, but I convinced my husband to go home to the kids while I waited for the slow, agonizingly slow process of induction to kick in. Before he left, I asked him to fold up the baby blanket that the nurses had left draped over the little crib they have in delivery rooms. The doctor went home to snatch a few hours of sleep. The nurse gave me the Cytotek and went to take care of patients delivering live babies. And I was alone in that cold, cold room, with a purple teardrop taped to the door so that everyone coming in knew there was nothing to celebrate in here, even though the whiteboard in my room still cheerfully read: "Welcome Baby ___! My birthday is ____!"

Thanks to the Ambien, I drifted in and out of a restless sleep, my teeth still chattering. I left the TV on. No Netflix? I remember thinking. Every time I swam up out of sleep it was the same thought: Where am I? And then: No. No, this is still the bad dream. I have to wake up. And then the realization that there was no waking up, and what I would have to do in the next handful of hours, and the dread. I flipped channels impatiently, but couldn't stand any show. I think I watched a lot of New Girl at some point. I cried on and off. I tried to throw up and couldn't.

Periodically nurses would come in with random depressing paperwork that made everything seem even more surreal. "You won't get a birth certificate, since the baby isn't alive," one explained to me. "If you want to, you can fill out this paperwork to receive a birth and death certificate, but you'll have to send it in yourself. I'll just leave it here by the bed."

"Have you given any thought to the burial?" another asked me a bit later. "Given that the baby is full-term parents usually like to handle that themselves."

Had I given any thought to the burial of my unborn baby? I stared and stared. The baby that was still inside me, that only yesterday I had felt roll and kick? I had thought about what to name her. I had imagined her in all her big sister's little baby dresses, which I had pulled out only weeks ago. No, I had not thought about burying her yet.

But now I had to. So in the hospital bed, around dawn, as the nurse added the first Pitocin to my IV, I found myself texting my parents about which cemetery to send her to and how to get her there. And then I begged for more sleeping pills. I don't want to be here. I don't want to remember this. I don't want this to be happening. I just want to wake up. If this is being awake, I want to sleep forever.

My husband came back. I got an epidural. The day went on and on. I shivered and shook.

At 4:24 p.m., I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She was 19 inches long and weighed 6 pounds, 6 ounces. The nurse put her in my arms wrapped in a blanket, still warm from my own body. She had a full head of hair. I had joked to so many people that she would be born bald - hers was the first pregnancy that I hadn't had terrible heartburn - but she wasn't. She had a full head of dark hair, and a heart-shaped face with her father's features, just like her older sister and my younger son. That had also been a joke I told: I carry them and they come out looking just like their father. It's not fair.

It's not fair.

I tried to pretend as I held her that she was just asleep. She truly didn't feel so different than a sleeping newborn - she was the same size as my two oldest had been at birth, and still warm, her skin still pink for those first few moments. I hugged her and wept. Because even though it was only a few moments, it was so clear that she was lifeless. Her skin began to turn blue and grey. With no muscles to hold her mouth closed, her tongue poked out. I never got to see her eyes open. And of course she made no sound.

I noticed a blister on her neck and asked my OB: "Is this why she died?"

"No," he said. "The cord was over her shoulder and I think it rubbed against her skin, but to be honest, I've delivered many living babies who have that, as well. The placenta looks normal. She looks normal. There's nothing I can see just from looking at her that says, 'This is why she died.' And I am afraid that is usually the case with these things."

Then he said, "I'm so sorry this happened to you guys," gave the nurse a few instructions, and left.

"Do you want to hold her a little longer?" said the nurse. "You can hold her as long as you like. Do you want me to leave her in the room? Or should I take her?"

I felt like I was breaking in half.

"You can take her," I said. "I just want to get one picture with her first."

"Are you sure?" my husband said. "Are you really sure you want to do this?"

"She's my baby," I said. "I want a picture of us together. We'll never be together again."

He took the picture on his phone - "I don't think you want this somewhere you can stumble across it by accident," he said.

Neither one of us has looked at it yet.

Then the nurse took the baby away, to be studied by a pathologist and then taken to the cemetery, to be buried in an unmarked grave. Apparently this is the Jewish tradition for burying babies born dead; there is a special section of the cemetery for them. I had no idea. Who thinks about burying their newborn?

It was a few hours before Shabbos. My husband, who had come back to the hospital that morning, had to leave to get the house and the kids ready. We hadn't been sure, before, how long the labor would take, if I would be home for Shabbos or not. We still weren't sure.

With the baby and my husband both gone, the room seemed emptier than ever. Now that I had given birth, I was low indeed on my nurse's priority list; there was another mother delivering in the ward, and eventually I heard her baby cry. I lay in my quiet room, still watching and not watching New Girl, still wishing I could just wake up.

I wanted more sleeping pills, and medication to dry up my milk before it came in. When my nurse returned she told me neither were a good idea; my doctor didn't want me to become dependent on the sleeping pills, and he felt the medication typically used to dry up milk had been proven ineffective. He suggested Nyquil instead; much less habit-forming. Try to rest, she said. You've had a long day.

I tried. I picked up the book I had brought with me, what felt like forever ago, back when I thought I was just coming for a 20 minute non-stress test. I read the same page over and over again without understanding a word of it. I can't believe I'm supposed to just go on being alive now, I thought. How can the world keep spinning? How is time moving forward?

I heard a different baby cry as it was wheeled past my room to the nursery. I'm not staying here alone over Shabbos, I told myself. I'm getting out of here if I have to run the whole way home.

I got myself up, used the bathroom (I knew this was important to the nurses) and tried to get myself dressed (it was a little difficult to do this still attached to my IV and I did not do a good job). I packed my bag. I called the nurse and asked if I could get discharged.

She looked at me incredulously. "You gave birth an hour ago," she said. "I'm sure your doctor would like you to stay a little longer."

"I'm ready to go," I said. "I feel fine."

"You need to at least finish your bag of Pitocin and get your blood drawn by lab. Did you try to get dressed by yourself?"

"I want to go home."

"And you will go home, but I think you should stay at least a few more hours. You're still bleeding a lot."

"Can you ask the lab to come now? I really just want to get out of here."

She remained skeptical. I wanted to shake her. This place and the things that happened here will haunt me forever, I wanted to shout at her. Do you really not understand why I want to put it behind me? Is it really so strange?

To prove to her that I was well enough to go, I did not get back into bed. I sat in the chair beside the bed, with my packed suitcase and my hands folded in my lap, like I was just waiting for a bus. Just waiting for a bus to take me away from this bad dream.

A few minutes before candlelighting, my father drove my husband back to the hospital to get me. I badgered my still-skeptical nurse into printing my discharge papers. She said a lot of standard things about postpartum care and the risks of postpartum depression (you think?) and I just wanted to press fast forward on her or mute or both, which is a feeling I became very familiar with in the days that followed.

My father drove us home during the 18 minutes. My husband and my father tried to make conversation during the drive. I tried not to think, but the thoughts came anyway. This is me leaving the hospital without my baby. I have never left the hospital without my baby. There is no carseat. There is no baby to need a carseat. My baby is dead. They are going to put my baby in the ground. I will never hold her again. I will never feed her. I will never kiss her. She is going to be put in a hole in the ground and I will never see her again. This is me going home without my baby. This is me going home to a life without my baby.