(This is a guest blog by Jana about her son Brayden James. Thank you for sharing this with us, Jana.)
On May 25th, 2010, I was almost 36 weeks pregnant with our firstborn… a son. My husband had been deployed from the time I was 14 weeks until I was just over 32 weeks pregnant. It must have been quite a sight to see me so big when he came home. I am a critical care nurse and I was at work that night not feeling very well. I chalked it up to being so huge and I was exhausted all the time. It dawned on me that I hadn’t felt him move very much. I went home before the end of my shift and rested a little. I called my doctor when the office opened. I sent my husband into work as I was sure everything would be fine.
The nurse tried to put me on a non-stress test and she couldn’t find the heartbeat… then I went to the ultrasound room. I was relieved when I saw him on the ultrasound, but I didn’t see his heart fluttering. My doctor said, “I’m sorry….there’s no heartbeat.” My world crumbled. There I was alone… I had them call my husband out of a briefing to come to the office. Seeing him crumble into a heap just broke my heart all over again. I asked my doctor, “What do we do now?” She explained her recommendation. We decided to be admitted to the hospital that evening to start induction. By then my head was splitting from crying so much. I wanted to feel nothing physically… I wanted my heart to quit breaking. I got an epidural and rested a little that night.
By 9am the next morning I was 9cm dilated. I sat up for an hour to labor down. I started pushing at 10am and Brayden James was born at 10:46am. He was beautiful. He had his Daddy’s lips and big feet.
There was no physical reason why he left us. We opted for an autopsy. If it was possible, I wanted to know what took him. They did tons of labwork on me and a full autopsy on Brayden and found nothing. It was so hard to believe that no one could figure it out. As a nurse, not having a why really bothered me and it took a long time to get to a place of peace with that. After a high-strung pregnancy, Brayden’s little brother Liam was born September 9th, 2011. He is absolutely perfect….just like his big brother. We are expecting again in October… I’m probably more nervous than I was when I was pregnant with Liam. We are just praying for another little miracle.
Jana Orengia Elliott, BSN, RN, CCRN
“People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in,
their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. ”
- Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
