The day I lost my daughter—a story of stillbirth

They say the day that something life-changing happens, you draw a blank when it comes to the details of things that happened outside of that event. On October 16 I remember having a very foggy and out of it feeling. I remember not feeling my normally very active baby move. I remember being concerned but not scared.

When my husband Jeff got home that evening, I told him that I hadn’t felt movement throughout the day. We tried some juice and a piece of Halloween candy. I sat back and waited. I still didn’t feel scared. I felt like any moment now I would feel my baby move.

Around 7 pm, I called my midwife and she told me to drink a big glass of water and lay quietly on my left side for an hour. It felt like the longest hour of my life. I lay there alone thinking that any minute I would feel a kick and I could join Jeff and my son, Reeves, for our movie night. It was the last time I would ever feel comfortable laying in my own bed alone.

After the hour passed, we called back to report I had still not felt the baby. They advised us to come on in and get checked out. We packed the hospital bag we hadn’t had time to pack yet. We packed newborn clothes, diapers and blankets. We grabbed the infant car seat. We talked about booking a hotel close to the hospital because I was only 34 weeks pregnant and we would probably need to stay longer. I started to feel what I thought were contractions. I timed them during the drive. I still did not feel afraid as we drove along listening to the radio. I remember seeing the lights off the highway of a Friday night football game.

I remember walking into the hospital holding hands with my husband and son. I remember thinking these would be our last moments as a family of three.

Once we were admitted, the nurse put the heart rate monitor around my belly. We heard a heartbeat. She left the room.

And we exhaled.

But the belt wasn’t placed correctly and it was my heartbeat they were hearing. They adjusted it and heard only silence.

They rolled in a portable ultrasound machine. And then another. They brought in a second and third doctor.

Finally, they told us our baby’s heart was not beating. Then they let us know that the baby we would soon be saying hello and goodbye to was a little girl.

 As we tried to process, they laid out all of the decisions we had to make. 

I wished to wake up from this nightmare.

I would have to be induced and deliver my daughter. I could start the induction now or go home and come back in the next few days to begin this process. We needed to decide what we would do with her body. We needed to contact a funeral home. Would we like to have an autopsy?

The compassion we were shown by the nurses, doctors and staff of the hospital is something I remember very clearly. They paused with us as we sat in silence. Their tears flowed as ours did.

They brought us a cart filled with snacks and drinks. They hung a beautiful handmade angel on our door so that other staff would know as they entered our room that we were not going to have a living child.

Shortly after midnight, they induced me. There was no need to be hooked up to machines to monitor the baby so even though I could move freely, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to understand what the hell was going on and why this was happening.

I deleted all the pregnancy apps I had on my phone. I decided I was never having any more children. I looked at quotes about infant loss. I cried. A lot. I wished to wake up from this nightmare. I wondered what she would look like and how I would feel after I delivered her. I begged for the strength I would need in the days, weeks and months ahead to care for myself and my family.

I didn’t think a lot about the fact my daughter wasn’t alive inside of me. Instead, I thought about the enormous vacancy that would be left behind.

My body refused to go into labor so around 10 am the next day they broke my water. I have never felt so violated. Water poured out and it felt like my body was weeping just as I was.

I still believed she would come out crying and we would all marvel at how this beautiful little girl shocked us all.

She was delivered and the room was silent. They cleaned her up and handed her to me and the shock of the last 18 hours finally began to sink in. My daughter, Madison Reid, was beautiful,  warm and perfect. There was nothing about her that made her look like she wasn’t living, except that she wasn’t.

Harder than hearing the news that she was gone, harder than delivering her lifeless body, was trying to decide when we should go home. With every fiber of my being, I wanted to go home but with every fiber of my being, I also didn’t want to leave my daughter behind. 

Being wheeled out of the hospital was one of the hardest moments of all. I felt as though I was betraying her by leaving her there. But we had to go. We had to create space for her in our family and find ways to remember and honor our little girl whose life, however brief, meant so much to the people who loved her.

My daughter Madison would have turned 8 years old in October 2023. Instead of dressing her as a cheerleader for a Clemson football Saturday or finding the perfect Halloween costume, our family holds space to remember her, support fellow families of loss and advocate for stillbirth prevention.

Author’s Note: During my pregnancy with Madison I didn’t know about the importance of fetal movement monitoring. If you’re pregnant and in your 3rd trimester (after 28 weeks!), please download the free Count the Kicks app and start doing daily kick counts. Count the Kicks has helped decrease the stillbirth rate, and that’s why I joined them as an ambassador to help bring this life-saving tool to all birthing parents and their partners. In the US, one in 175 pregnancies end in stillbirth and fetal movement monitoring with Count the Kicks is an evidence based stillbirth prevention program that saves babies.