Editor's Note: Nicholas' Mom is a Catholic work-at-home
mom who lives in the Northeast with her husband and their six children.
"Are any of them twins?"
And there it is again. It's not
an unreasonable question with so many children so closely spaced together, but
every time it comes up I have to pause and loosen the lump in my throat, smile
and say that no, none of the children standing with me are twins. One of
them, my littlest girl with the pigtails and impish grey eyes, should have been
a twin though. And she was a twin until Fall of 2009 when I caught H1N1
influenza.
We hadn't even been trying to get
pregnant, so when those two pink lines showed up we felt pretty stunned.
However, my husband and I quickly wrapped our hearts around the fact that
we would be welcoming our 5th child and were so excited to see him or her on
ultrasound. In the darkness of the ultrasound room at first I didn't know
what I was looking at and wondered why there was something else in my uterus
next to "the baby" until the tech pointed out very clearly "so,
there is baby A and there is baby B." I asked if she was sure.
I had to stop driving a few times on the way home to collect myself,
muttering under my breath "one baby... and another baby. Two
babies?!?!!" I hadn't expected to be pregnant at all and here I was,
extra pregnant with a couple of stowaway twins. I called my husband who
quickly started calculating how we were going to afford a full size van.
I called my midwife, and a nurse friend who had two year old twins and
started figuring out how to try to have the healthiest multiple pregnancy that
I could have. I wasn't sure how all of the logistics were going to work
out, but we are a Catholic family and decided to place our trust in God and to
walk by faith.
For weeks I took belly photos, counted
grams of protein, devoured any book on multiple pregnancies that I could and
consulted with my doctor and my midwife about how to plan for pregnancy, birth
and life with twins. I felt amazing and was so excited about my babies. I
cherished listening to baby A and baby B's heart beats, so distinct from each
other, one much faster than the other. Living in a house that would
barely have accommodated one more baby, we started looking at finding a bigger
home in our area and price checked on eBay to see what kind of car that would
fit our family we could afford with our tax return that year.
When the first cases of H1N1 started
popping up in Mexico I barely noticed. I thought the idea of
"pandemic flu" sounded so overblown. When my friend told me
that natural immunity was better than the vaccine and there were miscarriages
associated with the flu vaccine, I took what she said seriously the same way I
trusted her about what size shirts I was going to be in by the end of my
pregnancy. I was afraid to get the vaccine. Ultimately I wasn't
sure whether I was more scared of the disease or of the terrible things my
friend told me could happen if I got the vaccine, but I decided to trust my
health care providers and signed up for the very first vaccine clinic for
pregnant women in my county. Beyond that I went about my daily life and
just waited for the vaccine to become available in my area since there was such
a severe shortage in our area. I never thought that anything bad could or
would happen to me. I was in my mid 20s, ate a healthy diet with lots of
vitamins, tried to lead a more natural lifestyle and I worked too hard to have
a healthy pregnancy for anything to possibly go wrong. I worried about
how I might get pneumonia if I caught H1N1, but beyond that it never occurred
to me that my babies could be at risk.
I was the first in my family to show
symptoms. At first I felt slightly off and then I spiked a fever that
evening. Through the night I slept fitfully, slipping in and out of
hallucinations and for the first time in my life truly afraid that something
worse could happen to me from a virus than just being miserable for a few days
or weeks. My doctor saw me first thing in the morning while my husband
and then our kids started showing symptoms, and immediately prescribed Tamiflu.
I realized how serious my condition was when my doctor gave me the
"if you start turning blue, don't try to get to the hospital. Call
911 immediately" discussion. Within even a few hours of getting the
Tamiflu on board I started feeling not exactly better but like I wasn't getting
worse. I was still weak and took time to recover fully, but I was certain
that the worst of it was over.
But what bothered me in the weeks that
followed was that I only heard one range of heart tones. Before there had
been two, even as recently as the day before I was sick. They were still
in two different places and I measured ahead enough that my midwife had no concerns,
but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. I put it down to
being the normal jitters of a mother who had had previous pregnancy losses and
trusted that everything was ok even if it didn't feel ok. After all, the
worst was over, so I waited for my 18 week ultrasound to find out whether my
babies were boys, girls or one of each. We brought all of our kids with
us to see the babies on ultrasound, the day after Thanksgiving that year.
It was clear as soon as the tech's face changed from excitement to
concern that something was very wrong. She kept looking but finally had
to tell us "right now I'm only seeing one baby." With those
words my heart sank through the floor. I had children in the waiting room
waiting excitedly to find out whether they were having brothers or sisters.
I had no idea how I was going to tell them what had happened. The
radiologist came immediately and confirmed what the technician had found and
life would never be the same again.
Through so many phone calls to be made,
emails, Facebook updates I felt numb and wondered what I had done wrong.
I took all of my vitamins, I was healthy and working so hard for a
healthy pregnancy. As much as I looked for things I should have done
differently or better, I kept coming to the bewildering conclusion that
there was nothing. I had done everything right and my baby, my daughter's
twin, still died anyways. There was no rhyme or reason. There was
no missing piece of the puzzle that if I had just done that one missing thing,
everything would have been ok. The only thing that would have made a
difference was the vaccine, and no amount of wishing was going to change the
fact that there was a shortage and that I got exposed during that delay.
I am so thankful to still have my daughter, that she was able to survive,
but loving her doesn't change the knowledge there is someone who isn't here who
should have been.
No one looks at my family and sees that
empty space where the lost child we named Nicholas should be. No outside
observer sees the missing fingerpaintings, hears the missing voice in the
crowd, or notices the muddy footprints that aren't left alongside his brothers
and sisters. But I see them. I see them in my daughter's eyes and
wonder whether Nicholas' would have been blue, brown or grey like hers are.
I see them at Thanksgiving when my beautiful little girl sits so proudly
at the table and I know exactly how old Nicholas should be this year.
These are the invisible losses, these are the hidden pains that I will
always carry because of what H1N1 did in my life. And I will spend the
rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I had been able to get
the flu vaccine.
The question still comes up every so
often even now that we have our 6th child: are of my children twins?
No, and yet yes. My daughter will never know her twin and I will
never have that baby, that precious child in my arms. But I carry him in
my heart and in my life just the same. I remember him with every vaccine
that my children get as soon as they are eligible to receive it. I
remember him with every stranger or friend I help to research vaccines so that
they can feel comfortable in the safety of immunizing their children. I
remember him with every step of immunization advocacy that I take, every time I
share his brief life with others. This is his legacy. This is his
life, and how I honor it by remaining Nicholas' mom.
Editor's note: Flu vaccine is strongly recommended for all
pregnant women. It is safe for both mom and baby, and will provide the newborn
added immunity through its first few months of life.
