TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information about infant loss, which may be triggering to some.
Our daughter, Hannah, was approaching 5 years old when we decided it was time to try for baby number two. After about six months of trying, I was pregnant! I cried happy tears and called my best friend to tell her the news.
When I was about six weeks, we decided to tell my momther. My mom was crying, so happy to see Hannah realize that she was going to be a big sister.
I was constantly ill, and by the time I was six weeks old, I was in the hospital. My OB had scheduled a visit for eight weeks, but she consented to see me sooner because I ended up in the hospital dehydrated.
She said, “Well, there is a reason that you’re feeling this way.” And my heart dropped. I thought she was going to tell me I was sick, or something was wrong. She said, “I usually make a joke about this, but when you told me your symptoms, I thought better of it … you have two babies in there!”
Matt and I both started to cry! We were terrified and overjoyed — so many emotions at once!
We had another appointment scheduled for eight weeks and we would find out the sexes then. My mother created a cake for us to cut at Thanksgiving with the family to see what we were having after the doctor gave her the sexes. The cake was pink as we sliced into it, then blue! Being able to dress up and share JoJo bows with a baby sister made Hannah incredibly happy. Things were going well, minus my morning sickness (which lasted all day) and we were moving right along.
We had our 19-week scan on January 22. When it came time to do the head, she said the words every pregnant mother dreads, “I need to talk to you guys. There’s something wrong with Baby B. She said, “Have you heard of anencephaly?” and I had. I just said, “the brain.” At this point, my mother left to get the doctor and I broke down. Matt was merely shocked and perplexed, but I understood what that meant—it meant we wouldn’t be having our baby girl.
We told Hannah a few days later. At first, she was confused and just said, “So I’ll only have a baby brother??” After telling Hannah, she was so sad. We took some time to talk about what we wanted for Camille; we were hopeful that she could be an organ donor.
At 36 weeks and 6 days, my blood pressure jumped up. We were told to expect Camille to pass within minutes of birth, if she survived the birth. The C-section was performed on May 24 at 7:00. At precisely 10:00 a.m., Cameron left, one minute after Camille. They almost instantly brought her to me.
I was holding her on my chest with my Matt, mom and Hannah when they brought Cameron over. Camille pinked up almost instantly. On the way to our recovery room, where our immediate family could meet both of them, I got to hold them both.
Camille struggled to regulate her body temperature and she couldn’t eat; but she was alive!
We had decided not to intervene medically since there was nothing that could be done for her and she would not feel pain; we decided to hold and love her every minute of her too short life.
It was so hard to feel both emotions; the joy of having two new babies and the sorrow of knowing we would likely leave the hospital with only one of them. It was just a rollercoaster. She would be fine one minute, then gasp, turn red, then ashy and I’d think that was it; then she’d pink back up. She eventually started suffering brief seizures. Although the doctors assured us she wasn’t in pain, it was horrifying to witness. On the third night, I prayed—something I do very infrequently—and pleaded with God to give her comfort and allow her to die quietly. That night, her intermittent small seizures and noises kept us awake.
I woke up at 5:24 that morning and went to check on her, in Matt’s arms, and she was gone.
I was grateful that it happened peacefully. I woke Matt up telling him, “She’s gone.” We each held her, then one another for a few minutes before calling the nurse in. Later on that day, Cameron and I returned home. The next stages with Camille were taken care of by the hospital.
She was too small to donate her organs, but Mid-West Transplant still gave her a plaque in recognition of her generosity.
Matt painted Camille’s heartbeat in Cameron’s room, and we talk to her every night in there. He loves to look at the painting and even reaches for it now. He’ll always be a twin and I’ll always be a twin momma.
