Phoebe's Story

This was written about a month after we lost Phoebe. I was currently trying to win a contest through Toyota where you designed the car and the winner got to go to a NASCAR race. We made it into the very last round and never got our prizes we were supposed to. But the car was decorated in honor of our sweet girl. So a friend of mine who had a blog asked me to write out the story behind the car so she could share it with her fellow bloggers and get them to vote.

As soon as hubby and I found out we were going to have a baby we wanted to know immediately what we were having. Of course being only 5 weeks along we still had a way to go. I had woken up that Sunday morning at 5 am and decided that I wanted to test. I shook my husband awake and told him I wanted to take a home pregnancy test. He rolled over and looked at me still half asleep asking if he had to wait for the results. I told him I would do the test, leave it in the bathroom without looking at it, and we could look at it when we got ready to actually get up to get ready for church. So at 7 am it was almost like a light bulb went off in my husband's head and he ran into the bathroom. I heard a gasp and he came running back in the bedroom, flipped on the light, jumped on the bed, shook me awake, and he couldnt even say anything all he could do was show me the test. Sure enough, it said positive, after a few negatives we had gotten a positive. We were estatic! As we went to church and went about our day we couldnt hardly contain ourselves. We called the OB office on base to get a blood test done that Monday to confirm it and at about 4pm on March 8, 2010 we found out that I was 5 weeks 3 days pregnant. We called our families and told all our friends and had high hopes and dreams for the future. My husband and I started walking everyday and I was eating healthy and would only feel nauseous every now and then. Over the next couple of weeks I kept feeling more and more nauseous and I started having horrible morning sickness. Gone was the walks every afternoon, gone was enjoying the taste of food, and gone was the normal meals. I was relying on popsicles, cheese sticks, and other small light things to get me through the days. My morning sickness was so bad at times that the doctor had to phone me in suppositories when the Zofran failed so that I wouldnt get dehydrated. I went through the weeks praying for a healthy baby, eating right, watching everything that went into my mouth, and anticipating the moment when we would know if we were having a boy or girl. As I would talk to my mother and mother in law we talked about how if it was a boy this, if it was a girl that. Everybody knew how much I had always wanted a little girl to love, cuddle, soothe, dress up, and call my own flesh and blood. Every single time I would have morning sickness I would pray to God that it just meant our little baby was healthy. Regardless of whether it was a boy or girl my husband and I already loved this baby as if it had already been born. We would try to find her heartbeat and we played her classical music and praise and worship music. Each doctor's visit we were told everything was fine and looking good and we were estatic. My husband always went with me so that we were always hearing news together. I didnt want him to miss anything just as much as he didnt want to miss anything. He was always there for me when he could be when I was sick. He picked up when I was on the couch too sick to move. He was my strong tower, my rock, and everything to me while we were anticipating Phoebe's arrival. When the time came to schedule the ultra sound we argued with the poor receptionist about when we could come in. We kept trying to get it earlier but they wouldnt budge. So we had to wait four very long weeks. Thursday, May 27, 2010 my husband came home for chow and wanted some hotdogs so we fired up the grill. For some reason we couldnt get the grill to stay hot but were able to cook a few hotdogs. We found one that was for sure fully cooked and I at it. We found another one that was cooked for him. He got back to work and ended up getting sick from the hotdog but it all came out right then and he didnt have any problems. I felt a little sick to my stomach but seeing as my morning sickness hadnt gone away I didnt think much about it. I was on Zofran for my morning sickness and it keeps everything in. I shook the feeling off and didnt think anything about it. When I got out of the shower about 9:30 pm that following Saturday I started having some cramping. One of the side effects of Zofran and a symptom of pregnancy which I had been experiencing a lot was constipation. I figured that was all my cramping was so my husband and I laid down in bed to get me warm to try to stop my cramps. We were laying there and I said "I feel as if I could be sick" and I had to run to the bathroom. I started throwing up pretty much water. Just a little bit later it had decided to come out any way it could. I do not remember much about that night but I can tell you about it thanks to my husband filling me in. I ended up blacking out and stayed blacked out from about 45 mins to an hour. My husband picked me up out of the bathroom and layed me out on the bed checking my vital signs. As soon as I came to, I started getting sick again so he helped me get dressed and we headed to the hospital. I couldnt hardly talk to him or communicate in any way at all, my heart rate was through the roof, I was sweating, I couldn't feel my hands, and I couldn't feel my feet. My feet were hurting so bad that I could hardly stand on my own. In the ER they hooked me up to some fluids and got my body to finally calm down. I went to the restroom and saw blood. I was hemoraging. They told me it was from the virus. They didnt check Phoebe till Sunday night and all they did was find her heartbeat. They ended up giving me 10 bags of fluids before declaring me hydrated. I was finally released Wednesday, June 2, 2010 being told that Phoebe was just fine and I was on the mend. We were so relieved and thanked God for keeping our little one safe. We left the hospital shaken from our experience and yet with high hopes and excitement for finding out what our little one was that coming Tuesday. Tuesday, June 8, 2010 finally arrived and we could hardly contain ourselves. Everybody back home in Alabama were waiting to hear the call. We had to wait what seemed like all day long till 3:15 pm. So I got a bath, got ready, and took a