Harris 🤍 pt. 1

This is by far the most difficult blog post I have written. It has taken me many months to write – sometimes revisiting it to write all of one paragraph and parking it again for another week or month before I was ready to come back to it. There were so many times I questioned myself whether I would even have the courage to write it, let alone post it. Despite how open and personal I had been up to this point with my breast cancer posts, this one felt to be on a whole different level. I ultimately decided to post it because I feel as though it is a very misunderstood experience and is not talked about enough. And similar to how I felt when I began blogging about my cancer, other than two close friends who have tragically experienced this, I struggled in finding something like this for myself to read; of someone else’s real and raw story so I could relate and feel understood. So here I am, the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt, but I find strength in knowing that someone else out there can gain comfort in my words and my story.

While it was difficult to write, I also think it's difficult to read.

I can’t express how thankful and eternally grateful I felt after I had my son Griffin in October 2022. A perfectly healthy baby following a perfectly healthy pregnancy. How could I get so lucky after going through the depths of chemo as a result of my breast cancer. I really didn’t know what my fertility journey would be like – it’s a fear any women has, cancer aside. For me, I went into it extra vulnerable because I was still emotionally fragile at that time. I JUST needed the universe to make sense for once. And so to my amazement, it did. After Griffin, I finally had faith in my body again and faith that I wasn’t destined to represent the small statistic in any given situation. It was a new beginning in how I viewed the world and how I felt in my own body.

Fast forward ~2 years, I was over the moon happy to find out I was pregnant, again! I knew getting pregnant once was incredible, but twice?! I had feared the second would be a challenge. Because of the chemo, I know my body is going to hit menopause a lot earlier than someone else my age, but the question is when. So on August 26^th, 2024 when I saw the positive pregnancy test, I felt that amazing sense of gratitude again. Everything was making sense and falling into place, with my emotional fragility feeling like a distant thought. Could I really be finally back on the “easy” path of life with my layers of grief and loss behind me?

I got my 12 week scan (which I had at 13.5 weeks because of appointment backlogs!), and everything looked great. Heartbeat was strong, all other checks looked normal. I found out that I had an anterior placenta, which is perfectly normal, but just means that it can sometimes be more difficult to find the heartbeat or feel kicks. All-in-all felt like it was going to be another normal vanilla pregnancy. My due date was May 4, and I was already mapping out the timeline of everything; the age gap between Griffin and the new baby (2.5 years – perfect!), my maternity leave (which this time would be through the summer – yay!), and what of Griffin’s things we could reuse.

After the 1^st trimester, we’ve all been taught it’s a pivotal point in your pregnancy journey. You have a healthy normal 12 week test? You’re in the clear! The statistics really reinforce that when the probability of loss after 12 weeks is roughly 2-3%. But I won’t make it into that small statistic, right? Why would I dwell on that small chance. After breast cancer I told myself that just because I was a small statistic once, doesn’t mean I’ll be one again. I can’t live life thinking that way, it would be too debilitating. So of course, after hearing the great results, I was all in. Consider my emotions fully invested.

After the successful 1st trimester scan, we also got the NIPT blood test results and found out it was going to be a boy!! We were so excited because that meant a brother for Griffin! At 2 years old, Griffin was getting pretty good at stringing words together, so it took him no time at all to start regularly say “Baby Brother!”. Not even long after we introduced him to saying that, we picked him up from daycare and his teacher told us he said it quite literally all day long on repeat. I wasn’t entirely sold on him actually understanding what it meant, because when I said “Baby Brother is in mommy’s belly!” he all of a sudden looked like a deer in headlights. Either way, it was very sweet.

After having a successful 1^st trimester, I bought a couple of maternity pants because my clothes were starting to get tight. Some people don’t buy maternity clothes, but my view always is that the more confident I feel and the more comfortable I am, the better I feel overall. So I do splurge a bit on the maternity clothes and had started a small collection of things that I would wear through the winter.

