 |  My name is Charlie. After 8 years of trying to conceive, my husband Mike & I were shocked in February of '97 to find out that I was expecting. After years of trying we had almost given up hope. I had a wonderful pregnancy, no morning sickness or any other problems. I was very overweight when I became pregnant, and I was fearful that my weight would cause me and the baby problems. My doctor assured me that there were many women much larger than me having babies everyday. My due date was October 22. For the last month of my pregnancy I kept feeling like I was urinating on myself. I went to the Dr. with my concerns and he checked to see if my water had started to leak and assured me that I was indeed just leaking urine. He said that the pressure from the baby caused that to happen to many women. At 12:00a.m. on Wednesday the 22nd, my actual due date, I woke up because I was having contractions. I tried to go back to sleep, but about 15 minutes later I had another. I went to the bathroom, and I had the "bloody show" that they tell you accompanies labor. I waited until I had another, then I woke up Mike. We stayed up all night timing them. At around 5 a.m., the contractions where every 5 minutes apart. Mike insisted that we go to the hospital before they got any closer. We arrived around 5:30 and the nurses said that they would monitor me. They checked me and my cervix was still closed. They called my Dr. and alerted him that I was there. He came in later to check on me. While I was lying there the contractions got much stronger, but they never came less than 5 minutes apart. I felt a trickle run down my leg and we called in the nurse. She checked and told me that it was my water. Another nurse came in and checked and said she wasn't sure if it was or not since I didn't feel a gush. The DR came in around lunchtime and checked me again. He told me that it "smelled" like urine and that the strip was hard to tell if it was my water so he did something similar to a papsmear, and looked at it under the microscope. He determined that it wasn't my water and advised me to go home and stay close to the hospital because he thought that I would go soon. We asked him to induce since it was my due date and he said it would be a long labor without my cervix not being open, so he told me just to wait and everything would happen at the right time. We went home in hopes that we would be back before the evening was up. But we weren't.  The next few days my whole family wouldn't leave me alone in fear I would go at any time. The following Saturday evening I noticed that she wasn't as active as normal. I awoke around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning having contractions again. I knew in my heart that this was the day that we had waited for. I showered and did some things around the house. I noticed I hadn't felt her move since the day before so I called the hospital. They told me to drink Orange Juice and lay down that I would feel her move soon. I did that and still felt nothing. My fears seemed to be coming true. I started crying and told Mike I wanted to go to the hospital. We rushed there and when we arrived the nurses immediately hooked me up to the monitors. It took them a little longer than usual to locate the heartbeat but they found it. They said they would monitor me and notify my DR that I was there. About an hour after arriving I had to use the restroom. I called in the nurse and she unhooked me and helped me into the restroom. I noticed that I had a greenish looking discharge and I told the nurse this when I came out. She hooked me back up and left the room. I now know that the greenish discharge was the baby's meconium. Within a couple of minutes she came back in and started asking me all the questions they ask you when they admit you to the hospital. My husband noticed that the baby's heartrate wasn't as strong as it had been on the Wednesday before when I was there. The nurse assured him that babies heartrates change a lot. This made me start to wonder what was going on. About 5 minutes later I could no longer hear the baby's heart beat the nurse told me that she moved so she moved the monitors to find it. She found it once again and I started watching the heartrate myself. It was about 130, it had been 160 the Wednesday before. I kept watching while the nurse was doing things on the computer, other nurses started coming in the room asking if she needed any help. This was when the hearrate dropped to 100 then 80 and it started going down drastically within a minutes time. The room filled with nurses poking me and shaving me, My husband just kept screaming what is going on?? The nurses then told me that they were going to do an emergency c-section. They paged the DR on call and started shaving me and drawing blood. My husband started calling the family to tell them what was going on. While they were waiting on the DR they lost the heartbeat all together and called in an ultrasound technician. She tried to find the heartbeat but couldn't. All I remember from that point was the nurses yelling let's GO! NOW! They rushed