More answers

I had a follow-up appointment with my midwife this morning. I was SO excited for it because I absolutely ADORE Kathrine.

After I had Hannah, Kathrine (who also experienced a second-trimester loss during her third pregnancy) told me that crocheting helped her in her grieving process. We had been talking about crocheting and knitting because I had made a hat for Hannah. Well, she was right about the crocheting. It's just a very easy way to escape. Not necessarily to escape my emotions and try to bury them or hide from something. It's become more of a time to actually sit still and finally be alone with my thoughts. So I made Kathrine a scarf. :) And I wrote her a long note and also got her a bag of MILK chocolate because she was very vocal about her distaste for dark chocolate at some point in a conversation during my labor. Anyway, she read the note and we both cried and chatted and cried and chatted some more. And I was reminded of why I was so looking forward to our visit!

When Hannah was born, the cause of death seemed to be pretty obvious because the cord was wrapped around her neck three times. But Kathrine still sent some of the placenta and part of the umbilical cord to be tested. The cord goes all the way down to Mayo Clinic and it takes a while to get the results back. But the placenta results did come back and they found that I had an infection where the placenta was attached to my uterus. So, it looks like that could have also been the cause. And since babies can get tangled in their cords multiple times throughout pregnancy, and even be born with it around their neck, I'm tempted to think that the infection was more likely the cause. But we'll never know. And we'll never know what caused the infection in the placenta. I am grateful that both the cord accident and the infection are flukes. Nothing happened that will greatly affect future pregnancies for us if that's a road we decide to travel down. We may still find out from the cord that I have a blood clotting issue. And that would simply require some action on my part during a future pregnancy (blood thinners, etc).

One thing that Kathrine did mention is if/when I do get pregnant again someday, I will be considered high risk. I'll have to do some blood tests early on to make sure everything is normal, there are other tests throughout the pregnancy, my 20-week ultrasound will be Level 2, etc. That's a bridge I don't need to worry about right now. We'll wait until we have to cross it.

So we got some more answers. Obviously nothing is going to give us a cut and dry reason for why this happened. But I'm glad it's not a total mystery; I think that would be harder to carry right now.