I've Been Thinking
Eight and a half months pregnant. I was awaiting the birth of my second child. I went to the clinic in Ogallala for a maternity check-up with Dr. Spencer. I figured it would be a normal doctor visit and then I would pick up my son Mark from my mother’s house and head home.
“Hello Dr. Spencer, only two weeks to go, I can’t wait, but I haven’t felt the baby move like usual, is that because it is nearing delivery time and the baby has shifted?”Dr. Spencer listened with his stethoscope and he listened some more. He had a look of concern on his face. He told me to go to the hospital and I would be admitted and they would put oxygen on me and he would be up at noon to check on me. When he arrived he told me he still did not hear a heartbeat and feared the baby was not alive. My mind was going in all directions, “What did he just say? How can this be? I don’t understand.” I asked him what will happen next. He said I could go home and go into labor in the next two weeks naturally or they could induce me that afternoon with an IV drug called Pit.
I told the doctor that I would go crazy going home and having to wait for natural labor to occur knowing the baby was not alive. I tried to reach my husband Dean, he was a farmer and out in the field. No cell phones back in 1972 and his parents did not have a phone so I made calls a couple of friends of Dean and they finally got a hold of him. When Dean arrived at the hospital they started the IV. While I was in the delivery room on of the nurses tried to put a mask on my face to knock me out, I shook my head and said I did not want that, that I could handle what was to come. The baby was “born” or “stillborn” three hours later. They told me it was a little girl. Dr. Spencer said the cord was wrapped around her foot. Usually stillborn babies have the cord wrapped around their neck. He said they could do an autopsy on her so they would know for sure why she died. I said isn’t there any other way to tell besides doing that. He said they could check the placenta.
She was taken to the Bullock-Long Funeral home in Grant and her funeral was a graveside in the Fairview Cemetery by Grant. May 1, 1972 was a terrible day all around. The wind was blowing with a vengeance. Just family was in attendance. The wind was so bad that while Pastor Darwin Wasmann was doing the service the lid blew off of her casket and my two brothers had to run and catch it. I swear she was buried in what looked like a Styrofoam cooler the way it looked. Maybe that is what baby caskets looked like 53 years ago. As I said the wind was so bad that day the wind washed several cement barriers off the top of Kingsley Dam.
A couple days later I went to the funeral home to pay for their services and Mrs. Long said “no charge”. I was so mixed up before that burial I told her I could have brought over something to put on her to wear and she said they put on a little shirt and a receiving blanket and they were happy to help out. I was in such a daze it was hard to think on all of these things. I named her Lori Ann Lagler.
I had a follow-up visit with Dr. Spencer a month later. I asked him what they found out about the autopsy on the placenta and he said “Oh, I’m sorry didn’t the hospital let you know they threw out the placenta when they cleaned the delivery room?” So, we will never know what happened to her, only God knows.
I know that people do not know what to say to a person when there is a loss of a baby. When trying to give words of comfort for heaven’s sake DO NOT say, “Oh, you will have other children.” That is not what a mother wants to hear. What about that child? Do not dismiss that child. Yes, I did have two other daughters later but she is still in the back of my mind and I wonder what she would have looked like, who she would have grown up to be.
At least I had my 14 month old son Mark to hold when I got home. He filled the emptiness in my heart and on my lap. I hugged him tightly.
Mother of Mark, Lori Ann, Becky and Katie