Dad Scott tells about finding out that his daughter Henley would be born still at his wife Meghan’s, 36-week appointment, and describes her being born by C-section, and the time after with his daughter. After they decide to have her cremated, Scott finds a castle urn, because she’s “his princess”.
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In the birth story podcast episode, dad Scott recounts Henley’s stillbirth:
- Time Stamp 1:54: Who Scott is and how he met his wife, Meghan
- Time Stamp 4:25: When they found out that their daughter Henley did have a heartbeat
- Time Stamp 11:24: C-section delivery of Henley by Meghan’s doctor
- Time Stamp 15:04: Meeting Henley for the first time and seeing her hair
- Time Stamp 20:15: Henley is cremated and Scott chooses her urn, a castle
- Time Stamp 23:44: Scott’s last bit of advice to watch for erratic movements
- Listen to Scott’s advice of what not to say to a loss parent in his advice Episode 32.
- Listen to Scott’s wife, Meghan’s birth story of Henley here in Episode 29.
- Listen to Scott’s wife, Meghan’s advice of dealing with grief after Henley’s stillbirth here in Episode 30.
Full Transcript
Scott 0:00
My daughter’s name is Henley Ryan.
She was small. She was about four pounds. Born October 3 at 12:49 am.
Lee 0:31
Welcome to Still A Part of Us, a podcast where moms and dads share the story of their child who was stillborn or who died in infancy. I’m Lee Redd, and on this episode, Scott is telling the story of his daughter Henley, who was stillborn at 36 weeks.
As a word of caution to our listeners. This story contains emotional triggers of stillbirth and infant loss. Please keep yourself emotionally and mentally healthy and seek help if needed. Also, be aware that these stories may differ from his or her partner’s, as these accounts are told, from their own perspective through the lens of trauma, heartache, and the passage of time. Please respect our moms and dads, who are brave and gracious to share their children with us.
Scott 1:22
Yeah, it was a very long day actually. We went to the doctor’s October 2nd at 8am. Just a normal checkup. And Meghan was getting the checkup. I was supposed to go get the Tdap shot. And so, and then I had to go to work. So they were, Alright, here’s your shot. And then I was about to head out and doctor’s like, Hey, let’s listen to the heartbeat. And used a little–I forget what it’s called–couldn’t find a heartbeat. But then she got the ultrasound and still couldn’t find anything. And so that’s when we found out.
Lee 1:54
Let’s talk about you. What do you do, Scott? What do you–
Scott 1:58
Um, I work for a nonprofit. We help teach and train people with learning mental disabilities like autism, Down syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, how to join the modern workforce, either with custodial work, filing, stuff like that. The ones that we can’t find jobs out in the real world, we actually hire them inside of our company, and we pay them to do that same thing, custodial, stuff like that. Some of them do piecework, and they just put stuff together. And we package it up, and we ship it out to the different places that we have contracts with.
Lee 2:38
Wonderful. And then your wife Meghan, she recorded her podcasts earlier, but how did you meet Meghan?
Scott 2:46
I met Meghan through a friend of ours. I was working at a hookah lounge. And…yeah. And…she, our friend came in, my friend came in and then she came in. We just–that’s how we met. We hung out. Became friends. Had a great time. And that’s pretty much how it was. And that was about 2007, 2008.
Lee 3:12
Well, good. And your daughter, Meghan–sorry–your daughter, Henley. I hope you didn’t marry your daughter! Your daughter, Henley, is she your first?
Scott 3:24
She was our first. Yeah.
Lee 3:27
IS she your first, I guess…yeah.
Scott 3:29
Yeah.
Lee 3:30
And tell us–start at the very, very, very beginning. Were you guys planning on a child or…?
Scott 3:36
Yeah, for a long time, I was, you know, just wasn’t sure if I wanted kids. I had a rough childhood and I didn’t want to have my baggage put onto my kids, kind of thing. But after a while, I was like, Yeah, let’s, let’s let’s start. And that’s pretty much what happened. We just kept going and going and then finally everything was great. And she’s pregnant and I was super excited. Decorated everything, just went all out.
