We never got to hold this beautiful blessing with our hands but we hold her very dear in our hearts.
Two years ago this month we had a sonogram and got to see/meet this sweet child for the first time. This was the picture the doctor gave us to take home to remember that big day.
We found out we were pregnant the morning we moved into our house in May of 2010. It was 6am on a Saturday morning. My parents had spent the night at our apartment so we could start moving things into our new home ASAP that next morning. I woke a little before 6am as I was so excited to finally be out of the apartment and into a home. I needed to relieve myself but before heading to the bathroom I grabbed a pregnancy test as I was late so I figured I might as well see if it was pregnancy related. About 10 seconds after using the pregnancy test.... I saw it was positive. Holy Cow! We were having a baby!
I remember feeling like something stole my breath. I felt faint. I felt a rush of emotion and excitement come over me. I couldn't talk. I remember covering my mouth sitting on the toilet, laughing and crying at the same time. Right then, I ran into our room with tears in my eyes and woke up Michael to share the wonderful news. I think I may have scared him at first when I came rushing into the room as he was sound asleep. Once he grasped what was going on he was so so happy. God had blessed us so richly.
We hugged it out as I squealed with excitement.
After I composed myself, we decided to wake my parents up right than and there and tell them the good news. I will never forget it. They were still sleeping and I burst into the room and tearfully shared the news. My mom literally jumped out of the bed and hugged me in excitement and my dad just beamed. They were so happy. It is a cherished moment. It worked out well because our whole family came that day to help us move so we got to share the news with almost everyone in person. It was awesome.
The next few weeks rolled on and things were seemingly going well. I had the above sonogram 6/29/10 and I was 8 weeks 4 days along according to that sonogram. We saw a tiny little heart beating at that appointment and we were filled with joy. Everything looked great. This was the week before Sheila and Jamie's wedding so we had a lot of excitement going on that week.
Since we had seen the heartbeat, we decided that we would share the news with our extended family after Sheila and Jamie's wedding.
The day after their wedding we got together with our whole extended family at a hotel and watched them open their gifts before they took off on their honeymoon. After the gift opening my whole TeSlaa family had a big lunch together. This is how it all went down........
To give you some back story, my uncles on the TeSlaa side had a tradition that most every time their wives were expecting a baby they would pray before a meal when our whole family was together and at the end of the prayer, they would pray out loud for the baby in their wife's womb. This would of course always make everyone in the room erupt with excitement. It was the perfect way to announce something exciting like this to a large group because everyone was quiet and listening when they were praying.
Because we were pregnant with the first great grandchild on that side, we decided to announce our pregnancy the same way as my uncles and dad had in the past. My dad helped set the scene before lunch by saying, 'Michael, will you bless this food?' Michael of course said, 'Yes'! He began to pray and at the end of his prayer he said, "God, I also want to pray for your protection over the baby that Danielle is carrying.' Everybody gasped and were immediately excited. I will never forget that. Michael and I both said afterwards that we felt like our hearts were going to beat out of our chests.
We took the week after the wedding off of work and decided to spend some of that week at our new home working on our yard and the exterior of our 100+ year old house.
One particular day, I was out in the yard mowing and Michael was working on the landscape. As I was push mowing, I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen......It didn't feel good. I decided to go to the bathroom. When I got to the bathroom I was sick to find blood and tissue in the stool. Something no pregnant mother wants to see. My heart sank. I was immediately sick to my stomach. I ran outside to get Michael to bring him in to see what I had found. This may sound sick but I needed him to physically see what I was extremely concerned about.
My mom happened to be on her way to Ankeny that day to hang out with us which ended up being such a God thing.
I called the doctor and they decided to have me come into the clinic immediately. My mom came just in time to go to the doctor's appointment with us. I went to the OB in Ankeny first.
They brought me into a room and used the heartbeat 'doppler' to try and find the baby's heart beat. The doctor searched for what felt like hours and couldn't find anything but my heartbeat which was extremely fast due to nerves. There was no Ultrasound Tech in the Ankeny clinic that day. The doctor said that the baby may have been too small to hear that heartbeat through the doppler. She sent me to Mercy in Des Moines to have an ultrasound so we could find out for sure what was going on. She told me not to worry.....Yeah right! I remember feeling an intense claustrophobic feeling come over me. I couldn't think straight. I was so scared and sick to my stomach. I did not think I was strong enough to handle what I was facing.
When they brought me back to the ultrasound room when I got to Mercy in Des Moines I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest.