I also commenced my pregnancy “roadshow” at work. It can almost feel like a part time job having to tell people. I know you don’t technically have to, but I do care about the people I work with and I want them to hear it from me. So I did start to broadly tell people. At 17 weeks along, I went to a gala charity event for work and ended up telling everyone at the table (I also was showing at this point, so it was hardly a surprise). With almost each person, I spoke about how exciting it was, and was really starting to invest in everyone’s stories about what it’s like to have two little ones. At 17 weeks things were starting to feel very real and so with a full vulnerable investment of my heart and emotions, I visualized our future regularly as four of us. Two boys that would conquer the world together, spend cottage summers jumping off the dock, play with each other, and grow and learn with each other. It was perfect!

My midwife had booked an appointment for me on Nov 28^th. By that point I was 18 weeks and had just had my bump debut at work the day before in a cute fitted sweater dress. I received multiple compliments, and it was nice to finally be able to style the bump! For the midwife appointment, I convinced Mark not to bother coming with me, telling him it’ll be “uneventful” and “likely not worth his time”. During the appointment, it was all the usual stuff (a bit of chit-chat, was given my ultrasound referrals, checked my blood pressure, etc.). Then at the end of the appointment my midwife had me lie down and she took out her doppler to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. About 30 seconds had gone by as she moved the doppler around trying to listen for the heartbeat. Neither of us were worried because she said I was measuring perfectly for 18 weeks, but generally it also can take a while to find the heartbeat with a doppler, not to mention I had an anterior placenta, so we just kept on going.

She had me move positions; lie on my side, lie on my other side. I had read multiple times too that dopplers can sometimes not work well, so I truly wasn’t getting concerned. She tried for a few more minutes, and then finally decided to put it away. She still didn’t seem overly concerned, but did say it would be best to leave me self-assured and just get an ultrasound that day to check in. So off I went to the nearest ultra sound clinic to get the scan. No big deal.

Going into the ultrasound room I was feeling like this was overkill, overdramatized. Of course everything was going to be fine. I had a perfect 13.5 week scan, all was good.

When they started the scan, I was trying to read the technicians face. When things go right in these types of scans, the technicians turn the screen over to you to show you the baby, the blood flow, the heartbeat. Instead, she said nothing, took the cloth to wipe off the gel from my belly and told me that she was going to get the lead technician. I quickly asked her if everything was ok, knowing full well she wasn’t going to tell me even if she knew. All she said was “it is unclear, I need the lead technician”. It was this moment that I felt my heart instantly drop, my throat become tight, and my body numb with fear.

All of a sudden everything felt very real and it was as though I was outside my body trying to disassociate to the situation that was unfolding in front of me. I knew from previous scans from my pregnancy with Griffin that seeing the blood flow on the screen and the heartbeat was very obvious for the technicians. So hearing the words “it’s unclear” may as well have just been “I’m so sorry, your baby is gone”. The lead technician came back, also did a very quick scan of my belly, and said the same “it’s unclear” followed by “we need the radiologist to review” and “we’ll call your doctor”.

I got in my car and felt dumbfounded. I called Mark, but saying it all out loud was so crazy. How is this happening, how is this happening. This can’t be happening. I was convinced they had got it wrong. Maybe the baby was hard to find on the scan, maybe the technicians got the imaging wrong. The same shock from the words I heard 7 years prior started coming up my throat “you have breast cancer”, triggering a terrible déjà vu moment of thinking “why me?”.

My midwife called and told us to meet her at the hospital and that we’d do some additional scans. This was the same midwife who had delivered Griffin two years prior. I love her because she has such a motherly presence and when I was in labour with Griffin she stayed by my side the entire time. I knew her care was exactly what I needed in that moment and I was so thankful her on-call schedule aligned to be with me that day.   

When we got to the hospital we had to go to the Labour & Delivery center. It felt so triggering to go in there because it’s meant for women in full-term labour about to have their babies. Walking through there I felt like I didn’t belong, as though I was sticking out like a sore thumb. I kept thinking how everyone must know, as I walk past, why I’m here.

They brought me into a large delivery room and Mark and I were left in there for a few minutes alone. After looking around the room I choked up and said to Mark “I know why they brought us in here. He’s gone and I’m going to have to deliver him”. Mark looked at me in disbelief. I knew he was holding on to the smallest glimmer of hope that the scan had been wrong, and we’d get it right this time and all would be well. But I knew better.