It’s a double edged sword right there. It hurts.
The room’s still set up too. Name’s still on the wall and everything.
Lee 4:15
Man. So you were going to go get your Tdap boosters.
Scott 4:18
Yeah. What’s that?
Lee 4:22
Is it a booster or just Tdap shot or–?
Scott 4:25
It’s a Tdap shot. I forget everything it does. I want to say it was like tuberculosis and some other stuff like that. It’s basically just a cocktail of different things. And so when in for that, and this is probably only the third appointment I’ve ever gone to with Meghan. And so it was like, Alright, well, I gotta get to work too. So her appointment was 8am, and about 8:15 or so I got my shot and I was about to head out and the doctor stopped me. And she was like, Wait, let’s listen to the heartbeat before you go. And I’m like, alright, yeah, okay. And so she grabs the little thing and can’t find it. And at first, I wasn’t thinking too much about it, because this was only my third visit with the doctor and everything. But then I’m looking at her face and–the doctor’s face and I can see that she’s looking a little concerned, actually a little pale. And she’s like, You know what? I’m just gonna go grab the ultrasound and she brought it over. And she’s doing it and I can see, Henley’s heart, and it was not beating.
And I instantly was just crushed. But Meghan was holding it together. She’s, she’s gotten really good with dealing with loss. She’s lost, she lost her father and her grandmother, both in 2016. So she’s like, Okay, let’s go to the next step. Meghan starts getting cleaned up, we grab her stuff, and the doctor’s in tears, and she’s hugging us. And I can see Meghan’s trying to hold it together, so I’m trying to hold it together for her. And we just get in the car and we start driving to the hospital, which is about 15 minutes away from my, our doctor’s office.
And we check in and there was like no rush. Nobody was like, Oh my god, let’s check this and everything. So we’re like, alright, obviously, they’re pretty confident in this doctor’s findings. And it was literally like, about an hour or so after we checked in the hospital before the ultrasound technician came with her machine to confirm. And they confirm everything. They didn’t even turn their screen away as they were typing their findings into the computer. So we were able to see and read everything.
Lee 6:39
That’s–I don’t know it, it’s one of those situations where, you know, who, what do you want to know? What do you want to do? And when we are in that situation, we’re just completely clueless and oblivious to what really is normal and that doesn’t sound normal to me like, Ah!, you know?
Scott 7:01
Yeah, it definitely didn’t feel or feel normal. I was just like, Why isn’t anybody coming in here? Like all we had was our nurse, who was adorable. She was, she, she’s a new nurse. And she, she’s in tears. As soon as we got she walked us into her room, she was in tears. And she’s like, I’ll be honest, I’ve delivered multiple babies. But this is the first situation like this I’ve dealt with. And she’s in tears. And Meghan and I were still focused on Okay, next steps. Let’s figure this out. And so it was a little rough seeing her cry.
And, but then later on, I guess we scared her, because none of us, neither of us are crying, and the nurse literally pulled me out of the room and is like, Is Meghan okay? Like, she’s not showing anything. Is everything okay? And I’m like, This is just–she’s just, she’s very…I don’t want to say goal oriented, but she’s very focused on the task. So that’s what was going on.
Lee 8:00
The time and place, time and place.
Scott 8:02
Yeah, pretty much.
Lee 8:03
So what happened after there was the confirmation that Henley did not have a heartbeat?
Scott 8:08
After the confirmation and everything, we waited a bit longer. And a different doctor than ours–because ours was still at her practice. She was actually not supposed to be scheduled to go to that hospital until the next day. So a different doctor came in, who does work alongside with our doctor, and a really, really nice guy. He honestly kind of sounded Jamaican, which was really interesting. That accent was definitely interesting to listen to while he’s trying to give us all the information of what’s gonna be going on.
