Today marks three weeks since little Emily's birth. Oh how I miss that little angel. I was laying in bed last night and was thinking about her and I figured it was time to write down her story so I could share it with everyone. Just a side note...it's going to be a very long blog post...but please read it. Emily's life touched ours in so many ways, and I really hope that it can do the same for all of you.
Joseph and I found out we were pregnant back in February while we were in Wisconsin and we were so excited to be trying again to have a little baby. We got to see our little baby for the first time when I was around 11 weeks along and as far as they could tell everything looked just fine.
We had an appointment with my doctor first thing after we moved back to Rexburg. By now I was around 14 weeks along. I was excited but scared at the same time. I kept thinking to myself, "What could possibly go wrong. You're just scared because of what happened with Ethan." Well, they did an ultrasound and they found that our baby (we couldn't figure out the gender through the whole pregnancy) had what looked like a fluid filled mass inside of its abdomen, and that is was putting strain on the baby's heart and other organs.
My heart plummeted. How could this be happening? I felt like I was such a failure as a mother, not being able to provide for my baby, in not giving her a healthy body. A million thoughts were just plowing through my head; I was just devastated.
Our doctor told us that he wanted to monitor me and the baby every week for the next couple of weeks. So that's what we did.
At week 17 the mass had grown and there were several masses near the baby's spine that they concluded were linked to a spina bifida issue. We were told that our baby would most likely not survive through the end of the month.
Of course I went home and cried. Then I had to put myself back together and come to terms with having to lose another baby. Our families prayed and fasted. Our ward members prayed and fasted. Our
friends prayed and fasted. I received multiple blessings. Slowly I began to come to a sense of peace with everything...I felt that I was going to be okay.
Joseph and I lived on pins and needles for the next few weeks. We would go into the doctor's every other week for them to do an ultra sound to check for a heartbeat and to check the condition of the baby. We prayed and we fasted.
I got the surprise of my life, up to that point, around 22 weeks when little baby began to move and I could feel it. I never thought I would get that experience with this baby. Joseph and I continued to be surprised as we went into our biweekly appointment and found the baby growing and continuing to have a steady and healthy heartbeat.
At this point I had decided to do the quad screening, which is were they draw my blood and check the different levels of hormones or chemicals in it cause by the pregnancy to see if there are any risks of abnormalities with the baby. The doctors had wanted to do this and an amniocenteses, but by now there was hardly any amniotic fluid in my uterus around the baby so we just did the blood screening. The results came back that there was a 1 in 10 chance that our baby had Trisomy 18 or Edward's Syndrome. I'm not going to take the time to list everything that goes along with that, but I'll just say that most babies with Trisomy 18 don't make it to birth and those that do don't live very long after.
Again, I went home and cried. This was becoming a ritual for me...go to the doctor and then go home and cry.
We continued our biweekly appointments and still our baby held on and continued to grow. Joseph and I began to get the feeling that the baby really didn't have a Trisomy condition, but we still weren't sure what was going on.
Around 30 weeks our doctor told us that he was thinking that we might actually get a live birth with this baby if it continued to hold on. He wasn't sure how long the baby would live though. Because of all the mass in the abdomen there was a lot of pressure being placed on the cavity of the chest where the heart and lungs are. Our doctor wasn't sure if there was going to be much lung development, meaning our baby might not be able to breathe on its own.
I was excited about getting a live birth, but then I had to think about having a live baby and having to watch it die because its body couldn't support life. I cried some more. I didn't know how I was going to be able to handle any of this, but that wonderful sense of peace would come back to me time and time again. I didn't know how any of this would turn out, but somehow I knew, in the end, that I was going to be okay, I was going to survive.
On Monday September 17th we went into the doctor for the last time. They checked my cervix and found that I was already dilated to a 4! I was not really all that surprised, but just the fact that I was dilated that much without really feeling and contractions and all that still surprised me. So we set the inducement date for Friday September 21st, which is when I would be 37 weeks along. We were to call up to the hospital around 5:30 that morning and see if they weren't too busy so I could be induced.
I continued throughout the week freaking out that I was going to go into labor before that Friday. I was in school and I did a lot of walking around on campus. I really was worried that I would have that baby early.
Well Thursday came around and we still hadn't had the baby. Joseph took me out for ice cream (my biggest comfort food) and then I went to a book club that night and then talked with a good friend until about 10ish. I came home and Joseph and I stayed up and talked for about an hour because we really couldn't sleep with the nerves of what was going to happen the next day. Well, Joseph set his alarm for 5:30am and then went to sleep. I on the other hand tossed and turned until about 12:30, I just couldn't seem to get comfortable.