An on-call obstetrician came in with an ultrasound machine to do the scan we had all been holding our breath for. As she did the scan, I was watching her face, and I just knew. I actually think out of respect and sympathy, she spent more time on the scan than she needed to, because I could tell she knew instantly. I think she just wanted us to know it was thorough, when in actual fact, after the first few seconds she put the wand on my belly, it was clear the baby had no heartbeat.

That moment felt so familiar to me. Hearing the worst possible news, and the overwhelming sensation of sadness through my whole body. The doctor empathetically touching my arm and telling me how sorry she is. Crying with no ability to stop, and feeling so sorry for myself. How did I get here again?

It was in that instance where I saw my future erase, the future I had invested all of my emotions into so vulnerably. Our second child, our son, a brother for Griffin, our family of four. It was all gone so suddenly, replaced with pain, fear and enormous uncertainty. How did I find myself here, why me, again? Why us? Haven’t I, we, been through enough? The accumulation of the grief in my life was too much (and still is too much) for me to process, to even grapple with. How do I cope? How do I leave this delivery room and face the world after this?

The doctor said the baby was measuring almost exactly to 18 weeks, meaning his heart had stopped beating very recently, maybe even the day or two prior, maybe even that morning. I had absolutely no symptoms or signs that anything was wrong. No earlier red flags that anything could be off. It then occurred to me that if I hadn’t had my appointment with my midwife that day, I could have carried our baby for another 2-3 weeks until I had the anatomy scan and only then would I have found out.

Almost instantly I’m thinking about every possible thing I did during my 18 weeks of pregnancy that could have resulted in this loss. The list is endless, but also pointless, yet it forms in your head nevertheless. They tell you not to let your thoughts go there, but how do you not? Did I have too many colds? Was I too stressed? Did I not sleep well? Was I not eating right? Did I not get enough exercise?

Then the dark looming thought hit me that I now had to be induced into labour and deliver our baby. What a horrific and cruel thing to have to be put through after finding out you’ve just lost your baby. With such intense grief tied to the pain of labour, it makes pain more painful, discomfort more uncomfortable, time more endless. I just couldn’t understand how I was going to get through it. I needed someone to do it for me, take me out of my own body, I just can’t do it. How can the universe ask this of me? The task felt unsurmountable.

The thought of the delivery made me have to switch off my brain. I had to stay strong and get through the next 48 hours. The emotions were sitting so high in my throat that at any moment I would have broken down and became inconsolable. I knew I couldn’t get through the labour if I was in that state. So to preserve my strength, I had to park my sadness and numb my thoughts. I had to disassociate to the fact that I had lost my son.

Mark on the other hand was letting all the emotions in. A loss like this is so complex and endless. Our baby had already weaved his way through our lives and our future, and now instead, the loss was weaving through it all and replacing our once happy thoughts with now immense grief. The intense emotions are overwhelming and take you down so many roads all at once. I knew I couldn’t let myself feel all of it until I could get through what I knew to be the agonizing and impossible task of labour.

By that point, the care team I had accumulated was walking us through next steps, and bringing up concepts we hadn’t yet even considered; If we wanted to give our baby a name, if we wanted to see our baby, hold our baby, take home any sort of mementos they could give us (photos, foot molds or foot prints). It was too much information and decision making to process. Only the evening prior had I received Griffin’s new snow suit in the mail and thought how cute it will be when his brother is big enough to wear it too. I had excitedly started an inventory in my head of all the cute outfits I had bought for Griffin that his brother would also get to wear. And now, here I was being forced to make all of these difficult decisions in relation to the son we no longer will have, and the gift of a brother and a friendship that Griffin will no longer get.

And then the conversation for the labour came to the forefront. I could either commence induction right then and there and get the process started, or they would give me a pill to take to relax my uterus to loosen it and allow my body to be primed for induction so that the process of the labour could be quicker vs. spontaneously forcing my body into labour, which can prolong the time in labour. The choice was mine of which road to go down, but I quickly decided on taking the pill because to me, the less time I can be in pain was all I cared about in that moment. The pill took 24 hours to run its course, so I was told to take the pill, go home, and come back around the same time that following day.

