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Sunday, March 16, 2014

Our Angels: Carter and Tanner

A year ago I went from being the happiest woman alive to the darkest days of my life. Throughout the past year my heart has slowly been mending. I don’t know if it will ever be 100% whole again, but my heart has healed enough that I am ready to share publicly the story of my sweet, precious sons, Carter James and Tanner Lee Dietz.

It takes a couple an average of 1 year to get pregnant. “Ya, that sounds somewhat long, but of course it won’t take us the full year.” I think everyone has had that thought. But as the year slowly ticks away, you realize that a year feels like FOR-EV-ER! And you didn’t beat the odds. That’s our story. While living in San Diego, CA we met our one year mark and decided it was time to start seeing a fertility specialist. We did lots of research and found one that we loved. Not only was she a good doctor (had good success rates) but she was also a part of leading research in the fertility world. To top it all off, when we met her, she was personable and friendly. She was never in a hurry to move on to the next patient. She did testing on both of us and we were diagnosed as “Unknown Infertility”. And that’s where our insurance ended. Our insurance only covers fertility testing. Once we have our diagnosis, everything else – medical procedures and medications – are out of our own pocket. But Ammon and I really wanted (still do) a family, so it’s worth the cost! We did a few ‘less invasive’ procedures in the coming months (IUI’s) that cost about 1/15th the amount as Invitro Fertilization (IVF). One of our IUI’s we used oral hormones and the second we used injectables. We were disappointed after each one to find out that it was unsuccessful. The doctors were stumped, they said that the IUI’s should have worked. The next step: IVF. Ammon and I took some time to financially prepare. During this time we decided that although we were currently living in California, it made the most since for us to do IVF in Utah. The reason behind why this was the best choice for us is long, so we won’t go into that. We started researching fertility centers in Utah and Salt Lake counties. In the midst of this research, we were contacted by our CA fertility center and informed that our doctor had left this practice, moved to Utah and joined a new practice there, so we would need to choose a new doctor at the CA fertility center to start seeing. This peeked our interest. The CA fertility center didn’t know where in Utah our doctor had moved, so we researched it ourselves and found that she had joined one of the fertility centers that was top on our list! There were some benefits to continuing to see the same doctor, but in Utah. We didn’t know if different states (or doctors in general) had different requirements for fertility testing, but because we had already done so much testing with this doctor, we were hoping to not have to pay to do more. On the other side, maybe more testing by a different doctor would mean they would find an actual reason why we weren’t getting pregnant. In the end, we decided to stay with our doctor; and that was a huge blessing.

We started the long process of IVF at the end of 2012. It was more tricky to do it out of state, but we’re still glad that we did. And we are still very glad we stayed with the same doctor. If you are looking for a fertility doctor in Utah, let me know and I’ll tell you more about our doctor and why we have so much faith in her. She is truly amazing. I would HIGHLY recommend her! In December 2012 not only did we find out that after 2 years of trying, we were finally pregnant (YEAH) but to top it off, we were pregnant with twins! Wow! What a blessing! We were so excited!

My first trimester wasn’t smooth sailing though. I bled a lot. We had multiple doctors tell us that it is actually common for women to bleed during their first trimester. We were even told of women who had bled throughout her whole pregnancy and still had a healthy baby. That calms your nerves, but you still worry some. Every doctor I’ve told (which is quite a few) that I bled during my first trimester reassures me of how common it is. I had never heard that it was common to bleed while pregnant. I guess pregnant women don’t talk about it much, because like I said, I’d never heard of it before. But it makes since, I didn’t walk around telling people, “Ya, I’m pregnant, and guess what, I’ve been bleeding during my first trimester.”

In February Ammon and I were very excited to announce our pregnancy publicly!

A couple of weeks after our big announcement, we found out we were have two boys! When you find out the gender of your baby(ies) it seems so much more real and you get to start planning things – everything!

Around 15 weeks, when our son’s inner ears had developed and they could hear, I would talk to them all throughout the day. Every day before our nap, I’d sing primary songs to them. I was the happiest woman alive, hands down.

