My name is Nina Newborn. 8/26/20 is a day that my husband and I will never forget. Our sweet baby boy Kolby Lane Lamon was born sleeping at 37 weeks gestation due to a placental abruption.
Our nightmare started the day before on 8/25/20. My friend, my husband, and I have been gone all day running errands. It was an all day affair that lasted way on into the late evening hours after dinner time. I was extremely tired ast I was not used to being gone all day without resting especially in a small truck and going far more distance than what I’m used to. I can also tell that the baby was extremely agitated as well. As if he didn’t have muçh room to grów and was ready to come out and meet the world.
As the day persisted on I kept having what I thought were Braxton Hicks contractions – I thought that’s they were. But I began noticing that the more I became agitated and upset it seemed like the contractions were coming closer and closer. We were trying to make our way finally to our friends lake house. She hadn’t been out there much due to this being a new home they had purchased. We kept getting off on the wrong exits. She couldn’t remember which one it was. So then we would have to correct ourselves several times before getting on the right exit. Again I kept contracting off and on in my stomach was so hard. Before our destination of reaching the lake house, we decided to stop by Publix to get a quick bite to fix for dinner.
My husband and I sent in the truck while she went into shop. All of a sudden I started feeling really faint my heart – I felt as if I was going to pass out. My stomach hardened up but would not let back down left the other contractions had been doing before. I knew something wasn’t right because my uterus was not going back down it stayed completely hard. I decided to get out of the truck and go into the lady’s room thinking that maybe I could calm myself down. I thought that maybe I could get the baby to behave and to calm down. That didn’t seem to help either.
My friend finally comes out of the store. I told her to just go on and head to the lake house. When we arrived and got out of the truck I kept getting worse so I decided to go and immediately get changed and lay down.
Not long after laying down, I felt a gush of warm water flowing out of me and it kept gushing. I couldn’t look so I screamed fór my husband or my friends help. My friend came ín and discovered that what I thought was my water breaking was in fact pools and pools of blood. They help me get cleaned up and dressed and immediately took me to the nearest hospital.
When we arrived they explained that I was pregnant and that I had sevére bleeding and that I hadn’t felt my baby move all evening. They wouldn’t let anyone in the exam room with me not even in the waiting room due to the coronavirus. So I was in a room, scared, confused, tired, and alone.
I remember a nurse bringing a heart doppler in to try to check the baby’s heartbeat. Before she even started, I knew he was gone, you just know. A mother knows.
Of course as I suspected, no heartbeat. They called a doctor in to do a sonar. Again it reveled that my perfect, healthy little boy had no heartbeat.
At this time I wasn’t acting normal so the hospital staff assumed I was on some kind of illicit drugs which I clearly was not. Not realizing until later that my blood pressure wàs extremely high, I wàs severely dehydrated, añd I had lost so much blood, it was cutting off oxygen to the brain.
Finally the paramedics arrived to transport me to the hospital I was going to deliver at being that the first hospital didn’t deliver babies. I finally arrived there añd my O.B. mets us there and we all discuss the plan. They decided on a c section due to me losing so much blood añd so they wouldn’t have to go through labor. Less rísk. The put mé to sleep as well.
The anesthesiologist came in and I found some papers and they explained the procedure and about the medicine putting me to sleep I had expressed my concerns due to I’ve always been afraid of being put to sleep. I have never been put to sleep and I was terrified that maybe I wouldn’t wake up. It was actually one of my biggest fears of being put to sleep. But I agreed to do it despite being fearful of the anesthesia.
I remember waking up but not quite coming to myself I couldn’t see anything. I remember it seems like I was screaming for my husband I was in a confused state. I have always had vaginal births so this was a big change for me. I didn’t know that I was not going to have an epidural, I didn’t know that I was going to wake up in severe pain.
I was then taken to ICU. Wasn’t exactly sure when I was there and wasn’t quite myself due to the anesthesia and all kind of pain medication that I was receiving. I only knew that I was in severe pain and that I had delivered my dead son.
Before the surgery happened I was introduced to a grief counselor / nurse period who was responsible for coaching me through the whole process and being there with me the whole step of the way including after the surgery. She had told me that I would be able to spend as much time with my baby as I wanted to . She had also said that she would make sure today to clean him up and snap some pictures if we would like for us on a CD I agreed.
Finally I remember waking up and seeing my husband there. I was in so much pain all I could remember is the nurses coming in and out pressing on my stomach. For some reason they been giving me pitocin. I’m guessing this is due to help me get rid of the blood. Although it was making me have severe contractions. It was like I was going through labor all over again. It was extremely painful.
Finally the greatest counselor came up with my sweet sweet Colby. Due to me being in so much excruciating pain due to the cut due to no epidural and due to all the confusion, I couldn’t enjoy spending those final moments with my stillborn baby. I wasn’t given as much time as I wanted with my baby. I’m not exactly sure if this was because I was in ICU or whatever the reason was I was not given the opportunity to get to spend as much time as I wanted to with him.
