Month: May 2017

Joseph Courtney (Part 5)

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Part 1        Part 2        Part 3        Part 4        Part 5        Part 6 Conclusion

At Saint Benedict’s Hospital I was offered, what at that time was making it’s way into the birthing world, a spinal epidural.  My father was very nervous of my decision to have the epidural block.  In his youth and in the Navy at the time he had known of a young lady who had experienced permanent paralysis during her procedure, one of the rare risks of a spinal epidural.  I remember his deep concern.  But, with my doctor’s assurance that the risk was extremely rare and it was becoming a common procedure, I had the epidural.  I was told to hold extremely still as I leaned over and the epidural was placed.  My daughter says they are not painful at all now.  But, I remember it being painful.

As I remember, because my son was gone, my body wasn’t going to go into labor on it’s own.  I was given medication to induce and imitate labor.  But, told that because my natural hormones are not helping that the labor was harder than the labor of a live birth.  Sometime later I was being examined and a needle type instrument was being touched up my chest starting low on my abdomen.  Each time he, the examiner, would touch the needle to my skin and ask, “Can you feel that?” I would say no.  I was numb.  He would then move the needle up a few inches and say, “Can you feel that?”  Again, my response was, “no”.  When he got as high as my chest and still received the same answer, he frantically called some code over the hospital intercom and several doctors arrived as well as Doctor Hurst.  I’m sure my father in the waiting room was panicked if he knew it was my room.  There were several huddled around me.  Once again Doctor Hurst came to my rescue.  I don’t know why but Doctor Hurst asked me if I could wiggle my toes.  I said that I couldn’t.  He then got closer in my face and it seemed as if her were yelling at me, “WIGGLE YOUR TOES!”  I did.  The atmosphere calmed and people started departing.  That’s how I remember it.

When finally taken to the labor and delivery room, labor was hard.  The medicine was producing contractions.  They just weren’t as hard as they would have been during a normal delivery.  I remember Doctor Hurst had to push down on my belly the procedure.

After recovery, I was returned to my hospital room and lying on my bed calm.  A nurse came in and asked if I would like to hold Joseph Courtney before they took him away.  Babies gain most of their weight in the last few months of pregnancy.  Joseph was about nineteen inches long and weighed about 1 and 1/2 pounds.  I held him.  He was wrapped sweetly in a little blanket and I will always remember him.  He had his own unique features, a mixture of mine and Jay’s.  He was beautiful.

Part 6 (Conclusion)

Joseph Courtney (Part 4)

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Part 1        Part 2        Part 3        Part 4        Part 5        Part 6 Conclusion

As time slipped silently past me and my son grew inside, he began a routine with me.  As I would lay in bed each night around 8:30 pm, he would let me know he was there.  He would start to wiggle.  I’ve had four other children now and looking back I feel his wiggle time was a special communication between us.  It wasn’t a kick or a stretch, it was continuous for fifteen minutes or more every night as I settled down in the quiet of my room.  I cherished the moments he rolled around as I gently placed my hand on the belly that housed his precious body.

None of us can cheat time.  The phone rang.  I don’t remember the words this time.  I remember the context.  My time was over.  Next week Joseph Courtney and I will have made it thirty-two weeks.

Regardless of our religion God loves us.  We are His children.  He will help us in ANY situation that comes into our lives NO MATTER WHAT WE HAVE DONE or what our religious background.  I know this to be true!  Reach up to him!  This is one of my stories and it is true.  It is simply what happened.  In the LDS faith we believe men have been given the priesthood which is the power to act for God in righteous situations and according to God’s will.  No matter what your religion is, if you believe God is involved in our lives, you can imagine the reality of his concern and care for his daughters on this earth and that he will help us.

At my parents suggestion, I agreed to having my father and my brother give me a priesthood blessing.  This took place sometime close to and before my regular time for bed.  I don’t remember the words my brother spoke.  I do remember the peace I felt during the blessing.  I went to bed that very night and never felt the touch of my son throughout the night.  When I woke up in the morning, I spoke to my mother, “I haven’t felt the baby kick all night”.  My mother said, “Let’s go to the hospital”.  She knew Joseph was gone.  Oh, how I love my mother!  Later she told me that as I went off to bed my brother had told her that he felt the baby  was already gone.

What a loving Heavenly Father who let me suffer consequence of poor decisions to learn and grow, yet in the hour of my need, comforted and blessed me beyond measure, releasing me from something I wasn’t prepared or armed to handle!  In fact, during the entire pregnancy, I do not recall contemplating the decision or ever coming to one, not even the night of the blessing.  It was just something I could not do.  Perhaps, I had been comforted and released from those thoughts.