But he gave us all these selections that we could do and what could happen, kind of thing. Like if we tried to induce, what could happen. Because Henley was really breech up in Meghan. Like her–Hendley’s head was actually up under her ribs. Yeah, she was way up there and he’s like, Well, you can try to induce. But the problem with this, is since she’s not moving around or anything, her head can get stuck. And then we’d have to do a more in depth kind of surgery, kind of thing, which could actually ruin Meghan’s possibility of getting pregnant again in the future. And so he’s like the safest, in my opinion, would be the C-section. And so, Meghan and I talked about it for a bit, and we decided to go with the C-section. But Meghan wanted to wait till the next day to have her doctor, the one that she’s been with this whole time. And so we kind of just hung out. Meghan and I–
Lee 9:45
Did you go back home, or…did you go back home or were you hanging out at the hospital?
Scott 9:50
We stayed at the hospital the whole time. Meghan, actually, her body started to realize something was up and started having mild contractions and stuff. So we didn’t want to go back home. And plus anything we’d be able to face going home, because we had nursery all set up and everything. Didn’t want to really see all that right now.
But we had a great family friend. She went and she came to the hospital. She was talking to us. Everything. I started making phone calls to people like Meghan’s mom, who was in California at the time. They were on vacation, her and her stepdad, her and Meghan’s stepdad, they’re on vacation. And so they’re like, We’re grabbing our stuff; we’re driving back now. And our friend, she went to our house. She picked up a whole bunch of stuff for us–laptop, pretty much anything to keep us distracted. And then I left my car at the doctor’s office. So her husband had to drive my car, because of the stick shift, back to my house.
Lee 10:51
It’s safety security right there.
Scott 10:53
Exactly. Nobody can steal my car.
But I didn’t want to leave it at the doctor’s office, because it has all my work tools in there. And so he grabbed that and he drove it back home. They came–she, uh her, his wife came to the hospital, gave us all our stuff and food. And we just kind of just, try to stay focused on what needed to happen. And also distract yourself. Watch Netflix and movies and stuff like that.
Lee 11:24
And so the next morning happened. Well, I guess–
Scott 11:26
It was later that night. Her doctor didn’t want us sitting in the hospital that long. And so she, after she left her practice, she went home, fed her kids, had dinner really quick. And then she came in around 10:30 at night. And she’s like, I’m coming in. If you guys want we’ll do this now. And that way, you guys can recover. You’re not sitting here suffering and thinking about all this. And that’s when it got me even more. I actually had to step out and just the fact that she was willing to come in, when she was already going to be on call the next day. She was already at work all day. And it just was really touching.
And so we said, Okay, we’ll do it. Meghan’s mom and stepdad finally got there at that point. And we told them what was going on, what the plan was. And her stepdad was awesome. He actually smuggled in a water bottle filled with vodka and cranberry juice for me. Because he saw I was on edge. He snuck that in for me, and then we got ready. And we did the C-section. And it was about an hour or so going. I was just there, focused on Meghan. The blind was up, so we couldn’t see anything. And both of us are in tears the whole time, just– And then finally like the nurses, the doctors, everything just went quiet. And that’s when we knew that Henley was, was finally out. And yeah, there’s–the silence is just, it was deafening.
And then after everything was sewn up, all that stuff with that, the doctor talked to us for a little bit after everything was cleaned up. And she believed that it was caused because Meghan’s placenta was on the front of her stomach area, not in the back, but her umbilical cord was abnormally short. It was…she said that she barely had enough to take Henley out and put her on Meghan’s stomach. It was so tight. So we think that…the doctor thinks that, every time Henley would try to roll to get into position, she was actually kinking her cord and cutting off all the supplies she needed, until it finally just collapsed. Yeah.
Lee 14:06
It is one of those situations where, after our son Brannan, the doctor, the doctor said it really is how anybody is ever born, is amazing. Because anything and everything can go wrong. So Henley is delivered via C-section, you guys wheeled back to the room, what happens after?