me down the hall to the operating room where nurses and an anesthiaologist (?Spelling) where waiting. They were ready for me but the DR still wasn't there. The called the u's technician into the O.R. to try and find the heartbeat again, but still no luck. I just laid there praying to GOD to save my baby. I felt someone rubbing my foot and I saw that it was the Dr. She was looking at the ultrasound. FINALLY, We could get my baby out and save her!! All at once as if they were told the room emptied out, everyone except my nurse and the Dr. The Dr. came up to my face where I could see her. She said because of my weight they thought it would be easier on me to deliver vaginally, rather than do a c-section. This is when my world came to an end. I asked her what are you telling me? My baby is Dead?? She just shook her head yes and started to cry. They brought my husband into the operating room where I was. They didn't tell him until he came in there with me. He told me later he thought they were bringing him in their to tell him I had died. There was a hospital counselor with him, and they proceeded to tell him that the baby was gone, Her heart had been stopped too long for them to save her. He fell to the ground screaming and crying. To this day I still can't listen to the Tim Mcgraw song "please don't take the girl." I just laid there in shock, speechless, I couldn't express any emotions. Mike just kept holding me crying saying Why, Why our baby? They took me back to the room and family had started to arrive, I remember coming down the hall hearing them all crying, when they saw me they just kept saying they couldn't believe it. Still no tears came from me. I don't know why but I just couldn't cry. It was like I was in a dream watching everyone else around me react to the news. My mother and father had not arrived yet. When they got there they were expecting to see their first grandchild. My husband's family met them outside the room and told them the news. When my Mother walked into the room and I made eye contact with her, that is when it hit me. My baby was gone, I remember telling my mother that she was gone and mom just held me and cried and assured me that everything would be all right. That she would take care of me. At that moment I felt like a child again, safe in my mother's arms. They notified my DR who was off for the weekend, of what had happened. He came into to see me just about an hour after they called. He sat in the chair with all my family surrounding us and said he just couldn't figure out what happened. He told us unless there was an obvious reason at birth then only an autopsy would tell us what happened to our baby. They induced labor on me immediately. The next morning I was fully dilated and the DR came in to break my water. He wanted me to start pushing because I had carried the baby so high. When he broke my water nothing came out, no fluid at all. He had a look of shock on his face. My mother told him, her water broke the other day didn't it? He said no there must be some reason for this. The only reason me and my family can conclude is that the last month of my pregnancy, I really was leaking fluid, not urine. Anyway, I pushed for 2 hrs, and on October 27th, 1997 @ 12:05p.m., 26 hours after they induced me, Our beautiful angel came into this world asleep. She never made a sound, or moved her precious little body. She weighed 7lbs. 8oz. When she was born the DR and everyone in the room knew the cause of her death, her umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around her neck. The DR couldn't squeeze his finger between it and her neck. The whole family was at the hospital and they all got to hold her, and dream of what might have been. For me and Mike it was the dream of raising our first child. For my Parents and his, it was the dream of spoiling their first grandchild. But for our little angel her dreams had already came true, because she was in heaven. I was discharged from the hospital 2 days later and on the 30th of October we had a beautiful graveside service for our angel. All of our family and friends attended the beautiful ceremony. We named our daughter Charley Irene Kaitlin Pardue. We were going to call her Kaitlin. She was our dream, and our inspiration. She still is today, but now she watches over us from heaven's playground above. We will see Kaitlin one day again, I for one can't wait to see her beautiful face and hold her again. But until then I will hold memories of her in my heart, and thoughts everyday. We have tried to conceive since then but no luck yet, we have underwent fertility treatments, but now we have put that on hold. I am dieting and losing weight now, It will be easier on me in the next pregnancy. I have already lost 61lbs, and I am still going strong!! If we can wait that long, after Christmas we are gonna start trying again. I am sorry to ramble on so much, I just wanted to vent and tell our story. Mike and I have had a very hard time dealing with Kaitlin's death. But our love has remained strong through it all.  
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