I wanted time to stand still because in that moment it was still possible that our baby was still alive.......I couldn't bare to think about hearing someone say the baby had died. We asked my mom to come into the ultrasound with us. Her and Michael sat down right beside me. Michael held my hand. The Ultrasound Tech had the screen facing us so we could see everything she was doing. As the baby appeared on the screen, all I saw was stillness......The baby was so tiny but looked as if it was sleeping.
I wanted to puke. "No No No, Lord," I whispered under my breath. 'Please, No!". The Tech hadn't even broke the news at that point ...but my heart told me this was very bad. I had seen that little heart beating just a week earlier and the beautiful flicker of the beating heart was no longer there......Only quiet remained. You could have heard a pin drop in the room for those seconds.
This is when I heard the technician quietly say, "I'm so so sorry, but the baby is gone, please take as much time as you need." She then walked out of the room.
I immediately rolled into a ball on the table and tears flowed from my eyes like a fountain. I could feel a hole in my heart immediately. A feeling of deep void and emptiness. Michael and my mom laid over me and held me. I think we all cried. I was shaking uncontrollably. I felt cold. I was filled with unimaginable pain and fear of what may come next and also not wanting to believe that on this side of eternity I would never hold the child I was already completely in love with. I remember telling God, "I can't do this, it's too hard, it hurts me so bad!" The child that we were already planning and dreaming about. The child whose picture had already found a comfortable place in my wallet to look at each day.....she was gone.
Everything felt foggy as an OB came in and shared my options. She said I could try and pass the baby on my own or I could have a DNC where they would remove everything from my uterus for me. I remember hearing her say those words and wondering how she could ever expected me to make a decision like that... The thought of my child being dead inside of me was too awful for me to take in, let alone to have to decide how I wanted my baby removed from my body. It just felt so heartless at that time. I felt angry.
I told her I needed time to think and that I would call her back that afternoon. I needed time to clear my head.
Michael and my mom were incredible in their own ways.
Michael was a support to me even though this was the first situation in our marriage where we were truely grieving together. Something we were both equally invested in, our first child. The baby that God created for us for a short moment of time. He was such a strong supportive husband to me.
I can't imagine how hard it was for my mom to watch her daughter go through this but she stayed with us and supported us through it all. She was so strong. I was not strong enough to be a support to Michael at the time so she stepped up to the plate and was that person for him, for me.
On the drive back to Ankeny we decided we would choose to have a DNC. I was 10 weeks along and the doctor said if we did the DNC we could get everything taken out at once and I would not have to wait for my body to release the baby. Before I had left the hospital earlier that day, the doctor told me that they did not have time to do the surgery until the following Tuesday......it was a Friday. Tuesday felt like a lifetime away. I could not imagine carrying my dead baby inside me that long with the fear that I would pass it over the weekend. I was so so scared.
When I called the scheduling desk I got the NICEST lady. I cried as I told her I needed to schedule a DNC and I wanted to have it ASAP. I could feel the compassion in her voice when I was talking to her. She asked if she could call me back. After maybe 30 minutes she called back to see if I could come in that afternoon as she found a doctor, Doctor Hancock, who was willing to come in that night and perform the DNC for me so I didn't have to wait till the following week. God must have known that was too much for me to handle.
She scheduled me to have surgery that evening at 6pm. I cried a majority of that afternoon as I sat around waiting for the surgery. Michael held me and we cried together. My mom held me and I cried to her too.
Michael worked off some of his emotion that afternoon my scooping rock out of our landscape and my mom walked with me around the block a few times and we talked as she too had a DNC. She shared her heart with me and told me it would be ok. She helped comfort me as much as she could at the time. She also assured me that God knew the desires of my heart and that she believed that one day I would get to bring a baby of my own home.
The day that I lost the baby, I had been painting trim on the outside of our house, pulling weeds and mowing the yard. My mind started to believe that maybe I had done something to make our baby die. I had so much guilt. I could not shake it. I was so sad, empty, and scared. I kept telling Michael and my mom that I was afraid that it was my fault. They kept telling me it was not.
As I was waiting in the pre-op area of Mercy, Dr Hancock came in to talk with me about what was going to happen and answer any questions I had. God was using him at that time because before I was even able to tell him or ask him anything he started out by saying. "First off, this is not your fault, if you think painting, yard work, or mowing caused this.... you are wrong. You did not do anything wrong." He literally called out all of my fears by name. Talk about God speaking through someone. It still gives me goosebumps when I think of it.