(Part 5)

Joseph Courtney (Part 3)

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Part 1       Part 2        Part 3        Part 4        Part 5        Part 6 Conclusion

I don’t remember the ride home or much after that except the doctor at the University wanted to see me throughout the pregnancy.  The decision slipped away with my pregnancy as I waited.  Why make such a decision until it was necessary?  Perhaps the life growing inside me would make the decision for me or God.

Sometime before the news of our baby’s difficulties, my parents had made the decision for Jay and I to get married.  We had a small ceremony in the living room of my parents and moved into their home.

One difficult time that I remember was at one of the appointments down at the University.  Doctor Hurst came down as well.  I remember that they wouldn’t let my husband, Jay, come in.  He had to stay in a waiting room.  The University doctor and what I believe were several students were huddled around studying the ultrasound as it was being given.  I think they forgot about me and the life inside of me they were discussing.  To my recollection they were discussing all the things that could possibly be wrong as they looked at the screen.  Maybe this, maybe that, well look at this, that’s strange.  Tears began to roll down my face and as I looked up Doctor Hurst was directly over me looking at me.  He told them they needed to leave.  I was so grateful to him in that moment.

Another difficult thing was when people who didn’t know me would congratulate me or talk about my pregnancy as my belly protruded larger and larger.  Once on the elevator at the University I remember an older lady especially enthusiastic as she congratulated Jay and I and asked about how excited we must be as we were riding to our destination floor.  I’m sure she was confused as my troubled eyes could not conceal the deceit of the positive nod of my head and my quiet lips.

(Read Part 4)

Joseph Courtney (Part 2)

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Part 1        Part 2        Part 3        Part 4        Part 5        Part 6 Conclusion

Doctor Hurst (to the best of my recollection), “I’m not sure exactly what is wrong here.  I do know that the baby’s head is measuring about four weeks larger than it should.  That can indicate some form of Hydrocephalus which is fluid built up on the brain.  But, I just can’t be sure.  They can sometimes treat Hydrocephalus by placing a shunt to drain the fluid.  There are some other oddities.  I would like to send you over to the hospital for some more tests.

The rest of my memories come in bits and pieces.  Many years later after Dr. Hurst had delivered all four of my now grown children, four girls, I sat at the same doctor’s office, different office, same doctor and two of the same nurses, Ann and Rita, that had apparently worked for him for thirty years now.  I was at his office again.  But, I sat in a chair next to my youngest daughter Jory.  Jory was seventeen.  Jory was pregnant.  Jory was having her first ultrasound.  Did we want to know what the sex of the baby was?  Yes, a girl, another girl in the family.  Both of us seem nervous.  Both of us keep asking questions.  “Does everything look okay?”  Jory wants to know.  “I’m sorry”,  I say, “I was in your office a very long time ago.  There was something wrong with my baby.  I was seventeen.  Doctor Hurst was the doctor and it was during my first ultrasound that he discovered something was wrong.  We are both just a little nervous”.  The nurse, Ann, looks stunned, “That was you?  I remember that…  I was the nurse.  I remember that so well because that was my first situation where something was seriously wrong.  I was the one that called the hospital.  It was late in the afternoon, about 4:30 pm right?  I called the hospital to get you in.  They weren’t going to take you that afternoon because it was so late and I told them, ‘You have to take her.  She is so young.  She needs some answers.  We can’t leave her like this.'”  Our eyes are both watering up.  I thank her.  We both express gratitude for being able to share the experience and she gets back into the moment with Jory and my first granddaughter in the oven!

It’s been thirty-five years now since Ann walked with me across the street to the hospital for more tests.  There was more wrong with my son Joseph Courtney.

The next test Doctor Hurst wanted performed was an amniocentesis, which currently was only performed down at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.  An amniocentesis is a medical procedure used in the diagnosis of chromosomal abnormalities.  During that procedure I remember lying on the table surrounded by people with lab coats.  After a local anesthetic, and with the aid of an ultrasound, a large needle was inserted through my abdominal wall, then through the uterine wall, which is thicker and you could tell they had to use more force,  I felt it, and finally through the amniotic sac.  Amniotic fluid is then extracted and fetal cells are separated.  I was told the fetal cells would need to be grown in a culture and then they would be able to examine them for chromosomal abnormalities.   This would show exactly what was wrong.

