Our Angel - Jonathon Louis Hennecke

I started writing this post in July 2012. I never finished it-never found time to. It has been sitting in my drafts so I have FINALLY decided to complete it... July 8th 2012 I noticed Jonathon wasn't moving as much as he had been. He was a constant mover around bedtime. As soon as I would change positions (sitting to laying down or laying on side to back) I would do kick counts and he would move 10 times in less than 2 minutes. This Sunday evening, he moved less than 10 times in an hour. I called labor and delivery and they said to monitor it for 30 more minutes to see if it changed any. He moved 5 times in 30 minutes-which is about average for the suggested 10 times in an hour but was not "average" for Jonathon. July 9th 2012 Monday he still wasn't moving as much as normal so I called my doctor's office and they said to come into Labor and Delivery to be monitored. They said his heart rate was fine and near the end of the monitoring session, he started moving around to a more "normal" rate for Jonathon. So I went home glad that I went in and had everything checked out, just in case something was wrong. July 12th 2012 Thursday I went in for my 36 week checkup. I hadn't really felt him move too much (I had only been up for an hour before going to my appointment) plus I was busy getting ready to leave so didn't even think about kick counts. I had also had reassurance that everything was "okay" on Monday that I didn't even consider what was about to be the worst day (and worst next few days) of my life. I was seeing the nurse practitioner, Lisa, since my doctor was on vacation. I told her about the activity since Sunday and how he was moving a lot on Wednesday when I last noticed. I told her that I had a softball game that night so I was busy keeping our team's score and didn't happen to notice anything abnormal with Jonathon's movements. Then she did the normal and started to check for his heart rate. She checked ALL OVER and couldn't find it. For whatever reason, I was still not worried at this point. She said that Dr. Glover would do an ultrasound across the office to have everything checked out. I was still not worried after starting the ultrasound, I thought to myself, "he's going to find the heartbeat and I'll be able to go back to work." He looked around for a while & finally turned the monitor and said something along the lines of, "Here is where we should see the heartbeat...It's not there. I'm sorry." It took a minute to register what he just said. I couldn't understand how my baby could be fine when monitored Monday, even fine when I knew he was moving just the day before! He then explained that he really couldn't tell what happened and that it could be a cord accident or something else-they wouldn't know until we delivered the baby. I was at the doctor by myself so I had to call Nathan to tell him the hardest thing I've ever had to say, "they couldn't find Jonathon's heartbeat," and, "they don't know why and won't know until I have a c-section to deliver him." I called my sisters & my mom and they all came up to the doctor's building to be with me. Once I had a better hold of myself, we left and all went to Nathan's grandma's house. Nathan was riding back from work and I didn't get to see him until then. Once I saw him, we both just cried. We had to tell everyone else in our family that our son was gone and prepare for the c-section the following day, first thing in the morning. We stayed at Nathan's grandma's house so they could watch Mylah for us while we were in the hospital. I got little sleep that night... I went through surgery the next morning, half of the time I was sleeping because whatever they gave me to "relax me" made me go to sleep. We got to hold Jonathon and get pictures with him. He was 7lb 10oz-which would be a healthy sized baby for most people! He was already 21 inches long-if he had gone the next week and 1/2, he may have been longer. He was beautiful and had SO MUCH HAIR! I thought his hairline was crazy because his hair went all the way to his eyebrows. Now, I see that Mylah has a similar hairline in her baby pictures and that she's just as hairy on her back! So they're very much alike in that way. When Dr Glover delivered, he noticed that Jonathon was pale and so was the placenta. He also noticed that the umbilical cord was on the shorter side of normal but wasn't abnormally short. He told us later that he believed that what occurred was a fetal maternal hemorrhage. The majority of Jonathon's blood (possibly close to all) left his body through the umbilical cord into my system. This explained why he was so pale and why the placenta had little blood in it as well. Dr Glover also knew that because of Jonathon having a different blood type, I would have to have Rhogam shots to correct the Rh factor in my blood. Dr Glover conferred with the Midwest Maternal & Fetal Medicine office in St. Louis on how many Rhogam shots I would need. Turns out they were going to go with 11, but in the end I had 12 just to be safe. We had his funeral Monday the 16th. Everything seemed okay until we walked into church for the service, then Nathan & I both bawled our eyes out. We are very thankful/blessed/grateful that Deacon Leon officiated the service and did a GREAT job. It was very meaningful coming from him because he had followed my posts on facebook and been a great influence on me the past year while going through RCIA. He made me laugh & cry which made it a little easier. We buried Jonathon at St Francis Borgia cemetery. He is in his own plot in between Nathan's and my plots. We did that so we'd both be around him...