Jasper’s Legacy

My name is Brittany Morgan, I’m 25 and I have been working over the last year to build Jasper’s legacy through offering not only birth services as a Doula but also Postpartum NICU/Bereavement care as well. 

There’s so much community work involved that I never expected to see myself doing after losing Jasper. I really never expected to end up working with birthing families, until slowly birth work found me. I thank my church for planting the seeds and allowing me to feel acceptance. 

I found out I was pregnant in September 2019, my first ultrasound was the 17th. Everything was pretty normal at that point. It wasn’t until we got around to gender testing that my Subchorionic hemorrhage was discovered. It appeared as common to my providers at the time.

Throughout my pregnancy, My providers never showed genuine concern as my Subchorionic hemorrhage increased in size instead of dissipating. I had started spotting just before finding out the gender and there were several times I went to the ER assuming I was having a miscarriage. My third ultrasound I went in and was given news that it had actually doubled in size & at that point had to assertively push to be referred out to a specialist.

My midwives had tried bedrest and the specialist even did to. The thing is, The midwives said I would be seen at least every two weeks by the specialist. Yet, he wanted me back not 2 weeks later but 4. I was referred to this man for having so much coagulated blood around my placenta that they couldn’t see the damage, but he wanted me back in a month after bed rest. 

It’s always so interesting being reminded that I gave birth the day of that second appointment after being hospitalized for three days trying to slow my labor.

I wish I could tell you the amount of magnesium they gave me, but what I can tell you is that they had to keep an antidote next to my bedside so that I wouldn’t go into toxic shock from a risk of fluid on my brain. My contractions were obviously not going to stop, but they were so certain they’d be sending me home. They were wrong.

By the end of the 4th magnesium bag I was still experiencing labor progression and had been moved into 4 or 5 different rooms. 

I had to fight the OBs on call and argue my way out of having an epidural called up to my room. I had to beg nurses for something besides ice chips and water, I got chicken noodle broth. And, I was given stadol three times during active labor, each time being told it wouldn’t hit me like the last. They were wrong. I was very in and out of it, thankfully one of my nurses there before my last room transition advised me not to accept the last dose until I really couldn’t make conversation anymore with contractions.

When they moved again the contractions were so overwhelming but then there was a moment where everyone in the room seem to be in conversation and the midwife was apparently waiting for me and I believe I actually asked what do I do. I don’t remembering having the urge to push so I had to sort of scream/yell to get my body to to really start my pushing so to speak. It could’ve been the stadol and anxiety stalling everything. My water wouldn’t break because jasper was too small and when they ruptured it there was an odor and discoloration. 

Probably because of the damage to my placenta as it was very deteriorated. The midwife was actually shocked with what my placenta looked like. Jasper was less than a pound and not even a foot long. He was overall as healthy as a 26 week old baby. Scans were consistent and doing great.

Ultimately Jasper passed away just 20 days later on Feb. 3 2020 from NEC. A nurse checked in nutrition line where they’d give my breast milk through his umbilical line. They had initially been going up in increments of 2 on his calories of “human milk fortifier” being added to my milk for him to develop. I was never advised of any risk or informed of what could go wrong. I was just informed of the benefits and how this could help him. Due to how well he was accepting the small adjustments they told us they had decided to double his calorie intake. We essentially came in and it had already been done and we thought that was a good thing. The last time I was with my son was at a 2 PM visit on a Sunday after not visiting for almost a weeks because a head cold I had gotten at the start of Covid. When they checked the nutrition line that evening at 8 PM during touch time I nor his father had gone and every part of me wants to hold on to that and feel that guilt. At that time he had not digested the milk but it was not discolored so then nurse on duty decided to give the milk back because they are trained to look at the discoloration to make the decision on whether it’s being digested and needs to be pulled from the line. At the time it appeared all right to the nurse and so upon giving it back they hoped that he would just finished digesting. Instead gas set up and by 7am we had received only the second call to inform us our son was in a medically induced coma enduring transfusions while becoming septic. His iron was awful and the tissue in his intestines was killing him. There was no way for a surgeon to come down because the hospital in Athens didn’t have the equipment or the anesthesia available for babies his size. They also did not give him a survival rate high enough to survive transport and said it wouldn’t be viable. Knowing stories of similar instances including one most recently at the same nicu makes me wish I would’ve followed through with having the autopsy done to verify whether or not they had caused damage when running lines to his bowl and how this progressed so aggressively. They called once at 1am roughly and we had just gone to bed, they said they hadn’t called back because they didn’t believe his life was in danger. He passed away at 6:10pm Monday just over 24 hours after being seemingly healthy. 

Everything following this was a blur and hard and I remember waking up every morning right around 4am soooo restless because my body hadn’t adjusted to not having a baby at home to care for. My maternal clock had been kick started and didn’t know how to stop. The first year was basically retraining my body and my thoughts around this trauma. I really didn’t think I’d come out of it.

Somehow Jasper lead me right to God and his death has become something so much bigger than I could’ve planned for. 

Thank you for allowing me to share this story.