I went back to the University a few weeks later for the results of the amniocentesis.  Again, it’s hard to say if Jay was there.  I’m sure he was.  But, my memory is so focused on the doctor, his office and his WORDS that anything peripheral in my mind became non-existent.  As I remember, his said something like this, “The results of the amniocentesis are not good.  The baby’s chromosomes are entirely messed up.  If I could, I would tell you that absolutely there is a 100% chance this baby will not survive.  But, legally I cannot tell you that.  So, I will tell you that there is 99.9% chance that your baby will die before you reach full term.  If for some unknown reason the baby did survive until you were full term, there is no way that you would ever be able to care for the baby.  It would need to live in an institution for as long as it survived…  Blah, Blah, Blah…  We could go in and drain the water on the baby’s brain, which would terminate the baby’s life.  You do not need to make any such decision today.  You can safely go until 32 week of pregnancy (about 7 1/2 months along).  The baby will either die on his own before that time or at that time YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE THE DECISION.

(Read Part 3)

Joseph Courtney (Part 1)

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Part 1        Part 2        Part 3        Part 4        Part 5        Part 6 Conclusion

742524-R1-74-75Story One… Joseph Courtney

I was seventeen when I met Javon (Jay).  He was so cute!  Ripped haha.  I was tall and thin, dark hair, and pretty.  I was one of those teenagers that had to learn by experience, insecure most of my teenage years, with amazing potential I just didn’t understand.  At fourteen, my mom was embarrassed because I wasn’t hanging around with the kids going to church and announced one day, I’m sure with good intentions, “Since you’re going to hang around that crowd then you aren’t going to church anymore”.  It didn’t seem like a punishment to me.  What my mother may not have understood was that I was having so much trouble trying to fit in somewhere.  I tried hanging around with a couple of cool girls in the neighborhood.  They were mean girls.  I tried hanging around the good girls in the ward.  Why did they seem boring?  But, there were a couple of girls who were nice to me and fun.  Why did they always have to get me in trouble?

Eventually, I stopped feeling out of place with a group of kids skipping school.  Unfortunately, I started doing all the things those kids were doing trying to fill up our day without school.  I remember being sent to the counselor’s office numerous times to help solve the issue of why I was skipping school.

Oh ya… the love of my seventeen year old life haha.  Jay’s family wasn’t LDS.  His family was so accepting of me and all my non-LDS habits.  I’d sit at the table and talk with his mom, his sisters and even his little brother.  It felt like home.  Secure, a place where no one judged me, they loved me.  Let’s move to the part where I get pregnant haha.  That’s it, I end up pregnant.  I was working at Coryelle Answering Service in Ogden at the time.  I remember going to work and shoving my growing belly into the same pants day after day.  It was getting harder.  One of my co-workers made a funny comment one day that my baby was going to be born with a zipper mark on it’s forehead.

I could NEVER tell my parents.  They would disown me.  I know this seems ridiculous to you mothers as it does to me now.  But I really thought I could NEVER tell my mother.  I WOULD NEVER tell my mother.  I  believed she would never want anything to do with me again.  I didn’t have any other plan, no thought for the future, just today, or ever, I could not tell my mother.  God knew my heart.  He knew of my true resolve to not tell my mother and he knew I would need her help.  He knew what lay ahead of me and what my pregnancy was going to be like.  One day, when I was about four and a half months pregnant, my mother came to me…  She said, “I had a dream that you were pregnant” and I started crying.

My parents did NOT respond how I had expected them to.  They responded with love.  It wasn’t a wonderful amazing adventure.  It’s not by any means a recommendation to get pregnant haha.  But, it is a recommendation to trust that your parents love you and that they will no matter what mistakes you make.  They may not respond in the best way immediately.  But, time helps and you are loved and life continues and your trials can bring experiences that will change you for the better forever if you look up to heaven and trust the most high parent whose love is greater than we understand.

My mom scheduled an appointment for me to see a doctor, Dr. Craig Hurst.  He was young and I remember he wore Jordache jeans 8).  I’m not sure if Jay was at my first doctor appointment.  I think he was.  But, mostly I remember the ultrasound screen.  The black screen with the grey/white outline.  The wand running across my belly and the screen dancing around on the baby’s outline.  I remember him saying, “Do you want to know what you’re having?”  I said “Yes” and he said with a smile, “It’s a boy”.  A flash of content and then the doctor’s face.  He was concentrating now…  Driving the wand back and forth, snapping measurements.  He didn’t need to speak.  I didn’t want him to speak.  My eyes were locked on his face.  His face locked on the screen.

(Read Part 2