I'm Abby's mama.

That's my favorite title; Abby, Eli and Isaac's mama to be precise, but others know me as Kristin.

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On July 20, 2018, Abby was due to join our family. Her room was pink, her brothers were excited, her Dad and I were ecstatic for a girl. It felt so different this time and we had all the ideas of bows and frilly things and had decided exactly what her wedding day would be like. 

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I was 38 weeks pregnant on July 6th and that afternoon my blood pressure was quite high when I took it at home. I called the nurse and she asked me to come to the hospital. Our firstborn, Isaac was born at 31 weeks after a bout with preeclampsia, so this pregnancy they watched my blood pressure carefully. However, in the hospital that day, my blood pressure never spiked, we both checked out 'perfectly' they said, and home we went. One week later, on Friday July 13, I was at my OBGYN's for my last check before our c-section planned for the 17th. It was supposed to be my last prenatal OB visit, ever. It was supposed to be quick - weight, blood pressure, heartbeat, see you later. 

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The medical student in with my doctor that day couldn't find her heartbeat. I tried calming myself over and over again, "it's just a medical student." My doctor took over. "Has she been active?" "When did you last feel her move?" I was spiraling downwards. They always found her heartbeat right away. "I'm going to stop torturing you, let's go around the corner to the ultrasound...."  We were joined with a few more nurses and they all stood over me staring at the screen. My hand cover my face so I couldn't see theirs. "I'm so sorry. There is no heartbeat."

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That was the moment my life became before and after. It will forever feel divided by that moment in time. We did a lot of very hard, very awful things over the next few days -- one of the hardest for me was call my husband to tell him his baby girl was gone. He eventually met me at the hospital, and our beautiful 6lb 14 oz curly haired girl was born later that afternoon. That's when we named her Abigail Elizabeth; Abigail after her great-grandmother Mary Abigail and Elizabeth after her mom. She had long narrow feet and toes like her Mama, full beautiful lips like her Daddy. We spent a day and a half together before we said the most difficult goodbye. We know we will see her again and we look forward to that day!

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We asked the doctor before she was born if he would be able to determine how she died. "About 50% of the time we have an answer." Our girl died of a hyper-coiled umbilical cord, a freak accident they said. I soon learned that 24,000 babies in the US are stillborn every year. I learned the US does not have a system to report and evaluate stillbirth. If we don't understand why it's happening how can we prevent it?With all our medical advances, how is it that only half of these deaths are studied? I learned that stillbirth is ten times more common that SIDS. I learned that between 2000 and 2015 the US decreased our stillbirth rate at .4% per year putting us at 155th in the world, equivalent to Chad and Niger. I'm not okay with any of this. Many equate stillbirth with miscarriage, they see it as inevitable. This is not always true.

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As people started hearing the news the sentiments, posts and sympathy cards were hard to understand: "be strong," "God needed an angel," "at least you have your boys." It was hard to hear each one of those. I believe in a God that doesn't need anything from me, surely not my baby 4 days before her birth. I've had to wrestle with the fact that I can be fully grateful for my living children and fully devastated at the death of one at the same time altogether. My baby died and society wants me to be strong? That makes no sense to me. We, as a culture, are terrible at sitting with people in their pain. We quickly turn to 'look on the bright side,' and if a baby dies it is not at all appropriate to offer this. 

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I'm easily drawn to advocacy and I'm on a mission to expose the gaping holes in stillbirth research, education, prevention and family care. No family should have to live this life -- and it doesn't have to be. 

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