Cassie's Love Story

I am writing the story of my Angel in Heaven, Chaz Michael. It has been a sometimes, unbearable journey. My only hope writing this story is to educate women and doctors of the signs and symptoms of the medical condition I had called Obstetric Cholestasis or Cholestasis of Pregnancy. My only hope is to prevent women from enduring the pain that I have lived. This is how it happened…

I had an uneventful first pregnancy and labor. I gave birth to Caymon Russell on September 2, 1995 at 2:32am. He was 8 pounds, 9 ounces and 21" long. 

On August 2, 1997 we moved from Kentucky to Florida. On January 24, 1999 I took a home pregnancy test and it was positive. I was ecstatic.

On April 28, 1999 I had my one and only ultrasound that showed that I was having another boy. Everything was great.

Then on September 14, 1999 everything changed. I had been busy cleaning all day and in the middle of eating lunch at 11:30am it occurred to me that I had not felt Chaz move much. After I ate, I decided to lie down. After 30 minutes of feeling no movement, I called my doctor. She told me to do "movement counts" for the next 30 minutes. I called her and told her he had only shifted a little once. She told me to repeat it and he only kicked and slightly shifted once.

She told me to meet her in labor and delivery. I was uneasy. I arrived at the hospital and a nurse came in and hooked up 2 monitors. My doctor came in later and said everything looked normal on the reports. They sent me home after 4 hours of monitoring. My doctor's explanation for the decrease in movement was that I was so close to delivery. Chaz was simply out of room.

On September 24, 1999 I went to my regular check-up (weekly at this point). They checked his heartbeat. I heard it and it was strong.

On Monday, September 27, 1999 I was out shopping when the palms of my hands began to itch. It finally became annoying so I looked at them. They had red splotches on them. I left, went home and called my doctor. They scheduled me for an ultrasound and stress test the next morning at 9am.

A pain awakened me at 4:20am the next morning. I was in labor, 2 minutes apart, 45 seconds long. I called my doctor and she told me to go to the hospital. 

I arrived at the hospital and got into the room at 6am. I had a sensation. I needed to push and couldn't stop it. The nurse checked me and told me I was 10cm dilated. The nurse to my right tried to hook up monitors, find heart tones, etc. She kept moving the monitor around on my stomach trying to find where he was laying. It all happened so fast. I didn't really have time to register what was happening. "Don't push" became "PUSH" in a matter of seconds.

Chaz Michael was born still at 6:09am on September 28, 1999. He was 6 pounds, 12½ ounces and 20" long. The top layer of skin had slightly peeled away from the insides of his tiny thighs, which the nurses said indicated he had been deceased for 24-48 hours.

The cause of death on the certificate stated "unknown". They couldn't find anything of significance and I refused to let them cut on his perfect, beautiful, tiny body.
I was blindsided. I didn't know how to react. This pain. This emptiness. How do I move forward? I dreaded waking every morning and realized I had taken for granted once simple, daily routines such as taking a shower, brushing my teeth, eating, going to the grocery, cleaning and the worst, laying down to go to sleep.

Seeing his rosy cheeks and lips, his dark hair, his blue/gray eyes in my mind each time my eyes closed, the guilt of not knowing how bad it really was and the never ending questions like “Why me?” Knowing that I would never get to hear him cry, feed him, see him take his first step, say his first word, watch him get onto a school bus, go to his first dance, have his first kiss, girlfriend, car. Not watching him walk down the aisle to get married, have his own children and none of this compared to not ever getting to hear those four most precious words you can hear from your child, "I love you, Mom."

Four weeks later I discovered the Internet was my only escape to keep my mind busy until I was so tired I could fall sleep without thinking. By the grace of God, I stumbled on an article. (Unbeknownst to me, it was the only one on this medical condition available online at the time.) When I saw the article, everything jumped out at me, the splotchy, red, itching hands and/or feet. It said that the liver can not handle the excess estrogen levels produced during pregnancy. And the most important thing, the fetal distress at approximately 37 weeks of gestation due to the fact that the baby at that stage would no longer receive nourishment from the placenta.

I was rummaging through my calendar like a maniac. As I began counting the weeks, the knot began to get tighter in my stomach. It became clear that this medical condition was my second son's demise. When I read that the only way to prevent fetal death from occurring when a mother has this condition is to deliver no later than 38 weeks it felt like someone was sucking the life out of me.

Knowing I could've demanded that delivery, when I was in the hospital on the 14th and he would be here now, made it impossible to breathe. I was dizzy and nauseas.

At my 6 weeks postpartum appointment I went to my doctor with my printed information in hand. After she browsed through it I asked her to do the blood tests it indicated. She assured me that it would be too late to know since the problem would only be evident if I were pregnant. The one good thing she did was to prescribe birth control pills to keep me from getting pregnant too quickly. Because of this, the estrogen from those pills kept my liver functions elevated enough to confirm (with blood tests) my suspicions.

For the doctor who told me not to search for a reason because I may never find one and I would only torment myself I say to you, "IGNORANCE IS BLISS!" My research may have been the only thing that saved my, now 5 year old, precious miracle, Angel on Earth, Christa Jo who was born on May 14, 2001 at 10:45pm. She was delivered at 37 weeks of gestation. She was 6 pounds and 18" long.

Still No More

Return to Our Love Stories