Connor James
March 28, 2008

I had a picture perfect pregnancy. My husband and I "tried" for our first child while we were on our vacation down in Jamaica last July 2007. We only tried 3 nights and figured that it would take a couple of months to actually conceive. August rolled around and I was 3 days late--and I'm NEVER late. So, I take a pregnancy test and we realized that we are having a -what we called- our "Jamaican baby". I don't think I have ever seen the look on my husbands face when he saw that pregnancy test--I'm going to be a daddy....wow...what a rush it was for us....I was going to be a mom. I am a mom...?

At 5 weeks the Dr. confirmed the pregnancy and then at 10 weeks we told our families. They were all SO excited--for this would be a first grandchild for some of our parents!!

I am an exercise-aholic. Worked out everyday and up till 1 week before I delivered--I was just so big (belly of 47 inches) that working out was the last thing on my mind--I was just ready to have my baby!!
I kept an online pregnancy blog where I would take a picture of my belly each week and type up a little something about how I was feeling that week and any changes I was noticing. All of my out of town family just loved it because they were able to follow along my entire pregnancy.

Everything had been going great!!! At 25 weeks my husband and I were having intercourse and he noticed that there was blood on the bed. We both got pretty nervous and called the Dr. right away and we were up at the hospital within 10 minutes of the bleed. We had a stress test done and checked to see if I was contracting--and I wasn't. So the Dr. was going to send me home. I just wasn't convinced and asked him if the placenta was ok and that I wanted an ultrasound done. The Dr. did a quick ultrasound and said that everything looked fine. So we went home, refrained from any pelvic activity for 2 weeks, and everything seemed to be back to normal.

When I had my first ultrasound done to check the baby and find out the sex, the u/s tech noticed a slight irregularity in his heartbeat. The Dr. said he would monitor it at every checkup and if he heard it again consistently, then he would send us to a maternal fetal medicine specialist down in Indianapolis. Well, he heard it a few more times and decided to send us to Indy. There we had a full Doppler u/s done and a stress test on the baby. According to the Dr. there he didn't see anything wrong. (They do these u/s so quickly--I wonder now why this wasn't caught.)

So we go home thinking that everything is just fine. I had this appointment at 31 weeks.

7 weeks pass with no problems.

I started having contractions on 3/27/08 around 8:00 p.m. ...I told my husband that if they didn't go away by 11:30 that I wanted to go to the hospital to check and see if it was real labor--well it was and I was dilated to 3 cm. I stayed that way until 4 a.m. and then they started me on Pitocin. That wasn't doing much either--maybe it was a sign I wasn't dilating b/c of the VP...who knows. So the Dr. came in around 5 a.m. and broke my water..ALL BLOOD. After he told me that I said I'm nervous I just want to get him out lets do a c-section. He said my baby's heartbeat was maintaining at 140-150 bpm and he was confident that I would delivery vaginally. So...I listened to the Dr...why wouldn't I, right? So I went on the next couple hours in labor. There were a few times when the baby's heart rate would drop to 70 and they turned me on to my left side. I finally dilated to 10 cm around 8:00 a.m. and pushed for about 50 minutes. This is it! This is what my husband and I have been waiting for these past 9 months. Finally, we are going to meet our son! I had my husband holding one leg and my mom was holding the other and trying to video tape as well. I was so overwhelmed with excitement!!! My husband looks up and me and says his head is out, his head is out!! Within a few seconds I had delivered my first child!! I did it!!!! The doctor held out our baby boy and cut his cord......nothing....no crying, no flailing arms and legs....nothing. He told us he was going to go over and wake him up a little bit. As they are working on Connor I began to hemorrhage pretty badly. 10 minutes had passed--no cries, 15 minutes had passed--no cries, 20, 30, 40, 50....and hour....nothing. He had a heartbeat (not strong), but not enough blood in him to even get an IV or anything for a blood transfusion. Our baby was dead.

Connor James was born at 8:54 a.m. on March 28, 2008--1 day before my dad's birthday. It was the most AMAZING thing I have ever done in my life. He left this world at 10:00 a.m. March 28, 2008.

We were in the hospital until Sunday morning March 30th. The day we got home, we planned a viewing and funeral and said goodbye to our Angel on April 2nd. We were able to hold him, kiss him, love him all day that Friday in the hospital--but for me--it wasn't enough.

We dressed Connor in his "going home" outfit (A Purdue Boilermaker onesie, Purdue hat and Purdue booties) and that is what we buried him in as well.

We miss Connor so much everyday. I hope that more can be done to help prevent this kind of tragedy.

~ Jeremy and Mandy Hall