Welcome, Joan Margaret: 11.07.2019
We’ve been waiting for you after two long years; after finding out we were pregnant and losing the baby right away. It was a physically painful miscarriage and took me by surprise. But a few months later I had a positive pregnancy test and was filled with hope. Twelve weeks in we lost her too. The loss brought on a serious hemorrhage that landed me in an ambulance being rushed into surgery to stop the bleeding. It was intense and scary and life changing. John Michael (15.09.17) and Faustina Therese (25.05.18) rest peacefully buried in a garden where I visit them often with flowers and prayers of thanksgiving for their short but precious lives. My sweet babies.
After a pilgrimage to France you came. They said you were too small and that I was losing you too. But every time we checked your heart kept beating and every time I heard it I could breath too. And you grew and grew…until you were placed in my arms on 11.07.19.
The surgery went poorly. The anesthesia didn’t take well and I felt the cutting and tugging and pulling of the C-section. I went into labor and my contracting made it difficult to get you out, so they had to use a vacuum. I was throwing up and moaning in pain, wishing the anesthesiologist could do something but we were too far along in the process. There were adhesions and scar tissue from my past surgeries, making this one extra long and very difficult for the surgeons. They took you out and placed you in your father’s arms to hold next to my face, but I was too sick and they had to take you away while I stabilized. When the surgery was over I rolled into recovery where you were skin to skin on your father’s chest, where he prayed out loud for you and I. You rested peacefully in his arms; a moment that seemed to pause time; a moment I will never forget… and I finally could nurse you.
We went to rest. But the next day I was sick. My stomach became hard and hot and I couldn’t walk or stand. The doctors came in, swarmed around me trying to figure out what was wrong. They tried all kinds of things to cool my stomach but nothing worked. Hours later the doctors came back again disturbed at my state. They said the ultrasound showed that I was either bleeding internally or had a hernia from the C-section cutting through so many layers, and that they needed to have me go for a CT scan immediately. I called your father in tears, he rushed in and they took me for the scan. They saw that the surgery left a large hole causing a bad hernia and they needed to re-do the whole operation to get to that layer and fix it. He came and held you, through all of this you peacefully slept and nursed when given the opportunity. You never cried.
Saturday, late into the night, I had my second two hour long operation. I was put under general anesthesia. I had three IV’s, shots of blood thinner and a tube put down my throat. I woke up feeling better despite it all. I went back into recovery, this time with two surgeries behind me, both in the same place, cutting through the same layers. I begged to go home and on Monday afternoon they hesitantly let me.
But Wednesday night came around and my stomach hardened again and I had to be readmitted to the hospital. I was so scared of a third operation but God spared me. I had a blood clot causing swelling and after a second scan they found I had a gap between my muscles in one of the layers from the C-section. And because of this gap it makes it very dangerous for my uterus to expand ever again. The gap can only be fixed with a surgery, a third surgery no one was willing to put me through. Thank God. Between the muscle gap, the C-section related hernia, the adhesion of organs, and scar tissue, and more, things looked rough. After all of this I had five different doctors gently and sadly tell me that I cannot have any more children.
Joan Margaret, you are a treasure. You were worth all of it and more and I’d do it all over again for the gift of you.
Every human life is a gift. Every life is precious. Every baby is a miracle. Pro Life.
Megan Madden