At the end of my 19th week, I woke up one morning to a teeny tiny amount of blood. I’d seen this before, I knew the drill. It had never been anything to worry about, but you’re supposed to call the OB and schedule an ultrasound to be safe. Not this time. They said because I was 19 weeks 6 days with twins, I would need to go to the hospital. They said I needed to go to OB Triage, which is basically an ER for pregnant woman located in the L&D department. Ammon came home from work to take me. We were pretty calm about it all, like I said, we’d done this drill before (except at the OBGYN office). After I was checked in the doctors discovered 2 things: I was having contractions 8 minutes apart (I couldn’t feel them, I had no idea) and that I had started dilating. You know the age old riddle: which came first, the chicken or the egg? That was the question for me: which came first, the contractions or the dilating? The best conclusion we were given was that I had an incompetent cervix. I was immediately put onto a “head-down position” called trendelenburg position (body flat on your back with the feet higher than the head by 15-30 degrees). Although others looking at the bed said I really wasn’t tipped back that far, I felt like I was doing a head stand. I was told that I would be like this for the remaining 20 weeks of my pregnancy. It was difficult to mentally accept this, but I was willing to do it. Anything for my sons. Absolutely anything.

I was pumped full of medications to help stop the contractions (which did help – within an hour or so, my contractions were basically gone). Then I was taken to the Maternal Fetal Medicine doctor (a high risk pregnancy doctor who I had been seeing) in the hospital because they were the only ones with a good ultrasound machine. As the ultrasound tech was doing the ultrasound, I felt a big gush of fluids. I immediately told her to stop because I had started bleeding again. She was a little confused at first, but then went and got a nurse, who looked down there then went and got the doctor. The doctor said they were going to take me back to my room and then he’d talk to us about what was going on. That was the longest ride back to my room. It even involved the doctor telling everyone on the elevator to get off because he needed it right now. Obviously our tension is growing, obviously something was wrong.

When we got back to our room our doctor informed us that one of my sacs of water had broken.  This changed the game. The doctor no longer expected me to make it full term. He said that if I was pregnant with a single baby and my water broke, then they would have had me give birth to him that day. But because I had a second baby whose water had not broken, I would remain in the head-down position as long as possible. Our hopes were still high. We asked if hypothetically, the baby whose water had broke could still live inside of me; the answer was yes, hypothetically he could, but that the doctor believed he wouldn’t stay inside of me for more than a couple of days. Although the baby whose water broke could survive without being in the sac of water, his muscles would suffer because he would be unable to use them. The doctor made it clear that he didn’t want us to get our hopes up, but how could we not? We had worked so hard and done so much to have these children in our family. All we could hang onto was hope!

We were given the option that when the baby whose water broke was born, they could immediately give me a medication that would hopefully stop the second baby from being born. Ammon and I agreed that we wanted this. The doctor also said it was time that we picked names for our sons.

Everything that had happened so far this day had happened so fast that we hadn’t called any family yet. We called to tell our parents (who we asked to pass all the information down to siblings) what was going on. Although doctors didn’t have much hope, we did. We thought that surely God would grant us this miracle.

In the weeks since we had found out that we were having boys, Ammon and I had started the process of discussing baby names. We were far from coming to any decision because we thought we had plenty of time. As we sat in the hospital, we chose to name our sons Carter James and Tanner Lee. Although we didn’t decide which son had which name.

The days (and nights) were long. Ammon never left my side. But with each passing day, our hope got stronger and stronger. If we could just make it to 24 weeks (viability) that would be a miracle! Although viability doesn’t guarantee your baby will live, it does mean the doctors will do everything possible to help the baby live. And at 24 weeks, if your baby does live, he could have problems (sight, hearing, etc) the rest of his life.

Late morning on Saturday, March 16, 2013 I went back into labor. At 12:36 Carter James was born. I was quickly pumped full of the medication to stop Tanner from being born, but it wasn’t working. The doctor said they could keep putting the medication in me, but Tanner was coming either way. We decided to stop the medication. Call it mother’s intuition, or whatever you want, but I knew for a fact that Tanner and Carter were already best friends. I knew that the reason Tanner was going to be born was because he missed Carter. He wanted to be with his best friend and brother. At 12:56 Tanner Lee was born. Ammon and I tuned out everyone else in the room. Our world only included the four of us. At some point everyone left and it was just the four of us, but what the doctors and nurses were doing was all just a blur. One of the nurses, on our request, took pictures of our family for a while before leaving us alone.