picture of my belly like I had been doing all along. I had been cramping for several days before but hadnt thought very much about it just thinking I was on the mend. I came down the stairs to get something from the kitchen and my hips felt really loose. Well being in my 18th week I thought excitedly that my body was getting ready for birth in the coming months. With Phoebe being my first pregnancy I had no clue that those two things meant something much worse than I gave them credit for. So my husband arrived and changed from his cammies and off we went to the doctor. We couldnt even sit still in the waiting room. The nurse called us back and layed me down to start the ultrasound. Holding my husband's hand we watched the screen and could see our sweet little baby's head! The nurse was pressing on my stomach really hard and I asked her if our baby was okay. I had a feeling something wasnt right. She tried to move Phoebe around and couldn't. She told us she needed to check something on our charts and ran out of the room. I looked at my husband and both of us were trying so hard to not cry and to not jump to bad conclusions. The nurse came back in with a doctor (I saw a different one each time) and he looked at us and told us that we had lost our precious baby girl. (Looking back I should have known the minute the nurse started the ultrasound. I went to a few of my mom's when she was pregnant with my brother and knew what a normal on was like.) My husband and I were both devastated. All our hope, dreams, wishes, and plans for this precious little life were all gone. That fast, in the blink of an eye litterally, we went from being estatically happy to totally devastated. At that point and time I lost all my strength and God picked me up and put me in his arms. I could no longer stand on my own two feet. The doctor and nurse gave us a few min to gather ourselves and to meet him in his office. He then told us that I was going to have to deliver our baby like I would a full term baby and they wanted to induce me in the next few days. We went home with a number to call and schedule my induction. We called our family and told our friends who were all waiting to hear if it was a boy or girl. Instead what they got was the sad knews that we had lost our baby. Phoebe was so curled up that we couldnt see if she was a boy or girl and we knew that being only 18 weeks there was a chance we wouldnt be able to tell once she was born. We tried to lay down and go to sleep but I just couldnt. I was having cramps and they kept getting worse. At 2am Wednesday June 9, 2010 I was up looking up biblical names on the internet. We wanted to give our child who was already an angel an angelic name. We came up with Jorim ( raised by God) if it was a boy and Phoebe (stunning) or Rebecca (beautiful) for a girl. I talked to my mother, father, brother, and mother-in-law at about 6am that morning and they had driven through the night and were almost up here. I told them how I was having cramps and that resulted in my mother pleading for me to get myself to the hospital. My body was trying to reject my own child. I woke up my husband and we headed to the hospital where we were met by our family who we hadnt seen since Christmas. I walked into the ER with my head held high, tears streaming down my face, feeling God's presence all around me, and clinging to my husband's hand. I told them what had happened and they sent me back to sit in a hospital bed. About 2 in the afternoon I finally saw the OB doctor that was on duty and she told me that she had been arguing my case to allow me to be awake while I our baby was born so that I could hold her and see her if that was my choice. I chose to have an epidural so that I could be awake. I wanted to see our baby, hold our baby, love on our baby even if just for a short little bit. They induced me at 6pm Wednesday, June 9, 2010. My husband never left my side. He even slept in the floor beside my hospital bed because due to his hip he couldnt lay in the chair anymore. Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 5:20 am Phoebe Rebecca Lee Brock was born. She weighted 4 ounces and was 7 inches long. She had blue eyes like her daddy and long lanky arms and legs like her momma. Hearing the words "Its a girl" coming out of my husband's mouth was met with a mixture of happiness and sadness. Happiness because we knew what our precious little angel was and could name her like she deserved and sadness that we will never get to know her. That tiny baby girl was layed on my chest and she was the most beautiful baby I have ever seen. My heart just overflowed with love for my husband and this beautiful child we created. A volunteer from the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep company came and took pictures of our precious daughter for us. To the military Phoebe was just a late miscarrage. To my husband and I she was a person, a precious child, OUR precious child. She did exist. The only pictures we have of her are the ones that were taken at the hospital. We never saw our little Phoebe alive, all we have to cling to from when she lived was the sound of her little heartbeat. Our precious baby girl was cremated and is currently in a beautiful pink urn, beside a single pink candle, and an outfit that we would have brought her home from the hospital in.She will be buried between her mommy and daddy here on earth when we find us a plot. God still continues to carry me in his arms today as I continue to have problems and am being sent to a Neurologist. I mourn the loss of our daughter just as much as my husband does every day. We have more happy moments than sad moments already but the pain is still very fresh and very real. I designed Phoebe's Car as a memorial to our precious daughter. It is a way to show that she was real, she was alive, and she did exist. It is a way to celebrate the joy she gave us while we had her here on earth. My husband is a big NASCAR fan and I would love to be able to win this trip for him. He has been so wonderful during all this. He never fails to show me how much he loves me, and how much he loves our daughter. He is an amazing husband and deserves the very best I can give him. My goal is to give him this trip but I can't do it alone. I thank each and every one of you for reading this and if you decide to vote thank you for that as well. I really appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. It will be such a great way to celebrate Phoebe's short life.