Wait, why is my pillow wet?
Oh, I started crying in my sleep and woke up with tears pouring out of my eyes. Even in my dreams my heart aches.
I’ve been deployed to two warzones and those experiences seem miniscule to the warzone and timeline that play out in my head from November 5- November 10 every year since November 2015.
I want to take you on the journey that paralyzes me every year around this time. I’m taking you with me because I’ve journeyed alone for the past 3 years and I don’t want to do this alone… Not again. I NEED you and your strength to get me through this.
Will you go with me?
November 5, 2015. 0400. Honolulu, HI
Lauren had me on a routine.
She started to kick my bladder around this time every morning and she did not fail me this day.
I rolled out of bed to use the restroom, wash my face, brush my teeth, and got back in bed until my 0500 work alarm went off.
I grabbed my phone for my morning entertainment on Facebook and laid there in the fetal, intertwined with my pregnancy pillow.
0800- Glucose test!
Eewww, I hated taking this test! I always felt so much worse afterwards.
I remember sitting there for that hour feeling extremely sick, almost as if I had to throw up but I didn’t have the energy to even do that. So I sat there. For an hour per the instructions.
0915- Work
I’m at work, looking and feeling like I was dying!
I called the labor and delivery ward and told them that I was still leaking fluids and they told me it was perfectly normal.
A customer walked into my office and I distinctly remember him telling me, “Sgt Williams you look like death! Are you ok?”
I replied, ” I don’t feel well.”
I stood up to go to the restroom and I remember feeling my belly “drop”. It stopped me in my tracks. I tap on the position that Lauren was in and desperately asked her to move, kick, change positions… Nothing.
Kisha, my troop at the time, asked me if everything was alright. I remember telling her, ” something is wrong… Something doesn’t feel right.”
I ended up getting sent home to rest. Y body temperature has risen to 102 by the time I got home. (A four minute drive)
I popped a Tylenol in attempt to break the temp and laid down…I fell into a deep sleep.
The kids came home, my temperature was rising, I had the shivers bad! I’m talking teeth rattling, uncontrollable shaking, but I had to take Kaileb to his football practice. Yes I was married at the time, but that was only a legality as we had been seperated for months at this point.
I remember talking to Ebony and telling her, ” I’m going to the hospital after his practice, IF I die… Take care of my kids.”
7:30 PM- Labor and Delivery Unit, Tripler Army Medical Center
I waddle into labor and delivery, tell the receptionist that I have a fever of 103 that I can’t break, I’m shivering, teeth rattling, and I haven’t felt my baby move since this morning.
She hangs me a cup to urinate in and I sit in the waiting room for 30 MINUTES!
I’m finally taken to a room and I sit there for another 20 minutes before a tech comes to apply the belly heart monitor.
She placed the heart monitor on my belly and keeps adjusting to. She moves it from the left side to the right. NOTHING.
She then says to me, ” Hold tight, I’ll be right back.” I instantly knew that she was gone but the tech didn’t tell me that.
One minute later, a male nurse walks in with an ultrasound machine. The screen is turned away from me. He applies the cold gel onto my belly and we searched. I say we, he looked for the heartbeat as I listened for a heartbeat…. NOTHING.
He left the room in a hurry and when the door opened again it was a female Dr. She’s too searched on the ultrasound monitor… She turned the screen around to me and said, ” This is your baby… This is where her heart should be beating… And it’s not.”
“I’m going to get the specialist to make sure what I’m telling you is true.”
They left the room… And I burst into tears!
I immediately got down on both knees in the hospital and prayed to God! I don’t know what compelled me to pray for my strength, for my daughter I’d lost, for my mind… But I was desperate! I guess my spirit knew what my flesh didn’t. I would be up against A LOT following my loss.
I sent a text to Ebony and Kisha and told them the devastating news. Ebony traded places with Shalanda who took over watching the kids while Ebony came to the hospital to be with me.
The specialist came back into the room and said, ” You can decide if you want to deliver her tonight or sometime this week. ” We are going to send you home and make sure you follow up.”
I looked at her in disbelief and said. ” You can’t send me home with a 103 fever.”
She said, ” Oh, I didn’t know you had a fever.” “We are going to have to admit you.”
What’s crazy is, I immediately thought about my children who were at home and how I would take care of them while being admitted. We as women think about everybody else before we think about ourselves.
Anyway, they put me into another room. I’m still shivering so much so that I can’t finish a complete sentence. I was hot and cold at the same time.
40 minutes later Ebony walked in and Kisha waddled in four steps behind her. Kisha and I were both pregnant and I think her due date were a couple weeks after my original due date.
I laid there. Hot and cold. Shivering and sobbing. Nothing or no one was able console me.
I had just lost a piece of me and wasn’t sure if I was going to survive.
Alexis
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The Girl In The Skirt 