She, too, lost her beautiful daughter, Maura Lynn. This organization is dedicated to helping grieving mothers and families worldwide by creating memorial blocks in their children's honor. I am blessed to be a part of it all. I, along with some of the other mothers from our weekly bereavement support group, will continue to blog about our shared journey of loss, grief, and healing. These amazing women are my sisters and I love them so much. Please visit the website and learn how you can contribute to such a great cause. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Ligaya
“Ligaya”. I repeat this over and over again, a million times a day, as if speaking her name will summon her back to me. I love the sound of her name, the feel of it as it rolls off my tongue. Ligaya, which translates to “happiness” in my parents’ native language, Tagalog. Ligaya – my daughter, my first born, my greatest love.
Ligaya was conceived sometime around Mother’s Day in May of 2012 after almost two years of trying to get pregnant. I was about to start Clomid due to PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), but with a combination of diet, exercise, and an increase in my Metformin dosage, I was finally able to ovulate. This was our miracle…and on Mother’s Day! From the start, there were a few things against us: my age (I would be turning 36 in a few short months) and a history of high blood pressure. As a high risk patient, I was seen every few weeks to monitor the pregnancy, which put my paranoid mind at ease. My blood pressure was controlled with medication and stayed relatively stable for the first half of the pregnancy. Everything seemed perfect. All of the genetic testing came back normal and she was the right size and weight for her gestation at the 18 week anatomy scan. She was absolutely perfect. There were no indications that anything was amiss…but still I worried.
Yes, I was one of those – the paranoid, neurotic pregnant lady with a whole lot of time on her hands and an addiction to Google. You would often find me researching both the simplest and most rare of pregnancy complications. I’m sure my doctors considered me somewhat “difficult” with my millions of questions, whereas I awarded myself an honorary medical degree. No – I just thought myself armed and ready for whatever problem may arise. The fear was intense, but it was powered by the most primal instinct to protect the most precious gift I have ever been given. I would have done anything for my Little Bean, and everything I did, was for her – eating healthy (with the occasional McDonald’s shake), not letting work get the best of me, checking my blood pressure upwards of 50 times per day, even buying a brand new Volvo. Yes, I was THAT crazy. And without a doubt, I would do it all over again just for her. Because behind all of that fear, was an immeasurable amount of love for this tiny human being inside of me. I thought I had it covered. I thought I knew it all. Unfortunately, science doesn’t always have the answer, and nature will ultimately run its course.
My biggest fear was of having an incompetent cervix, a condition in which the pressure of a growing baby causes the cervix to open too early, way before the baby is ready to be born. It is a condition that occurs in about 1 out of 100 pregnancies…that’s one percent. One percent. The doctors dismissed my fears, saying I didn’t have any of the risk factors, but I never could quite shake the feeling that this would be my fate. Intuition, perhaps? I asked for cervical checks at my appointments and they would always confirm my cervix was closed, but only from the outside. See, here’s the thing about cervical checks: the only way to know for sure that your cervix is behaving itself is by having a transvaginal ultrasound, which they stopped giving me after the first trimester. A finger exam just can’t tell you if your cervix is funneling on the inside, and it’s usually in the 2nd trimester that the cervical changes start occurring anyway. If you aren’t considered “at risk” for cervical incompetence though, most doctors feel that transvaginal ultrasounds are unnecessary. I will never allow them to make this mistake again in any of my future pregnancies.
The night of my 20th week 5th day, I went to the bathroom and noticed an increased amount of discharge. I drove to Labor and Delivery hoping it was once again nothing and that they would send me home yet again with instructions to just relax (yes, I was already well known there). Unfortunately, that increase in discharge was later confirmed to be my mucus plug. My greatest fear had ultimately come true. My cervix went from an impressive 5cm at 18 weeks to being funneled and less than 1cm in length two weeks later – less than 1cm. I was opening from the inside out. Talk about incompetent! I was furious at my body for not sending me any signals that this was happening. But that’s the thing about having an incompetent cervix. Most of the time you don’t even know you have one until it’s much too late. I had no signs or symptoms other than the occasional pain in my pelvic area and tailbone, which EVERYONE SAID WAS NORMAL.
The doctors performed an emergency transvaginal cerclage the next morning after putting me in Trendelenburg position overnight, which involved sleeping with my feet elevated higher than my head to keep any weight off of my cervix. A cerclage is a surgery in which a strong suture is placed around the cervix to keep it from opening any further. Unfortunately, the success rate of emergent cerclages is not as high as it is for preventative ones, which are usually done before 20 weeks, well before the cervix starts changing. By the time they discovered there was problem with mine, there wasn’t much left to stitch closed. The doctors still remained optimistic and sent me home after two days, with no instructions other than to be on modified bed rest. Modified? No way. If I was going to keep this baby inside me, I was going to put myself on strict bed rest. I would sleep upside down every day if I had to (and I pretty much did).