We left the hospital just in time to pick Griffin up from daycare. It felt risky, in case we ran into anyone we knew, but in that moment, I just needed the three of us to be together, and I could feel Mark needed that too. Splitting up or dividing and conquering any tasks that day was not an option. When we got to the daycare, Griffin was outside and greeted us at the gate. Without even saying hi to us first, the immediate first words out of his mouth were “Baby Brother!”. My heart dropped. No, it more than just dropped, it sank. How I held it together in that moment, I don’t know. I merely said nothing in response (because what do you say?), picked him up, and I cried the rest of the ride home.

That evening, putting Griffin to bed, we said our usual goodnights which consist of saying goodnight to family members and a few family friends. Over the last few weeks, we had gotten used to saying goodnight to Baby Brother. I couldn’t decide what to do. If I keep encouraging him to say it, he’ll keep saying it. Do I just be silent? Do I let him enjoy saying it? Does he understand? I decided to stay silent that night – for the sake of my own emotions. But right before I put him down, he said “night baby brother”.

The time we spent anticipating me going back to the hospital was so difficult. We couldn’t decide on what we wanted to do. Were we going to be emotionally and mentally stable enough to see our son, to hold him? If we didn’t, would we regret it for the rest of our lives?

I was so thankful that I had two close friends to lean on who had sadly gone through their own tragic pregnancy losses. Speaking with each of them was really the only thing that got me through any of it. Even hearing the words “the trauma of the labour is as terrible as it sounds. But you will get through it”. The honesty was so appreciated, and I’m so grateful I went into it expecting the worst, because it was truly as terrible as it sounds. What I appreciated the most though, was the collective encouragement to go through with each stage of the process; honouring my belly before it was gone by taking a photo, holding our baby, taking pictures, naming our baby, and ultimately cremating him. It occurred to me that my only reason initially not to do any of it was merely on the sole basis that it made me acknowledge my loss as truly my son. That I have lost my son, my baby. And that thought, in the midst of everything in that moment and in my life’s story, was just too much for my heart to even consider processing. Disassociating was my immediate biological response in order to cope, but I had to see past that in order to give myself what I ultimately needed and what I would cherish later. In the end, I found the strength to do it and have given myself the grace that I can take my time to process it all, but at least I have it. I am so thankful for that advice and courage they both gave me to do that.

At 3:30pm on November 29^th, we headed to the hospital. By that point, I hadn’t fully come to a decision of what I wanted to do, which was weighing heavy on me. I think I was also scared to open my heart up to the idea of it because I had to stay strong to get through the labour. We ended up back in the same delivery room, and my midwife met us there.

We got situated and started the process by getting my IV set up and blood drawn. Over the years of the MANY needles I’ve had, I thankfully have never had an issue with the nurses finding my veins. If anything, I’ve gotten compliments on how great my veins are. So of course, when it rains It pours. The nurse couldn’t get my vein. After two failed attempts, she had to find a second nurse. By that point the bruising was so bad and the pain was intense. Apparently what happened was that my veins were SO strong that they were rotating and making it hard for the nurse to accurately insert the needle. Hence all the bruising. By the time she got it in, my arm was throbbing, black and blue, and I needed to apply ice to subside the pain. Great start to this horrific journey. (side note, my arm was so badly bruised that my entire forearm was black/blue/purple/green/yellow for 7+ days afterwards).

All that aside, the nurses were incredible. Their empathy and care was something I’ll never forget. They were so understanding and went the extra mile to ensure I was comfortable, they were so respectful of what I was willing to talk about, but also encouraging me to talk about it at the same time. My main nurse’s name was Angelina. The only other time this name has come up in my life was when I had gifted a teddy bear to my best friend Deanna when she was in the hospital during her fight with Leukemia. Deanna had named the teddy bear Angelina, because it was a special name in her life. She kept the teddy bear with her through her entire journey until the end. This thought immediately came to me, and I knew from that moment that Deanna was looking after me through this.

Three or so hours after the first dose of induction drugs, I had to take my second dose. In those first 4 hours, I had moderate pain, but nothing that would require anything more than Tylenol to subside. I knew it was going to get worse, but I just didn’t know how soon. I took the additional pills, but within 30 minutes or so, the pain came on insanely strong. It came on so fast, that the nurse hadn’t had time to set up my morphine drip yet, which was what I would have available to help with the pain. All of a sudden it felt like I was being cut open from the inside. All I could do in response was to puke, non-stop. Angelina worked as fast as she could to set up my morphine, and finally I was able to administer it. What I didn’t realize was that I’d have a reaction to the morphine. It made me puke more. And the pain was still unmanageable.

