Abigail Frances Bacon is the second child of Brian and Vickie Bacon--the first to precede them to Heaven. Brian and Vickie have been married nearly 25 years and have one grown son, Ben. Abigail was joined in Heaven by her sister, Anne, in 2005.
Abigail Frances was born at rest December 6, 2003 at the precious young age of 39 weeks 6days. PCOS infertility kept me barren most of my life; our living son was a true miracle. After 17 yrs of secondary infertility, we finally conceived Abigail thanks to a PCOS diabetic medication called Glucophage. It was thrilling to have such a blessing after so many years of barrenness. But because I was diabetic and over 40, my OB referred Abigail's care to a practice of high risk specialists who were supposed to monitor her according to high risk protocol.
The pregnancy was uneventfully and delightful until the final four weeks when one of the providers had me go off my insulin injections and a diabetic drug that proved to be disastrous. What's worse, my pleas for help fell on deaf and neglectful ears. I'll go to my grave wishing I'd taken my care elsewhere, but we neared the end and I hoped for the best.
Sadly, in spite of the additional medical "expertise" Abigail died in utero after failing a routine bi-weekly NST (non-stress test) the week before her due date. It's a long horrid tale that illustrates dramatically infuriating medical incompetence. For unknown reasons, the doctor and nurse practitioner on rotation that day were indifferent to Abigail's obvious struggles. We were sent home rather than inducing immediate delivery. To my horror, Abigail died sometime in the night, and she was pronounced dead at our follow-up NST the next morning. She was born on that Saturday evening at 6:18pm after three days of induced labor. We learned that sudden antenatal death syndrome (SADS) is quite common in the middle of the night in the last days of pregnancy--especially in high risk pregnancies, and yet we were treated with neglect and disregard.
As I expected, my doctors made sure to blame my age and diabetes as a means of covering the many failures they made in monitoring my care. I went on to learn everything one can learn about high risk management of a diabetic pregnancy and the mistakes they made are inexcusable.
Pathology tests showed that Abigail was a normal healthy baby that died of fetal distress caused by cord constriction and placental insufficiency--fetal distress that showed up plain as day on the NST we had just hours before her death. It's quite distressing that the expensive fetal monitor did its job, but it's unclear as to why the even higher priced doctor didn't do his.
Ultimately, it was dramatically poor medical management that was the cause of her untimely death. As a result, she was born directly to Heaven, leaving us with agonizingly empty arms. She'll always be our beautiful sleeping baby forever in our hearts.
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/abigailfrances
