Full term fetal demise

This is how it's supposed to be...right?

I think the OBGYN is my least favorite place to go.  The cramped waiting room and brushing elbows with pregnant women.  Their smiles of hope and touches of life on their bellies.  The haunting noise of heartbeat thuds from Doppler’s in surrounding rooms.  I sit there, close my eyes, and remember exactly what it felt like when Quinn was alive inside of me.  I remember her bulging butt up against my right ribcage.  Her tiny fingers tickling me.  Her hiccups which I felt to the left of my pelvic bone. 

Then… the nurse’s long eyes, pursed lips, and tilted head as she calls me out of the waiting room.  She knows.  I can tell within seconds of looking at people.  And then I saw it.  “Full term fetal demise.”  This is the medical term describing the death of my perfect, innocent, beautiful baby.  These are the bright red words that infect my electronic medical chart and pop up at the top of the screen.  The words that will forever define me. 

I stung when I saw it.  It is painful to have the life and death of my baby wrapped up into one single, cold, medical phrase.  I still can’t believe that title in red letters belongs to me – full term fetal demise – surely you are talking about someone else in the waiting room. 

During the intake, the nurse was going over my medical background and seemed to be surprised by my clean medical record.  Yep, that’s me – perfectly healthy and fit, but birthed a dead baby.  She asked me my height and when I said, 6 feet, she responded, “Boy am I jealous!”  Well lady nurse, the Universe got me back.  After a lifetime of being tall and skinny, the joke is on me.  How I would trade tall and skinny or anything to have Quinn alive and healthy today. 

Upon exiting the OBGYN and traveling through the waiting room of life-to-be, I step aside from my jealously and silently say a wish that their babies make it through the journey of birth alive.