Taking long hikes kept me calm because about all I could do was put one foot in front of the other.
I have a chronic medical condition called autosomal dominant hypocalcemia which means that my body has trouble regulating electrolytes specifically calcium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorous. To manage this condition, I take many, many pills, and when I got pregnant my blood levels were all out-of-whack. By the end of my pregnancy with Bea, I was taking over 60 pills a day.
Because of this medical condition, I was heavily surveilled during Bea’s gestation. I had weekly ultrasounds from 3 months in, but despite this surveillance on September 12, 2016, we found out that she had died. The physicians induced labor on the night of the 12th and Bea was born on the afternoon of the 14th at the University of Colorado Hospital. We hung out with her in the hospital for nearly 48 hours. My parents and an aunt came to meet her. We took pictures with the organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and many of our own. The photo that means the most is one my partner snapped with his cell phone just as we were leaving.


I have a chronic medical condition called autosomal dominant hypocalcemia which means that my body has trouble regulating electrolytes specifically calcium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorous. To manage this condition, I take many, many pills, and when I got pregnant my blood levels were all out-of-whack. By the end of my pregnancy with Bea, I was taking over 60 pills a day.
Because of this medical condition, I was heavily surveilled during Bea’s gestation. I had weekly ultrasounds from 3 months in, but despite this surveillance on September 12, 2016, we found out that she had died. The physicians induced labor on the night of the 12th and Bea was born on the afternoon of the 14th at the University of Colorado Hospital. We hung out with her in the hospital for nearly 48 hours. My parents and an aunt came to meet her. We took pictures with the organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and many of our own. The photo that means the most is one my partner snapped with his cell phone just as we were leaving.