Around 2:30 I woke up just feeling miserable and then I started to feel kind of crampy, like period crampy. My mind started to whirl...was I in labor. I wasn't really sure. With Ethan they had induced me and so I wasn't sure what it was like to go into labor on my own and I really had never paid attention to counting the contractions when I was in labor with him. Around 3ish I woke Joseph up and he started counting contractions with me. By 3:30 they were coming 3 to 5 minutes apart and were lasting about a minute each. He decided that we should probably go into the hospital.
When we got there they admitted me right away since I was supposed to be induce anyway in a couple of hours. Turns out they weren't going to have to induce me. After getting me settled in a room, the nurse came in and checked my cervix. Lo and behold I was at a 7!!! Holy cow!!! I was shocked at that. I was already dilated to a 7 before I had even started feeling contractions!!!
They started me on an IV so I could get the required fluids in before getting an epidural. By 5:30 I had my epidural and was feeling physically a little better. The only thing was, now that I wasn't in as much pain, my mind wandered to our baby. Would it survive the birthing process? Were we going to be able to take the baby home? Was it going to be able to breathe? Needless to say...it was a little stressful.
Around 7ish I told my nurse that I felt like I was ready to push. She checked my cervix again and told me that I was at a 10. She told me to hold on for a little bit while she went and called the doctor. She came back in and we got two whole contractions of pushing in before she told me to stop pushing. We had to wait for the doctor. The doctor showed up and two more contractions later my little baby girl entered the world at 7:21am and was placed in my arms.
She was beautiful and she was breathing on her own. The NICU nurse did have to give her a little bit of oxygen just to
get her breathing regulated, but after a while she was breathing steady
and her heart sounded great. Our little girl was alive! She mewed like a little kitten and when I first heard that I almost cried.
Little Emily was just that...little. She was 5lb. 14oz. and was 16 inches long. She was perfect, even with everything that I knew was physically wrong with her. She really was just perfect.
As Joseph and I looked at her we decided that we had to name her Emily, it was the only name out of the ones we had liked that fit her...none of the others seemed right. So our little baby girl was named Emily Evelyn (middle name after her great-grandma Fuller).
Some good friends of ours came over and helped Joseph give little Emily a blessing. We knew that she wasn't going to live for very long, but we knew that she needed to feel the love and comfort in her life that can only come from our Heavenly Father.
Emily was such a good little girl. She loved to be held and bounced in your arms. She really wouldn't cry much if you were doing those two things. We got her all cleaned up and into a snug little wrap. She really was such a beautiful baby, with my nose, just like her brother.
The doctors decided to keep us overnight, which was miserable...its just not the same sleeping in a hospital instead of your own place. But the next morning we got to bring Emily home.
In checking Emily out at the hospital, the doctors found that there were serious issues with her digestive system and her urinary tract. This caused problems because it made it so we couldn't feed her because her body it have anything we could do with what we might feed her. Pretty sure I cried really hard over that, but there was nothing that we could do. To help her hunger we would give her drops of sugar water to take away the hunger feeling, but that was all we really could do.
With Emily only having about a week to live, we were provided with in home Hospice care, which was actually a really big blessing. They served as go betweens with the doctors, the hospital, the pharmacy, and pretty much everyone else we needed them to work with. We had a wonderful nurse named Sue that would come and visit us everyday. She would check on Emily's heartbeat and her breathing. It was nice to have that support from her.
We also had lots of visitors from our ward that would bring food, flowers, and little gifts over. I loved to show little Emily off because she really was just soooo cute. So many people just fell in love with her over and over again.
My parents came to help us as well. They showed up the day after Emily was born and were such a huge blessing in our lives. Joseph's mom came out as well and was such a great help and comfort and blessing. My grandma Fuller even got to meet her great-granddaughter.
Knowing that we were only going to get a week with little Emily, Joseph and I took advantage of every moment we could get with her. We held her constantly and took so many pictures of her so we could remember every little bit about her. It felt so good to hold a baby in my arms, and be able to look down into its sweet little face and to know that that baby was mine. We would talk to her all the time about how much we loved her and we covered her in little kisses. Joseph even would give her little Eskimo kisses with his nose. Joseph got the chance to bathe her as well. It was great to see him in action as a daddy. He really is the best and it just melted my heart to see the love that he had for his daughter.
