(Submitted by Helena’s dad)
No one sees you.
Anger, humiliation, helplessness, and a deep, crippling sadness. Grief for the loss of your baby, for the loss of all the future memories, for the loss of your previous life. Grief because you love and because you love in a way you have never loved before.
Nothing is simple anymore after your child dies.
I would try to be at as many of the ultrasound appointments as I could, however on March 27th, 2024 I was unable to attend. The appointment was scheduled for 1pm. On that day I was also finalizing my family leave with my boss and discussing what would happen should the leave start early. I had been talking with a colleague – who was also expecting her first child – about how excited we both were to become parents. My last message to her on Teams was 1:03pm. At 1:05pm I received a call from Melissa. I’ll never forget the tremble in her voice when I picked up the phone; I knew something was wrong. She told me the ultrasound tech could not find a heartbeat and that we had lost our child.
I immediately felt the world melt away. I could feel my mind trying to grasp at it, but it kept slipping further away. Frankly, I refused to believe it was true. My conscious mind thought that maybe they just hadn’t done the scan right, or the machine was not operational. SURELY our baby is not dead.
From the first moment we received a positive pregnancy test until the last time we knew she was alive, it was a good, healthy pregnancy.
I still remember the moment we first found out on August 16th. It was a Wednesday – and Melissa opened the door before I could put my key in and – smiling – told me she was pregnant.
On Friday, September 8th, 2023 we had the first ultrasound and heard our first child’s heartbeat for the first time. In that moment I fell completely in love with my child. It was a surreal moment, seeing this little pea size thing with little nubs representing the beginning of feet and hands. We also learned the due date of April 7, 2024 – our 6th wedding anniversary and also my late grandfather’s birthday.
After 36 weeks, weekly scans began. As the anticipation grew closer to the due date, our worry about something bad happening dissipated. We embraced our future role as parents and thought that all we needed to do was wait for the baby to arrive. We set up all the furniture, I painted the nursery. All this time we had elected to not find out the sex of the baby.
We thought about names and had one picked out for a girl and one for a boy.
Week 36, all was well.
Week 37, all was well.
Week 38 – no heartbeat.
I immediately closed my laptop and left the office without saying a word to anyone. I first tried to take the subway downtown but there were delays. I hailed a yellow cab. Bumper to bumper traffic all the way down to the doctor’s office. SOMETHING had simply gone wrong from a technical perspective and our baby was still alive.
We were told we would have to choose between a c-section or inducing labor; then between cremation or a burial. It was at those last words that we started to cry. They gave us a moment together in the exam room and I broke down sobbing into Melissa’s arms. The clock just hit 2pm.
We got an Uber home. We sat in traffic going downtown, over the Manhattan bridge, down Flatbush avenue, and to our apartment in Brooklyn. We sat on the couch and cried.
We tried to pack for a couple nights in the hospital. Around 5 or 6pm we got ourselves together enough to get an Uber to the hospital.
We sat in traffic up Flatbush Avenue, in traffic over the Manhattan bridge, in traffic up 1st avenue to NYU Langone on 30th Street and 1st avenue. Up until then the site of positive and good memories.
All the while, the world continued to spin, with people going about their lives without knowing the misery contained in our cab.
Finally, at the hospital, the doctor came into the room at the hospital and gave us the rundown of what was going to happen. While she spoke, there was the sound of a healthy, crying newborn, coming through the vent. The room was dark. It was eerie and painful.
When it was time to bring Melissa to the OR, she started shaking uncontrollably, so anxious and terrified as to what was about to happen, and – in hindsight – undergoing the transition from expectant parent to grieving mother. It hurt me so much to see her like that. I have never wanted to hold her and comfort her more than in that moment.
Melissa was lying down and I sat near her head. The only sounds were the doctor’s words and the beeping of hospital equipment. With the surgery complete there were no cries of a newborn, just a silence. They wheeled our firstborn child in the bassinet around the curtain so we could see her.
Up until this moment part of me still thought that a healthy living, crying, wriggling, child would be born. That the doctors had just made some mistake and our baby was alive. I’ll never forget what she looked like. She was small with pudgy cheeks and a bulb nose. Her mouth was open. She was our first child. Melissa had the wherewithal to ask what the sex of the child was. As soon as they said “it is a girl” we both broke down sobbing.
The sky was just filling with light on the 28th when we held our first-born child for the first time. I have never cried so hard and for so long in my life. I had a headache from crying so much. I wasn’t drinking water, I wasn’t eating food. I was just sitting in the chair and weeping.
I have never felt so far removed from life as I had known it. I felt that I had entered a bizarre, alternate universe that I was not supposed to be in. I felt humiliation. That we had finally achieved some life milestone and were about to be accepted into the “club” but then at the last minute were denied entry. It felt like the world was pointing and laughing at us. Like we were frauds, not real people, not good enough.
On the final day, March 30th before we were discharged, Melissa and I got to see and hold Helena again. This time to say goodbye.
Helena Pearl Stern was born in the early morning of March 28th, 2024. She was 6 pounds, 4 ounces and 19 inches long. She was a dream. We love everything about her and will love her and hold her in our hearts for as long as we are alive.
While she never lived in our home outside of the womb, being there without her was excruciating. It felt empty. Everything reminded us of the life we had thought we would have. Melissa’s body was going through everything that a new mom would experience – but with no baby to nurse and bond with.
Every waking moment of every day was a crushing reminder of the loss of our child.
One week after we came home from the hospital was April 7th, our wedding anniversary and Helena’s due date. We drove ourselves out to Jacob Riis Beach in Queens, which is a place we had hoped to bring Helena when she was old enough. We stood close together on the windswept sand and we wept. We thought about how that day would have gone had Helena not died.
My parents coordinated Helena’s cremation at a local funeral home and brought her ashes to us. Melissa’s childhood friend made a box out of birchwood. Her ashes are inside, tucked into layers of silk from Melissa’s wedding dress. Her box is perched on a shelf in her room, which is empty except for an unused nursery chair covered by a sheet, and a happy yellow rug that is folded into a messy pile to prevent our cat from scratching it. We visit her there, and write, sit, talk, or cry.
It has been over a year now and it still feels like we are lost in the world, feeling around in the dark. It is impossible to overstate how much acting we do in social or professional settings. We are totally different people, not simply sad versions of our previous selves. Never in my life has the gap between how I am perceived and who I am been so wide. No one sees you.