Born Sleeping

A personal post about the loss of our son

In October of 2023, my wife Katrina and I found out that she was pregnant. Our first child, Mercy, was born in 2022, and we were excited to expand our family and give Mercy a sibling.

For the first few weeks everything proceeded normally, though we tried not to get our hopes up too much. The risk of miscarriage before the 12th week of pregnancy is high, and rises quickly as you get older (we were both 39). But at 7.5 weeks we had an ultrasound that showed a heartbeat and a healthy baby.

The next week, I was flying home from a business trip. When the plane touched down, I had a text from Katrina: “I started bleeding.” While I was in the air she had started bleeding and passing blood clots. An ultrasound the next day revealed that Katrina had a subchorionic hematoma: a bleed in the walls of the uterus.

Subchorionic hematomas affect on the order of 2-3% of pregnancies, and are associated with greater risk of preterm delivery and (with larger hematomas) pregnancy loss. Katrina’s hematoma was very large, the size of a fist. Our OB/GYN informed us of the increased risks, but told us that hematomas often resolve on their own, and even if they don’t most women go on to deliver successfully.

The hematoma meant frequent visits to the OB and ultrasounds to monitor Katrina’s progress. The week after her diagnosis, an ultrasound showed that the hematoma was slightly smaller. But a few days later she started bleeding again, severely, passing blood clots the size of tennis balls. At this point, we were sure she was having a miscarriage. As we drove to the doctor, we tentatively talked about whether we would try to get pregnant again.

But despite the enormous loss of blood, the baby was still alive, its little heart beating away. The hematoma, however, had grown larger.

For the next several weeks, Katrina continued to bleed off and on, each round bringing more anxiety and stress as we waited to see whether we would lose the baby. We were extremely reluctant to tell anyone about the pregnancy. Standard pregnancy etiquette is to wait until you’re past the “miscarriage window” of 12 weeks, and with the hematoma it felt like we could lose the baby at any moment. But in mid-November Katrina had to cancel a trip to go see her family (with the hematoma the risk from travel was too high), so we broke the good and the bad news to them. By then Katrina had had half a dozen ultrasounds tracking her and the baby’s progress.

In late November, Katrina started bleeding again one evening. But instead of eventually stopping, this time the bleeding got worse, and worse, and worse. We called our OB, who told us that if it didn’t improve she needed to go to the hospital.

At midnight, still bleeding, Katrina left for the ER in an Uber, while I stayed home with Mercy. After five hours of waiting, she was finally seen by a doctor, and we found out that in spite of the massive loss of blood, our baby’s heart was still beating. But Katrina’s amniotic fluid was dangerously low: either there was a problem with the placenta, or her water had broken.

At a visit to the OB the following day, the doctor told us that there was no medical way to try and fix the situation, and because of state laws there wasn’t anything else they could do “as long as the baby’s heart was still beating.” At a follow-up visit two days later, a different doctor told us the same thing. The message was clear: go home, and wait for your baby to die.

But somehow, the baby held on. The next two ultrasounds showed that amniotic fluid levels had increased, and that growth rate of the baby was where it should be. The hematoma was still there, but for the next several weeks following the ER visit there hadn’t been anymore bleeding. We were referred to a maternal fetal medicine practice that specialized in high-risk pregnancies. They told us that every time bleeding starts, the risk to the pregnancy ratchets up, but that it gradually declines the longer you go without bleeding.

Towards the end of December, we got the prenatal genetic screening back – all negative – and found out the gender. We were having a boy.

When a pregnancy is going poorly, it crowds out everything else in your life. We were constantly worrying whether the baby is ok, or whether the next day, the next hour will bring some new disaster. But after going several weeks without any bad news, we allowed ourselves to relax just the tiniest bit. We picked out a name – Max Christopher Potter – and hung a stocking for him at Christmas. We were still keeping the pregnancy to ourselves as much as we could, but there’s only so long you can hide a pregnancy (especially because of Katrina’s travel restrictions), and we made a simple birth announcement for family and friends.

We continued to have visits to the maternal fetal specialist for the next several weeks, and things still seemed to be progressing well, though at the end of January Katrina was diagnosed with non-fusion of the chorion and amnion and partial circumvallate placenta. Membranes within the uterus weren’t stitching together and folding the way that they should. More complications on top of an already long list of them, but our doctor was hopeful that these too might resolve.