On Thursday September 27 we decided that we wanted to take Emily into the doctor. We had been wanting more answers about her condition. So we went in and the doctor ordered some CT scans and some X-rays to see what really was going on in little Emily's body. We found a wealth of new information from that doctor's visit. We found out that little Emily didn't have any kidney and that the rest of her urinary tract was not developed properly. We also found that her intestines had blockages, which explained the swollen abdomen. We also found that she didn't have a Trisomy, which brought relief and comfort to me. All of the abnormalities that little Emily had was just random, unrelated genetic anomalies that happened to occur all at the same time. There was nothing that could have been done to prevent them from happening and there was nothing that could be done to reverse and fix the problems.
While it still hurt knowing that our little Emily wouldn't live long, it did bring peace having some concrete answers about her condition. Joseph and I still looked at our little miracle girl and loved her for everything that she was and she really was perfect in our eyes.
Friday September 28 was our last day with our little Emily. I had gone off to take a shower and Joseph was cuddled up to her, talking to her like he liked to do, when sweet little Emily slipped beyond the veil, leaving this life and entering the next. She left us quietly, without any screaming and wailing of pain, without any struggling to hold on, she just slipped away peacefully.
I held her and cried and cried. I was sad to let her go, but I knew that she was better off where she had gone. Emily wasn't in pain anymore and her body was perfect now. Joseph and I had watched her decline slowly over the week that we had her and at times we wondered what it was that she was holding on to. There were time that she struggled, and it pained us to see her hurt and not be able to do anything about it. In the end we knew that it was better for her to pass on that to continue to live in this life. I cried because I missed my little girl.
We held a small graveside, like we did with Ethan, the following day. It was nice to have the support of all of our family members and several ward members as well. Even though it is hard to lose and bury a child, it helped me to know that only her body is where we laid her to rest, but her spirit is still alive and that she is with her older brother now, whole and perfect in everyway.
I am so grateful for the time and the memories we got with sweet Emily. She really was a miracle in our lives. I feel that prayers were answered and miracles performed so many times throughout my pregnancy with Emily. She continued to hold on and to grow. She made it to and through birth alive. She gave Joseph and I a wonderful week with her, holding her and loving her as her mommy and daddy. She was such a light in my life and such a wonderful little girl. I can't even begin to describe how thankful I am for my little girl.
I am also so thankful for the enabling power of Christ's atonement. Without it I know that I would not be as strong as I am today after losing two children. It is through Christ's strength that I am able to continue on and to wake up everyday and find something to be thankful for and something to live for. The peace and healing I have found though that power has blessed me so much in this past year. I know for a surety that my Heavenly Father really does love me and the He is always aware of the needs in my life and is willing and ready to bless me with those things. My testimony of the atonement has grown and I know that it is through that wonderful gift and through the resurrection that I will be able to be with my Emily and my Ethan again someday. The knowledge and blessing of eternal families is real and I am so grateful for that. I am really looking forward to the day when I can have both of my babies in my arms again.
Both Ethan and Emily have been such blessings in mine and Joseph's lives. We are grateful to have such sweet and wonderful spirits as our children. They have touched our lives in a way that we can't even begin to describe and we are thankful for that. We continue on each day with faith in the Lord and in his plan for us and we look forward with joy to the day that we can all be together again.
I officially finished and graduated from Brigham Young University - Idaho on April 12, 2013. I received my Bachelor Degree in Child Development, and I graduated Suma Kum Laude (highest honors - 4.0).
Afterwards we took some pictures and then headed off to Convocations - which is actually where you get your diploma - actually you only get your diploma cover...the actual diploma takes 6-8 weeks to be mailed out to you. I also got to speak at our College's Convocation (College of Education and Human Development). I decided to read from Dr. Seuss's 'Oh, The Places You'll Go.' I was really worried that it was a dumb idea, but everyone afterward told me they really enjoyed it. So graduation, all in all, was pretty much a success.
My whole family came up to celebrate with me...it was pretty great to see them. I'm so happy that I have such a wonderful and supportive family...especially my wonderful husband who has stood by me throughout everything.
So I'm all done with my education for now. One day I want to go on and get my Master degree in Marriage, Family, and Human Development...but I'm okay with waiting a bit for that. Here's to me and being all educated!!! College really was one of the greatest times of my life, but I am looking forward to the next chapter of my life. 