I can remember my husband holding the baby. I can rrememberf the girls trying to take some photos but it was mainly a blur due to all the sedation and medication I was on. I continued to have contractions due to the pitocin that was given to me but I had to give the baby back to my husband because I was in so much pain that I could not hold him.
I just tried to hold on to those memories try to get as many pictures as we could because I know my time was him was very short. The coroner soon came after him.
Finally after 3 days I was able to go to a regular room. My doctor came in and was asking me if I knew what happened – I explained no not exactly. Ssaid I had suffered a placental abruption and that my placenta had busted. Which in turn cut the babies oxygen off. I couldn’t understand. He was so perfect so healthy and so active to all of a sudden my placenta breaking and depriving him of the oxygen that he needed. I was 37 weeks exactly. So really I was supposed to have three weeks left but I’m not so sure of that because I just felt like he was overdue. He was very agitated the last month and I’ve never went into labor and I really feel like I had actually gone into labor that whole day. So number one I felt like I was overdue I feel like he had no room to grow.
Before I was discharged I had a lady come down to talk with me and explain the situation and why I was so severely sick. I was told that I had seven blood transfusions due to losing so much blood. They could not get my levels right. They asked if I have ever been told that I had kidney disease and I said no. As far as I knew I was a pretty healthy young adult. She said that this was not from the surgery that that apparently I’ve had kidney disease for quite some time which in turn is when I was in ICU having so much trouble with my blood. The kidneys are supposed to filter out toxins through your blood and mine wasn’t doing that.
So not only did I discover that I have had high blood pressure and kidney disease, but that I was anemic às well.
So finally I was getting better and the grief nurse came to my room when I was being discharged to go over everything about the baby. She told me that the coroner would be calling me and they would follow up after he was sent back from autopsy so that we could decide which funeral home we wanted to send him to.
After a month I began to worry and wonder on why I hadn’t received the phone call from the corner or from someone asking me where I wanted my son sent to. I kept worrying about it every single day. until we received a phone call from my mother-in-law asking when we was going to tell her about her grandson and that he had passed away. M mother-in-law was not aware that I was pregnant let alone that the baby had died. The corner had took it upon himself to go up there and tell her that I left the hospital when I was in ICU and that they could not reach my husband or I could make funeral arrangements in burial arrangements.
All of this was a total lie. I was sick I was in ICU and I gave them one specific phone number and one specific address. No one tried to contact us at all not at all. So not only did I not get the chance to spend all day with my son I didn’t get the chance to decide whether we were going to cremate or have a burial for our son. I didn’t get the chance to pick out a casket pick out his outfit or say goodbye. That was our way of saying goodbye in our way of having the final closure. I feel as if not only was my son ripped away but my rights as a mother and my rights of getting to do anything with my son. This coroner went and told my mother-in-law information that she was not aware of and also broke HIPAA laws. He made it his business to go around miles away to another county to go gossip and embarrass us. They had already buried our son when he went to my mother-in-law’s and told her this information. So there was no point in him going other than he went to gossip. I also lost the right to get to choose where my son was to be buried I also lost the right to get to pick out his casket and his outfit. A few months back we decided we was ready to go and see if we could find his grave in doing so we found the cemetery searched all over for his grave and found one that looked like it had been freshly dug. we wasn’t sure if it was him or not but it had to be because it was the only fresh grave that had recently been dug. Still there was no way to identify him because there was no marker there. Most of the time even if someone’s grave doesn’t have a headstone they at least have a green marker indicating who the person is their birth date and their date of death. His grave did not even have that to Mark who it was. On top of that it looked like it had been buried in the metal of a family period which was extremely odd to me they put my son right slap in the middle of a certain family which made absolute no sense to me.
Needless to say we are trying to still figure out and get a hold of the corner to find out if it this indeed is the correct cemetery and exactly where his burial site is. We slowly and surely are trying to heal our hearts that I know it’s going to take some time. I do feel as if my still birth could have been prevented due to several different factors. Something had happened with one of my sons 3 weeks prior that had really really caused me to stress out. The whole time I was pregnant I did not have any high blood pressure gestational diabetes or anything like that going on. Like I stated earlier the baby died due to April abruption which in turn cut his oxygen off. There can be several different reasons why the placenta can abrupt. Almost every one of them were checked off on the reasons that mine could have bursted. It all started with stress maternal stress, which led to me getting upset and having high blood pressure, along with these kidney issues that I wasn’t aware of, along with well I feel like being overdue and him not having room to grow, played a rollin the placental abruption. I can go home and on and on of what I could have done what I should have done and asking God why everyday of my life but then again I’m just repeating the same cycle over and over again. I do have to learn to move on and I do have to learn that although I wasn’t given many rights that I should have been given that I can correct these issues that happened in order to feel like my son can be put to rest and we can have some closure the proper way. We will never forget our sweet loving very alive 37 week old beautiful baby boy Kobe Lane layman. He’s our angel in heaven watching over us and I know that one day soon we will see him again.
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