This was the first time I smiled all day. He assured me that miscarriage was something many women go through and there was nothing wrong with me because it happened to me. He also assured me that one day we would bring a baby home and he would help make sure that this happened. He answered some more questions before rolling me out to surgery. I felt the most peace I had all day after that conversation.
What an answer to prayer.
I remember opening my eyes in the recovery area seeing Mom and Michael through foggy eyes. I was highly sedated at the time so most of this I do not remember but they told me all about it.
My mom said that I looked at her and said in my sedated state, "Mom, now we both have baby's in heaven that we get to meet someday!"
Michael and I have always had a strong feeling that this baby was a girl. I told mom that our baby was up there with Reggie (that is what she named the baby her and dad lost). Mom was emotional and at that time asked me if I wanted to name the baby. She told me that naming her baby was healing for her and that it might also be for me. Her and Michael said it took me almost no time and I answered with, "I want to name her, Hope." I told them I wanted to name her Hope because she gave me hope for my future, hope for a family, and hope that I one day would bring home her brother or sister. Ever since that moment we have always called this baby Hope.
Why would I share this story you may ask? And why would I share it 2 years after the fact?
After having the miscarriage I remember my dad telling me. "When you go through hard trials in your life don't ask God, 'Why are you doing this to me??' Ask him, 'What would you like me to learn through this situation?"
These words resonated deeply within me. He told me if we always search for what God is teaching us in the hard times, we will always come out stronger in the end and hopefully have a stronger faith because of it.
God has taught us more than I could ever write through that situation. But one of the things he has taught me is that sharing this story with others could help to heal someone else going through the same thing right now. You are not alone.
After you loose a baby, it is easy to wonder what you did wrong. It is easy to be mad at God.
This may sound selfish but I remember wondering why God wouldn't want Michael and I to have a baby but would allow a 14 year old kid have a baby with a dad that is not in the picture. I couldn't understand it at the time. Our baby would have had parents that loved it unconditionally. A stable home with loving parents that were crazy about each other.
Since experiencing this, I have come to know so many wonderful women and couples that have lost a baby or babies to miscarriage. I found mourning a miscarriage to be difficult and strange. You are mourning a person that was never born. I felt like no one understood my heartache. I felt that people would move on and forget Hope. That she would be forgotten and have no meaning to anyone. These feeling made the loss hard to deal with but we learned healthy ways of mourning. For me talking about her helped. I still talk about her.
Michael and I are thankful for our children, both Thor and Hope. One who is in heaven with Jesus right now and the other who is sleeping in his crib upstairs as I write this. They both are awesome gifts. We wish we had Hope but know that she was so very special God wanted to take her home early.
We celebrate that we will get to meet her someday and know that the love she experiencing now is unimaginable.
For me, I found great peace and healing through naming Hope. This made her a real person not only to us, but those around us. We talk about her by name to this day. My mom and dad planted a tree in honor of Hope at their house. This was a way that they grieved the loss as grandparents. This is so special to Michael and I.
I know I felt so alone those months after loosing the baby. I felt that I was wearing a sign that said "I just had a miscarriage,"...... but no one cared. I want to write this post for anyone that is struggling. I know how hard it is. To be honest, even after having Thor I still think about and miss Hope from time to time. She is so special to me. Please allow yourself to mourn if you have gone through this and are struggling. That was a real baby, a real blessing and it is a huge loss even though you didn't get the chance to kiss that face or brush tears from your child's eyes. You are not alone!
I viewed my pregnancy with Thor in a whole different light after losing Hope.
I think I was more thankful and grateful because I knew how it felt to lose.
I will say I feared the 'doppler' heart beat monitor when they checked Thor's heartbeat everytime. I had flashbacks of the silence we heard when we lost Hope. I feared other things as well but God helped me work through those things and continued to remind me that He was in control and that I needed to let him take the drivers seat.
We did not have the easiest pregnancy with Thor but I wouldn't have it any other way. All that matters is that he is here and healthy. God granted us the desires of our hearts by giving him to us. We prayed for him for so long and had a difficult time getting pregnant with him, it took just under 1 year.
Please feel free to contact me at anytime through email. As always, I am an open book and hope to be an encouragement to women out there. You can always reach me at daniellestensrud@gmail.com.
Mostly, I would love to pray for you if you are in a season of waiting for a child or mourning the loss of a child. I am no expert but I do understand the difficultly of both of these situations. God calls us to support each other in times of thanksgiving and trails. We cannot go through this life carrying our burdens alone.
You are not alone.
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