Loren could feel the baby move since about 13 weeks but I couldn't since she was so small but I started talking to her, telling her stories, planning things we would do--if she was a girl, she would be mad at me but I was going to be overprotective and intimidate her dates--and how we would gang up on her mother. Loren and I were very happy and were so looking forward to having the baby we had planned for so many years. We were home from Disney for about a week and I had started my new job, Loren had an ultrasound scheduled for Friday June 15, 2001. The ultrasound showed a beautiful baby with no problems and our daughter had a strong heartbeat. I really wanted to know the sex of the baby before she was born, Loren had given in to me and said that if it was possible to see on ultrasound this time we would find out. Emily didn't want us to know and she curled up and hid from the ultrasound probe. She hated the pressure from it and the Doppler probe the doctors and nurses used to listen to her heart beat--she kept one nurse chasing her for 45 minutes at one check up until the nurse gave up because she could hear lots of fetal movement but only a fraction of a second worth of fetal heart tones since Emily kept running away. On her ultrasounds she couldn't hide since we could see her so she rolled her back up and tucked so we could see her back and little arms and legs but we still didn't know if she was a boy or a girl. On Saturday June 16, 2001 Loren was only a few days short of 23 weeks gestation. It was a stormy night and we were watching TV. Loren got up to go to the bathroom and when she sat down there was a sudden flow of what we thought at first was urine that shot out and then while she was sitting there we thought she was leaking urine without straining. When she got up we saw the toilet was full of blood. Loren got dressed and we ran to the car and drove probably faster than was safe given the conditions through roads that were more flooded than should have been driven through. We got to the hospital and up to Labor and Delivery where we could still hear fetal movement and heart tones on Doppler but the fluid showed positive for amniotic fluid. The doctor told us that what would probably happen is that we would have to induce labor and our child would not be able to survive at this age, there was the smallest chance that the hole in the amniotic sack would seal over and the fluid would re-accumulate. The next morning the radiologist said the worst thing we could have heard--he could see no fluid around the baby. Again the doctor told us we would probably need to induce labor but we could wait until Monday morning to see if by some miracle the fluid accumulated and we could talk to the high risk pregnancy doctors unless Loren spiked a temperature or went into labor on her own. Sunday night the choice was taken from us when Loren spiked a temperature of 101 and we were told that we could no longer wait to deliver our baby. When we went to the delivery room we found that Loren was already 2 cm dilated--she had already been in labor for a while. At 9:52 p.m. our beautiful little girl was born, she had died a while before. My little girl was too small to live outside of her mother and we had no way of keeping her there. We loved our little girl as soon as we knew she was conceived, that love grew with her and we still love her beyond words. Our time with her was far too short. We love you Emily Katherine.