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mere lay our little 10-week-old baby, totally motionless, and because of the transparency of internal sturctures on ultrasound, we all witnessed that tiny little heart agonally beating. The heart rate was about 20 to 40 initially and very irregular in rhythm.
We stared in grieving silence as the pauses between teats grew longer. We could even see the heart’s upper and lower chambers contracting alternately. Also, because the baby was so still we could see every detail of that little body so clearly, the tiny arms and fingers, legs and toes, his eyes, nose and mouth. And that dying heart - it was so familiar to me.
This was the death of our little unborn baby, and we actually witnessed it with our own eyes. The doctor was compassionate and at the same time totally amazed. You see in all his years of practice he had never actually seen a fetus die on ultrasound. He said seeing such a thing was against all odds, because a few minutes earlier and we would have seen a normally beating heart, and a few minutes later we would have seen no heartbeat at all. We would have seen a dead, motionless child, which is what we had to return the next day and verify was the case.
Because of my background and the circumstances, that ultrasound is one of the most clear and painful memories of my life. At the time, I
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