Ammon and I held our sons. We gave them all of our love. Ammon gave each of them a baby blessing. We sang primary songs to them. We had family prayer together. Our hearts were breaking knowing that our children wouldn’t survive much longer. In the short time we had, we wanted them to know how much we loved them and of our devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

After they had both passed away, we had to make the most difficult phone calls. We called our parents to let them know that they had two beautiful grandsons. Family that lived locally quickly came to the hospital so they could hold and meet our sons before they were taken away.

I was released from the hospital on Sunday. That meant we had to go home. This was incredibly hard. For the past 5 months, there had been four happy people living in our home. Now, two of them were missing and we could feel their absence. Our home felt so empty. So lonely. So sad.

The whirl-wind of events didn’t stop there, however. Now we had a funeral to plan. We decided to burry our sons in Utah. Monday was spent making all the arrangements – moving our sons across state lines, what day to have the funeral, burial plot, travel plans, etc. We decided that we would hold a short memorial service at the cemetery. Tuesday morning we started our drive to Utah and arrived Wednesday afternoon. The drive was very therapeutic. Ammon and I had 20 hours to talk. We still had more funeral arrangements – buying a headstone, shopping for flower arrangements, planning the luncheon, shopping for the luncheon, planning our talks for the memorial service, etc.

Saturday morning came way too fast. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye again to my sons, but the time had come. Ammon thanked everyone for coming, and then I spoke about our sons. Ammon spoke about grieving process and our thoughts on everything that had happened. My sisters played “I Am a Child of God” on the violin and viola. Ammon’s dad dedicated the grave.

Ammon and I had debated about having a luncheon after the memorial service, but we decided we wanted one. This luncheon would be the celebration of Carter and Tanner’s lives. We would never get to throw them a birthday party. We wouldn’t get to celebrate them getting baptized, receiving the priesthood, going on missions, getting married, having kids of their own. So this luncheon was the one celebration we could have for them. We asked everyone to be happy, have a fun time and enjoy themselves. It was very helpful for us to end on a “happy” note.

A few months later the headstone was place.

My heart is still on the mend. I think of my sons often and am so glad that they joined our family. When I think of them now, I am able to remain happy – which wasn’t always so. This past week, as their birthday has been approaching, I have shed tears. Tears of sadness that I haven’t had the opportunity to raise them here on earth. Oh how our life would be so different if we had two little boys in our home right now. I miss them more than I can say in words. But I am proud to be their Mama.

Newborn babies are still a hard sight for me. They bring back so many hopes that I had for Carter and Tanner. They remind me of what will never be. They remind me that my arms, that should be juggling two little boys, are empty.

In the past few months, I have been making 2 sizes of baby hats, and baby booties. The smaller size hats will fit babies born around the same time as Carter and Tanner (Carter and Tanner both received hats like these after they were born). The larger hats and the booties will be for babies who will be living in the NICU for the first little bit of their lives. Ammon and I took these to the hospital and donated them to the NICU in loving memory of Carter James and Tanner Lee Dietz. This was how we celebrated Carter and Tanner’s birthday this year.

I am so grateful to be eternally married to such a wonderful man. Ammon has been my rock. He helps me get through my hard days. He has been my sunshine when my skies were grey. He gives the best hugs and lets me cry on his shoulder. He would do anything to take away my pain. I hope that I have been able to comfort him on his hard days as well as he has for me.

I love you Carter and Tanner. I will always miss you. Thank you for being a blessing in my life. Your daddy and I await the day when we can all be together again. We are eternally grateful that you joined our family, that you received physical bodies and that because of Jesus Christ, you are saved.

Happy Birthday Carter!
Happy Birthday Tanner!
You are my angels. Mama loves you.

2 comments:

  1. Sitting on my couch crying. Thank you for sharing. Two special pairs of twin boys in our family in heaven right now - I still can't understand how you and mom are so strong!

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  2. Laying in bed crying while reading this! I have no idea how you did it..what an incredibly strong woman and family you have! I love how you celebrated their birthday this year!! Very special and cool! Thank you for sharing your story!

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