So here is where I would say I hit rock bottom – and I don’t just mean in my current situation – I mean in my life. All I can describe of it was that it was a moment of release (it makes me emotional writing this because of how powerful that moment was). It was as though my whole mind, body, soul finally felt I had no more strength left. The last straw had finally broken me, the tipping point. Everything had accumulated to that moment and I finally couldn’t hold on, strength was let go.  Puking, and delirious from the pain, I just sobbed the hardest and loudest I’ve ever sobbed in my life. I sensed the nurses knew what was happening and they tried their best to pull me out of it. I knew because of how their tone changed and their concern in their voice increased, repeating my name over again and telling me to hold on. Ultimately the only thing that saved me was the counter drugs that had begun flowing through my IV to aid with the puking from the morphine. At last the morphine was finally working, and I was saved from the adverse effects of it.

For the subsequent 4 hours, my pain ebbed and flowed, and I would press my morphine drip every 10 minutes to make sure that terrible pain never came back. I still felt constant pain, but it had subsided from the intensity that it once was. What I hadn’t yet put my mind to was how the delivery would unfold. There is a chance that the sack could rupture, creating a risk that the baby could break away from the placenta. Because the baby is so small, the umbilical chord is quite thin and can’t always stay intact when the baby comes out – leaving the placenta still in the uterus, which may get stuck, causing more issues. Yet another uncertainty added to the list of many that I had to consider.

And then, it was time. Around 12:30am on November 30, 2024, after 9 painful and impossible hours of labour, I all of a sudden knew something was different, and the nurses sensed it too. The whole room fell still, and empty. There was just an aching sadness filling the space by all four of us in the room; me, Mark, our nurse, and my midwife. Thankfully the delivery was quick, seamless, and relatively painless. Angelina and my midwife, Barb, worked quickly and quietly. Once they had our baby, they moved him over to the table at the far end of the room, slightly out of earshot, but I did hear Angelina say “yes, it’s definitely a boy”. My body froze when hearing those words – it stung. Our boy, our son.

In the last hour leading up to the delivery, Mark and I had finally decided that we wanted to see him and hold him. Being immersed in the labour and surrounded by the whole experience staring us in the face for the previous ~9 hours – we realized we couldn’t heal from it if we didn’t see him. It also just didn’t feel quite right in our hearts to let him leave our world without being held. Every ounce of my body wanted to disassociate, because acknowledging him as our son was so painful. But it was necessary both to honour him, and to nurture our grief of losing him.

After the delivery, the nurse wrapped him in the tiniest little blanket and placed the tiniest little hat on his head. He was as light as a feather, and no bigger than the size of my hand. It was surreal to look at him and to think that Griffin at one point was this small but then became the most perfect little boy. This too could have been our baby’s fate, and our future with him. But instead, we said goodbye to him here. We held him for some time while the nurses stepped out of the room. I’m very thankful we had this time, but the memory of it is still painful to visit, and maybe always will be. We had some photos taken, which are now hidden on my phone and only accessible by password – I don’t know when I’ll ever been able to look at them again, but they are there and captured a significant moment in our lives. A moment that will live with us forever, and may evolve and ebb and flow as time goes on depending on where life leads us. What will these photos mean to us in 5, 10, 20 years? Will they be grief saved by joy of a rainbow baby to follow, and we’ll look back and feel sad for that moment, but thankful for the incredible moments that followed, or will they be grief layered with more grief and become heavier as a result. Only time knows.

Finally I could let my body rest. I so desperately needed it. They had me remain at the hospital for 6 additional hours to monitor me, and allow the morphine to wear off. I was able to get some much needed sleep and decompress from the immense trauma the last 36 hours had brought. I felt depleted of all physical, emotional and mental strength. My soul and my spirit had never been so extinguished. At this point, I had to focus on giving my body the basics; sleep, water, and food. Sleep was first.

Harris McDonald, born November 30, 2024. Honoured with love, and will forever be remembered.

Pt. 2 to follow.