Rhonda McMeekin's story: Love, loss and motherhood

She counted her fingers and toes, swaddled her in a blanket and put a hat on her head, but Rhonda McMeekin's first child was born "sleeping."  

McMeekin, 29, had the unimaginable happen on the day that was meant to be the happiest of her life — her daughter Everlee Rose McMeekin was stillborn.

The Mount Pearl woman delivered the full-term baby on Feb. 13, 2013.

The one job I had as a mother was to keep my baby safe and alive, and for whatever reason my body betrayed me and didn't do the job it was supposed to- Rhonda McMeekin

The pregnancy itself was uneventful but it took a turn for the worse when she hit the 34-week mark.

"I called my husband, we went to the hospital [and then] the case room, and they got me up on the table," McMeekin said. 

"[They] tried to find the baby's heartbeat and her heartbeat was gone."

Over the next several months, McMeekin went into the throes of despair, grappling with the guilt she was felt with. 

"The one job I had as a mother was to keep my baby safe and alive, and for whatever reason my body betrayed me and didn't do the job it was supposed to," McMeekin said. 

McMeekin had suffered a placental abruption, which happens when the placenta falls away from the walls of the uterus, depriving the baby of oxygen and nutrients.

Closed-door nursery 

In a bungalow in a Mount Pearl subdivision, a baby's bedroom sits dormant in the corner of the home. The door is closed and the brightly-coloured items inside are untouched.

McMeekin turns the door knob and opens the door — one of very few times she's gone in the room that was staged for her daughter's arrival.

"I try to come in here and desensitize myself to it, which is kind of sad. I sit in the rocking chair and this blanket over here that's on top of the dresser — that was the blanket that she was wrapped in when they brought her to me."

Living without the daughter she desperately wanted was excruciating, but McMeekin turned her grief into words. 

She mustered up the courage to talk about Being Everlee's Mom in the most public way possible.

"About 10 days after she was born, I started writing a blog," she told me in an interview.

"Looking back through those things now, it's a dark and scary place for me because I have come a long way in my grief journey," McMeekin said.

"On top of that, I've reached out to other moms in the area that have gone through miscarriage and stillbirth and early infant loss."

In keeping with being an unofficial spokesperson for parents of stillborns, McMeekin asked for — and received — systematic changes from the Newfoundland and Labrador government so that parents of still born children receive a certificate of birth.

'Rainbow baby'

On Jan. 1, McMeekin took to her blog to announce some good news — she was three and a half months pregnant with her second baby, nine months after burying her first child.

This time around, the experience was not nearly as exciting or pleasant. 

McMeekin learned that there was an eight per cent chance that her second child would also be stillborn, like Everlee.

That fact hung over McMeekin like a dark cloud.

"I'm around other pregnant people and they're so excited; they're talking about the baby's name and when the baby comes home ... and I still feel like, well, if the baby comes home," McMeekin told me last spring. 

Then more than seven months pregnant, she added, "I'm trying my best. I still talk to it and sing to it and do all those other crazy mom things that other pregnant people do."

Months after our initial meeting in January, doctors ordered McMeekin to stay on bedrest for the remainder of the pregnancy, to ensure that this time, she and her husband Darcy could bring home a healthy baby. 

He came out and they put him up on my chest and it was surreal, I can't even explain it- Rhonda McMeekin

"Basically, what my day consists of now is that I have to spend nine hours of my waking day lying on my side — immobile — pretty much not allowed to get up to do anything," McMeekin said as she strapped a blood pressure cuff to her arm in her living room.

"No housework, no stairs, no cooking — no anything like that, of course."

All of it is worth it, though, she said.  

"Ten minutes will go by and I don't feel the baby kick and I start to freak out," she said. 

"And you know, that's quite normal —you should feel the baby kick about 6 times every 2 hours. Luckily, I have a very active baby, so I get to feel it a little bit more. But 10 mins go by and the first thing I do is find something sweet or cold, trying to make the baby move." 

Welcome baby Finn

On June 16, McMeekin delivered a healthy Finnegan Alexander Joseph at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's. 

She and her family left out a collective sigh of relief.

"He came out and they put him up on my chest and it was surreal. I can't even explain it," McMeekin beamed. 

"He cuddled right into me right away and buried his head in my chest and I couldn't see his face. I kept saying, 'I can't see him, I can't see him, I want to see his face.'

​"I knew he was a boy, that was about it, and we didn't name him right away because I couldn't see him and I didn't want to name him before I saw his face. So, when I finally got to pick him up and take him up and look at him, I said, 'I think he's a Finnegan.' It fits him just perfectly."

Months after my first visit to their home, the nursery — which once had built up dust and had held shells of what could have been — is now lively and lived in. 

The gifts purchased for Everlee are now passed on to Finnegan, so that a brother never forgets the sister he never met.

"I'd have to be the first to bring it up when people came to see him. They'd say, 'Oh who does he look like?' I'd say he looks like his sister, and they'd say, 'I wanted to say that but I was afraid I would upset you,'" she said. 

"I said, 'Why on earth would that ever upset me?' She was perfect and so is he."