On November 18, 2015, our perfect full term baby boy, Zayne Martin Paszkiewicz was born still. We started this heartbreaking journey on the morning of November 16th, when our story took a tragic unexpected turn. It was a Monday morning, and as I got ready for work that day I noticed that my normally very active baby was not as active. He had kept me up kicking and moving around until 3am the previous night but suddenly he seemed very still. As I drove into work, I started getting really concerned. My baby was very still. I called my doctor to see if I should stop by for a “quick check” to make sure all was good. I was 39 weeks that Monday and was hoping that the baby had decided to get ready for his grand entrance before Thanksgiving.
That “quick check” turned into devastating news when I was asked if my husband had come with me that morning. He had not, he was working. The doctor followed up by asking how long it would take him to get there…I immediately knew there was an issue. I was in no way prepared to hear the words “there is no heart beat”, but they soon followed. We were 7 days away from Zayne’s due date that morning.
Most of my pregnancy had been relatively normal. I was considered high risk due to maternal age, and the 2 miscarriages that we had suffered thru since April 2013. Following the miscarriages, we saw a fertility specialist and had been tested for more than I ever knew existed. Everything was normal except the fact that I was 38 and had a high FSH level (something not uncommon at my age). We had discussions about IUI, IVF and other things, but none of them seemed right for us. We decided to leave the baby decision in God's hands and continued to hope that our prayers would be answered.
We continued to pray daily and on March 18th got our first positive pregnancy test after a night at Rodeo Houston. On April 1st we were told that it probably wasn't a viable pregnancy due to no fetal pole showing up on the first ultrasound. On April 8th we were over the moon excited after the ultrasound showed a fetal pole and a heartbeat, and our nerves were calmed when everything looked normal. We continued to have ultrasounds each week until we reached 13 weeks...everything continued to look great. We had our BIG ultrasound at 18 weeks, where we found out that we were having a BOY and again everything looked great. Zayne's due date was determined to be November 23, 2015. Read more.