On February 10th, a Saturday, we went out to dinner to celebrate Katrina’s 40th birthday. That evening, her water broke. She was 22 weeks pregnant.

Katrina took another midnight Uber to the hospital, this time to the Labor and Delivery wing, while I stayed home with Mercy. The doctors confirmed that her water broke, and that she would have to stay in the hospital for the remainder of the pregnancy, however long that was. We were informed that most women whose water breaks early will give birth within the next week, but that in some cases labor can be delayed for weeks or months.

Medical science has slowly pushed back how early a baby can be born and still survive. But 22 weeks is the very edge of where a baby has a chance outside the womb. If Max could hold on for a few more weeks, his chances would dramatically improve. Katrina was given medication to try and delay labor, along with antibiotics to reduce the risk of infection, now very high after her water had broken.

The next day, labor hadn’t started. Mercy and I came to visit, and Katrina’s mother came to stay with us to help while Katrina was in the hospital. We started to research the outcomes for very, very premature babies.

Another day went by, and still no labor. Katrina was determined to be stable enough to move to a high-risk maternity wing, which we hoped was a sign that labor could be delayed for a few more days, or a week, or more. Once more we allowed ourselves a sliver of optimism.

But the next morning, Valentine’s Day, they couldn’t find Max’s heartbeat. Doctors and nurses searched for more than an hour, but it wasn’t there. Max’s heart had stopped.

I was at home when I got the call, and rushed to the hospital. But there was nothing to be done except hold each other, and weep, and prepare for the worst day of our lives. Our baby had died, but Katrina was still pregnant, and she would still have to deliver him.

We spent the next several hours seeing doctors, filling out paperwork, and waiting to be moved to a delivery room. A doctor from our maternal fetal specialist had reviewed our history and told us that the whole series of complications was just a fluke, tragic bad luck, nothing that could prevent us from having another baby if we chose.

Eventually, we got moved to a delivery room. The nurses put a dove sticker on the outside of our door to indicate that we had lost our baby. Katrina was induced and given pain medication, and delivered Max early on Thursday morning.

He weighed just 14 ounces, a tiny little thing. Max had struggled and fought and scraped to survive, but he was just too small, too early. The nurses took him away, then brought him back in, wrapped up in a tiny set of newborn clothes that were far too big for him. His feet and hands were impossibly small. His eyes were closed.

We held him, and held each other, and wept. We were asked if we wanted pictures; we debated, in no state to make anything resembling a decision, and said yes, and a photographer came in. I asked her how she could muster the ability to do this. “I don’t do it every day,” she said. She had also lost a baby, and volunteered for a non-profit that took remembrance portraits for bereaved families free of charge. This was the first of several organizations, mostly run by women who had lost their own children, that would help us find our footing and shoulder the crushing burden of it all.

We’d later learn that losing a baby is, unfortunately, not uncommon. We were members of a tragically large club. The rate of stillbirth in the U.S. is 1 out of every 175 live births; higher than the rate of infant loss, and higher than the rate of death for any age before 50. There’s a very good chance you know someone who had a stillborn baby, though they may not have told you about it.

We had to decide what to do with Max’s remains, ultimately deciding to have him cremated. They’re in a collective grave outside Atlanta, about an hour from our home, shared with other baby girls and boys who didn’t make it.

Katrina had spiked a fever during delivery, and was kept in the hospital for another day after delivery so she could be monitored and receive antibiotics. The next morning we walked out of the hospital, side by side, with a little box of Max’s things instead of our son.

A few months went by before we got the pictures back from the photographer, and a few months more before we mustered the will to open them. Several weeks ago, we finally did, which is what inspired this post.

Max’s brief time in this world was a difficult one. He had to fight the odds over and over again just to survive, and in the end it wasn’t enough. But he was loved, and he was special, and he won’t be forgotten.

Goodbye, my son, my baby boy.

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There are many organizations that help parents of stillborn children, but here are some that have been particularly helpful to us:

• Hugs for Harrison: a Georgia based organization that provides support for loss families through “hug baskets,” grief counseling, and support groups.

• Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep: A national organization that provides professional remembrance photos at no cost to parents experiencing the death of a baby.

• Mother of Wilde: Provides birth prints and remembrance memorials.