Scott 14:30
So, we get back to the room. We transfer Meghan into her bed and we did that. And we’re–the doc– nobody comes in for a bit. They’re cleaning Henley up and everything in the other, in another room. And we’re just sitting there waiting. Meghan’s kind of joking a little bit, trying to keep things light, because she’s like, The weirdest part is I have no idea where my legs are in space. She’s like, I can’t feel anything. I’m looking at my toes, telling them to wiggle, but they just won’t move. So she starts to get a little bit of movement back.
And that’s when the nurses come in and says, Are you guys ready to see Henley? And we bought an outfit and everything that Meghan’s mom purchased–this cute little Ralph Lauren, pink onesie. And I brought a hat from home and everything. And like, Yeah. And so she came in and handed Henley to Meghan. And she’s holding her, and we’re just, we’re just looking at her and admiring her. And the nurses, we asked her to take some photos with us. And so she’s taking some photos of us and everything. And the one thing I was super curious about, and I needed to see, was her hair. I needed to know she took after me or if she took after Meghan and she took after me.
Lee 15:55
In what way? She took after you because you have dark hair and, or–?
It was dark, thick, curly hair. So she didn’t take after my color when I–my hair color when I was born. I was, when I was born, I was a toehead. Just straight white blond hair. But with the curls and how thick it was, we knew she took after me, because Meghan’s hair is like, stick-straight and very fine. So that was the one thing I was super intrigued by. And I was sad, but so happy to see that she took after me in that point. But everything else was Meghan. She had Meghan’s nose and her cheeks. And it was…it was great. And I mean, not great, but great seeing it. And yeah…it was heartbreaking.
It’s a cruel situation. So you guys, how long were you in the hospital?
Scott 16:54
We got to the hospital around 9:15am. And we were there…
Lee 17:01
You delivered at midnight-ish…
Scott 17:02
We delivered at 12:39am. Yeah. Henley was born. And we stayed there for…we were cleared to go actually, the next day. The doctor was like, you’re doing great. Meghan was already walking around, struggling a little bit, but she was still walking in her own power. And the doctor’s like, If you guys want, you can go home the next day. And Meghan’s like, No, I’m gonna stay another night. And so we stayed another night. But when we had Henley with us, her mom, Meghan’s mom was in another room. And we were going to set up in another room for her to see Henley and the hold and stuff like that. We didn’t think that we’d emotionally be able to see her with her granddaughter at that point. And so, but we asked her and she, she’s like, No. She was more worried about her daughter, wanted to check on Meghan and everything like that. So we’re like, Okay.
We had her for a bit. And we both wish we would have had her longer, because we had the option to, for up to 24 hours. And but at the time we couldn’t do it. We started breaking down and we just…yeah. So we decided not to go home the next day. We decided to stay the night again. And so we just–hanging out watching movies, friends visiting, relaxing, and just taking care of her as best–taking care of Meghan as best I could. I keep saying her and I keep forgetting we’re recording.
Lee 18:39
Did you guys decide to have a funeral for Henley or–?
Scott 18:45
We didn’t do a…we didn’t do a funeral. We had her cremated. We got in contact–there’s an nonprofit here in Vegas Meghan found, and I–honestly I have, I’m really bad with memory, so I don’t remember the name of it. But they got us in contact with a funeral home. And they, I guess the owners had a loss as well. His child, I believe, was two, when it passed. And he decided that any child under under five, he will take care of all cremation for free just to help out a family and all that stuff.
Lee 19:26
It’s, it’s, it’s amazing because we’ve had so many people, so many people come to our aid and it’s a wonderful little mercy for us. It’s, you know, it’s hard to make decisions in that situation. And it’s, it’s just terrible.
Scott 19:46
For sure.