As relaxing as it sounds, bed rest is the complete opposite. It is damn hard. Knowing that I was basically a ticking time bomb drove me crazy. I am so grateful for my family and husband Nate who looked after me during that period. It was hard on all of us, but we soldiered through the best that we could. I had a few mental breakdowns, but with encouragement from family and friends, I always pulled back from the edge. However, after almost 3 weeks of strict bed rest, of not moving from my left side at any time unless to go to the bathroom, I went into preterm labor. The cerclage was failing, most likely due to an infection that had gotten through my already compromised cervix.
My husband and I drove to the hospital and I was immediately admitted. Had we just made it one more day to 24 weeks, I would have been admitted on hospital bed rest, which had been the plan all along. We had JUST finished packing my bag in preparation for my stay when the contractions started, radiating from the center of my back to my sides, like a belt of nails being cinched tightly around my waist every few minutes. I was given magnesium sulfate to try and slow down the contractions and a steroid shot to help her premature lungs, but unfortunately it was already too late for the medication to be effective. Because the contractions were coming on so strong, the doctor had to take out the cerclage, which was tearing through my cervix. Without the stitch to hold my cervix closed, the end was near.
Ligaya was born at 3:15 am on October 14, 2012 via c-section. I was only 23 weeks and 6 days into my pregnancy. At the time, I was given the option of delivering vaginally, but she was in a breech position. If she was going to come, I wanted it to be quickly so she could be cared for immediately. I wanted her to have the best possible chance of survival, even though we knew the odds were 50%. The neonatologist had spoken to us only a few hours before and broke down the numbers. He also ran down the list of complications that she could be left with, were she to survive. My God, how I prayed. I prayed that if I was in the 1% of the population that had this condition, she would at least be in the 50% that would survive, and that if she did survive, she’d be in the super miracle group that did so without any lifelong disabilities. I also prayed that if God were going to take someone, He would take me. I just wanted her to live. As her parents, we had promised her a life of love and adventure. As her mother, I had promised to protect her at all costs.
I waited for her cry as soon as she was taken from my womb, but there was only silence. They immediately intubated her, and in the background, I could hear the doctors saying that her heart rate was dropping, and that epinephrine would need to be administered. They asked me and Nate if they should continue to the next stage, CPR. We were adamant that they should. Their calls of, “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and…” were mixed with my frantic cries of “Hail Mary, full of grace…”. Twice they stopped and asked if we wanted them to continue. Of course we did. The counts and the prayers continued in unison. At this point, I still had not seen her. The other doctor who worked on sewing me up kept saying over and over again that she was so beautiful. Nate kept telling me the same. After 15 minutes, they finally made the decision to stop CPR. Her lungs just weren’t mature enough at 23 weeks 6 days for her to make it. They laid my girl to rest in my arms and I watched her struggle to breathe. I am ashamed to say I did not have the strength to witness this for more than a few seconds. I closed my eyes and begged God to let me die with her. She was so beautiful. So very, very beautiful. She may have only weighed 1lb 5 oz (most of it contained in her chubby cheeks!), but she was perfectly formed – from her long legs to her tiny fingers, and her daddy’s nose.
Ligaya’s lion heart continued to beat for two hours while Nate held her in his arms and constantly kissed her beautiful face. I am forever grateful to him for having the strength to hold her in her final moments on Earth as I lay in the recovery room. I was so scared and so devastated that it wasn’t until later that afternoon that I held my baby girl once again alongside my husband. In a beautiful show of support and shared grief, my family came to the hospital and spent time with Ligaya, their first grandchild and niece. Though heartache permeated the room, love did, as well. She was surrounded by people who waited for her and loved her long before she even came into existence; people who dreamed for her, and who will long for her in the years to come.
I wish I had not been so broken by grief that day. I would have kept her in my arms the whole time. I miss the weight of her nestled next to me, the softness of her chubby little cheek, the perfection of her face. I miss so very many things.
Ligaya is now buried in a cemetery that overlooks the ocean. The day of her service Nate carried her tiny casket to her final resting place. Family and friends dropped hundreds of pink and white daisies, roses, and carnations into her little spot and Nate was given a shovel to fill the hole with dirt. Today, her grave site is full of flowers and little toys and trinkets we bring every time that we visit. It has been 2 months since she came into our lives. There is not one second of the day that I don’t miss her and wish she was in my arms. There is not one moment that I don’t feel a sense of loss, a heaviness in my chest, even in times when I feel joy. Yes, it is still possible to feel joy amidst all of the sadness. This is the delicate tightrope we mothers now walk, balancing a life of simultaneously occurring contradictions as we desperately attempt to move forward – happiness and grief, hope and despair, denial and acceptance. It is our new normal. It is our every day.
Where I do find comfort and peace is in knowing that she is in Heaven with many family members who have gone before us, as well as the beloved children of all of the mothers and fathers in our wonderful support group. I know that she feels no pain or suffering and that she is surrounded by only pure love and eternal light. The Reverend at her funeral service told us that she is in the best hands, that she no longer needs our help. It is us, her parents, who need the prayers. It is us who need the help. One of the last things he mentioned at the close of her ceremony was in reference to her name: Ligaya Isabella – the full translation being – “God’s promise of happiness”. That is what she was. That is what she will always be – our happiness.
