The gorgeous Jamie LaFave with her daughter Reese Addison (3.5) and son Jax Hudson (pictured - stillborn 06.18.2014). Jamie was able to conceive Reese her second month of trying and went on to have a quite easy and healthy pregnancy. She didn't want to deliver while her OB was out of town so she had him induce her just a few days early. Labor was quite short, only 6 hours from induction to delivery, and Reese was born without complication.
Jamie says that her experience through her daughters pregnancy and birth allowed her to be a bit naive to other realities. She thought that because things had been so smooth with her first that's just how things would go for her. Yet, in her second pregnancy she found her self thinking so often "this is too good to be true". At their twenty week scan they learned they were having a boy and she was over the moon. In the days that followed however, Jamie began to sense that something was wrong. She stopped feeling Jax move as much she had been but pushed away feeling after feeling that all wasn't well. She had some bleeding which prompted her to go to the hospital, they took her up to labor and delivery but a nurse said she found heart tones with a doppler and they sent her home with no ultrasound performed.
Jamie follow up with her doctor the following day as instructed, after swimming lessons and raspberry picking with Reese. Her doctor performed an ultrasound in office and couldn't find a heartbeat. Jamie says that hearing those words and seeing her face while she delivered them is something that she'll remember vividly forever. She called her husband to meet her in the main hospital where they had an official ultrasound to confirm his passing. Jamie was sent home for a few hours before her doctor called with her options. She didn't want to continue carrying her baby until her body decided to go into labor so she went in the following day for an induction. After about 12 hours of labor Jax was born in a breech position. While Jamie labored, she had the thought several times that she just wished she could see his eyes open and began to grieve the fact that she never would get to see them or know what they looked like. After he was born however, while she and her husband took a minute to prepare to meet him, her doctor came to tell her that because of his positioning, his eyes had been pushed open during delivery. She says she can't help but think that he knew she needed that.
Jamie spent 45 of her 48 hours in the hospital after Jax birth with him. She tried to savor in the moments with him she knew she would never have again. Holding him, snuggling him and dancing with him. They had a photographer come in to take professional pictures and took many of their own. Her nurses helped her to make hand and foot prints and casts to serve as keepsakes forever, and Reese even got to come in and hold him. Jax was cremated and Jamie says she began to find herself in a dark place, unable to function and care for her living child. She had great support from family and friends but there came a point where that timeline past and she reached her bottom.
Knowing they still wanted to grow their family Jamie and her husband waited for the all clear a few months later and began to try again. No cause for Jax's death was ever found and she didn't seem to have any issues herself so they anticipated another easy conceptions. She has since however been struggling with secondary infertility that her doctors and fertility specialists haven't been able to explain. After three "failed" attempts at fertility stimulation they decided to stop trying and then changed their minds and recently had one go at Intrauterine insemination.
Jamie has struggled with her body after the death of her son, feeling that it has conspired against her. Feelings of failure surrounded both this loss and her struggles to conceive again. She carried post pregnancy weight without a baby to show for it and struggled to find peace with that as the last physical link to her son. Beyond that, however, Jamie believes in the need to support other women, without condition wherever they may be. Even if you can't fully understand what they're going through, you never know when they might need another person there to lean on.