Jordan - Stillbirth (disclaimer)

by Judi on Nov 4, 2005

We had plans for Jordan Riley to experience a gentle, homebirth, into our loving hands. However, other plans where in store for our baby. This is a story of infant / baby loss. My way of creating my own infant loss memorial. My remembrance pages… See her pictures. This was both a happy journey for us… and a sad one. I am sharing pictures of our baby shower, belly pictures, and her, after her birth. At first I thought I shouldn’t, but then I decided that while I was pregnant with her, both Bob and I enjoyed so many things because of her. While this story did not have the ending we wanted, or expected, Jordan did bring us happiness.

This website was created for 2 main reasons… one… it was a very essential part of my personal healing process. A loss remembrance memorial. I had a few months in which some things where hard; I was sad, heartbroken. But never did I get depressed (which would have been completely normal too), but rather, I jumped up from one of life’s tragedies and kept going forward, looking back when I felt the need; but never dwelling. I didn’t ignore what happened, but processed it and vented in what I feel was a positive way. My second reason was for others. I was frustrated that there was so little about stillbirth, what happens, what do things look like, what do you do? And I wanted to share my infant loss experience with others. I have found that when some people [many] are going through something in life, whatever it is, they want as much information as possible… and they want to know they are not alone. This is my way of showing mothers and fathers and siblings of stillborn babies are not alone. My heart goes out to you.

Next, a “Personal Note” that I felt at one point was necessary. Whether is it or not anymore, I thought I’d keep it in place. Though, honestly, it doesn’t matter what I say, or how I say it.. there are some people that just want to find humor, horror or make fun.. I’ve come to realize that this not my problem. For those that send positive messages, thank you. Each one is appreciated.

~~~

Personal Note: Jordan Riley is our Angel (though, now, I think of her our “Spirit Baby”). Our daughter who was stillborn. She was born on May 13, 2000. It was written as a healing process for me. When I found out she died.. I knew no one who had “been there”. Through the web, through others who had tributes and memorials such as I’ve created, I realized I was not alone. I realized I could and would “Go on”.. I would finally feel my world start to spin again, as it had stopped in space, when Jordan died. I realized I would have another baby and I would laugh, and enjoy life. I searched the net and found my strength in others sites.. and so, I wrote my pages, provided pictures, because I thought, hoped, it would help someone else. At the same time, I was healing myself. They are still here, because, sadly, miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death are also still here. When we find a cure for our babies, I will not see a need for these pages and will remove them. Until then.. I hope these pages will bring comfort to those who, unfortunately, need it.

These pages are my infant loss memorial, the remembrance pages dedicated to my own healing process. I hope it brings comfort to others in need.

As for me…. I will forever ache for the child I carried and had to give back. But I am so happy with life. I have 2 beautiful daughters, a beautiful son (now two beautiful sons), a wonderful husband. I have little to be sad about. And, it’s just not my style to be sad for long. Life is about living… and boy do we do that here. We are planning another baby for 2003 (he was born in 2004). I do not dwell on our loss… but look forward to our gains. Our family is wonderful, awesome. For those of you here because of your loss…. there will come a time when you won’t hurt so bad. Life will have joy.. you will find things to smile about, to laugh about…

Please be aware, if you don’t like what you see here, you are welcome to leave at any time.

Peace, Love and Happiness ~ Judi

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Ryland Quin - Birth Story

by Judi on Nov 4, 2005

I know I have more than a few people wanting to read this birth story. There isn’t much to tell (didn’t seem to be). It was quite a tame birth, particularly considering my previous two.

Ryland was born at a quiet little hospital in Xenia, Greene Memorial. We hoped there would be no tornados, as is fairly common in that area. The last birth we attended there was right in the middle of a tornado..

Anyway, it was a quiet night that I went in to labor. I had all these fears during the pregnancy ¦ and fear just isn’t good. But I couldn’t figure out how to let go of it at all. One was that the baby would be born via c-section. I’d decided I’d almost, but not quite, welcome it, as I was truly dreading the pain of labor. This in and of itself was very stressful for me. Pain in labor. I just couldn’t figure out how I was so willing and ready to have babies at home, unassisted when this time I was so afraid of the pain. I was pretty sure I’d end up with an epidural.

Late in the pregnancy.. maybe 37 weeks or so, I started realizing how much the baby was facing out, the ‘wrong’ way. Though he was head down, his back was towards my back and could potentially cause lots of back labor.. uh oh.. more fear kicking in? I asked the midwives about it. Babies move so much we were sure that even though he spent so much time in that position that by the time labor kicked in, he’d get into position.

Pain ¦ I mentioned that right? Pain.. I can’t even tell you how much this was playing on my mind. I was so not ready for labor.

Each day would go by that labor had not started and I knew by evening that day was not ‘the’ day.. though I also knew, just plain new, labor would start at night and I’d have this baby on a Wednesday. Just one of those things. I really didn’t want to leave Teigen at night, where he could wake up scared and wondering where I was. I felt that could be traumatic. Wednesday, of all days I really didn’t want to go into labor, a Wednesday. Seems silly to want to plan our baby’s birth around our homeschool activity, which happened to be our Wednesday activity, I know. But the girls were really wanting to do this activity, see their friends, etc.

Of course, almost everything I didn’t want to happy, or expected to happen, did, in fact happen. No c-section, but otherwise.

Back labor was horrid. No, not really, I didn’t wait long enough. I was so not into the pain of this labor. I didn’t want to move. Because Ryland was facing the wrong way (so much for turning), I would only have regular contraction if I was up walking around. The contractions this causes hurt, period.. they just plain hurt. So much so that I didn’t want to move. I knew I HAD to move to get the labor going, but I sure didn’t want to. Nothing was happening.. so sporadic. After hours, maybe 4 or 5, I finally got an epidural. It’s what they call a ‘walking epidural’, but there was no walking. From there, things were slow.. still up and down.. I might have 5-6 contractions close together, some hard, some not (wasn’t feeling them so it didn’t matter to me much) and then nothing for 20 minutes or more.

Finally started a small pit drip and got things going. I was doing just peachy, enjoying the whole thing.. laughing with Bob, my mom, chatting with the midwives; it was fun.

Close to 11, the midwives suggested I start pushing. I was able to get into a squat and push and pushed. I think I pushed longer with Ry than I did any of my others. I’d blame it on the epidural, but I really think it was more his position and maybe because he wasn’t quite ready yet. Didn’t really matter much what was going on.. he and I, we worked together. The midwives instructed Bob on what to do.. My mom was there trying to get pictures, but unfortunately we were all crowding the bed and she couldn’t get in close enough. When Ry was head out, they had me reach down and help pull him out. He was stuck and I hooked my fingers under his arms and Bob and I managed to pull him up to my belly.

His cord was short so they clamped and cut it quicker than I’d have liked, but it was really less of an issue to me than I’d thought it would be..

11:35 a.m. born, in hands.. beautiful little boy. By 7 that evening we were home, the rest of the family meeting our newest addition.

In the end, an epidural, a hospital, midwives, push-push-push, no nursery, headed home in 6 hours.. happy, healthy (besides a bit of jaundice, which we were instructed to do ’sunlight therapy’ just as we’d done with Teigen 3 years before).

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Cassandra - Birth Story

by Judi on Nov 4, 2005

Birth of the First Child

She lies writhing on the bed, under the scutiny of apathetic doctors. The seemingly dispassionate nurses finish the preparations. Bright lights, a hard bed, the many eyes watching are nothing but background noise for the oblivious woman crying in pain.
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