Lee 19:47
So do you have Henley–some parents have like…we have a friend who had their daughter cremated, and there’s this nice little heart that they have on their shelf. And then we have another friend who, they split up the ashes into vials and the husband has some and he wears it. Almost dog collar-ish, dog tag-ish…um not dog collar, but dog tag…
Scott 20:15
So it came, she came in a little box, and it looked plastic. I wasn’t a fan of this box. I actually hated this box. It just had a little teddy bear on it. I found online another urn and it’s a castle, and it reminded me instantly of the Disneyland castle. And I’m like, She’s my princess. We’re going to get this for her and ordered it and we transferred her in. And right now she’s sitting on her dresser inside of her room with a teddy bear that our friend got us, which was a huge help. She found out that there’s a group that you can purchase a teddy bear for them and they will weight the teddy bear to the exact weight of your child they lost. And so this teddy bear, it’s there. It weighs four pounds, 10 ounces, and it has Henley’s name on it. It has her weight and her birth date on it. And it’s just sitting there, along with some custom onesies that that we had with her name on anything. And it’s just sitting on the shelf on her dresser. And also on the castle is a set of Mickey ears that you get in the park with her name embroidered into it.
Lee 21:30
Now just to let everybody know, Scott and Meghan go to Disneyland a lot.
Scott 21:37
Every every four to six weeks.
Lee 21:39
Every four to six weeks, so…
Scott 21:42
Huge fans of Disney. I was really looking forward to taking Henley to Disney, because the first time we would have taken her would have been, not this last trip we did this weekend, but the one right before. She would have been old enough and had her vaccinations and we could have taken her.
Lee 22:02
Do you take that little stuffed teddy bear with you?
Scott 22:04
We have not taken the stuffed teddy bear, but I do have a little stuffed Groot. Not, not the one that I showed you before, but another one. And it was the first stuffy I purchased for Henley while Meghan was still pregnant with her. And it was the very first stuffy that she was going to have. That one I do take with me and I–sitting on my nightstand with me. I have a bracelet that’s custom-made with Henley’s footprint and her name on it, and at night when I go to bed that bracelet is sitting on top of that Groot’s head, just right there for me to just to always know to grab it. I was looking for an embroidery house here that will actually embroider her name on to that Groot.
Winter and Lee Redd 22:54
Oh?
Scott 22:55
Yeah, I have not been able to find one that I’m willing to leave the Groot with overnight, cuz it’s, it’s just so precious to me, that I don’t want to risk anything.
Lee 23:06
You might get a patch. And then you sew the patch on yourself.
Scott 23:10
Yeah, I was thinking the patch. I was gonna, I was trying to take it to Disneyland and see if they can do it with their machines there, that way we can actually get the same thread and font that we have her Mickey Mouse ears. And but they said that they won’t do it. They’ll only do the stuff that they personally sell in the parks and this one was never purchased at the parks.
Lee 23:33
Well, good luck finding a workaround, so…. Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the birth of your daughter Henley?
Scott 23:44
The night before we had the doctor’s appointment, is what really sticks with me and Meghan both. It uh…we were laying on the couch, and Henley was kicking up a storm. Like just crazy, more than she’s ever done before in the past. And we’re like, Maybe she’s rolling to get into position, stuff like that. Didn’t think anything of it. And then the next day is when we found out what happened. And that’s what really sticks with me, because I’m like, Was this actually her kicking in distress, and we just didn’t think about it? Because we were never–we were always told to look out for lower amounts of movement, not higher. That’s the one thing that really sticks with me that, that I think about daily.
Lee 24:31
It’s heavy. It’s…I have no words. But it’s–I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.
Scott 24:41
Thank you.
Lee 24:42
Thank you.
I personally would like to thank Scott for being on the podcast and opening himself up. It’s hard to be vulnerable, and to share this special story with us. Thank you, Scott.
Head over to our website StillAPartofUs.com. There, you’ll be able to find the show notes including a full transcript of this interview and any resources that were mentioned. There you could also sign up for a short and helpful email newsletter. You can also find out how you can become a patron and support the work it takes to produce this show for just a few dollars a month. And lastly, you can find out how to get in touch with us if you want to share your child’s story with us.
The show was produced and edited by Winter and Lee Redd. Thanks to Josh Woodward for letting us use his song “She Dreams in Blue”. You could find him at JoshWoodward.com. And lastly, subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend that might need it and tell them to subscribe. Why? Because people need to know that even though our babies are no longer with us, they are still a part of us.
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