Missing Max

When their newborn dies right after delivery, the life goes out of a young couple — but their journey isn't over

Jeanine Seger opened her arms and pressed her newly delivered son to her chest. He completed her family and her dreams. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Moving like he could already run. She gazed at his petal lips. They formed a perfect "O."

O.

"He's ... not ... breathing," she said slowly.

"Jared!" she shrieked. "He's not breathing, take him."

No one said a word as staff leapt forward with tubes. Suction. Intubation. CPR. The Segers strained to hear a sound, a cry. None came.

Two days later, they went home with a box. Inside lay a tiny wreath, his knit cap and a plaster mold of his tiny fist. And regrets: that Jared Seger, an art photographer, did not take pictures. That Jeanine did not get to change him, cooing as he kicked and stretched. Mostly, though, that almost no one else met the person who would change their every relationship:

Max.

The autopsy was inconclusive. The doctors theorized that the baby bled to death from a weak point in the umbilical cord that leaked during labor. The Segers met with doctors and hospital staff, consulted with Jared's two brothers and their wives, all physicians. But there was no definitive answer.

Babies died on the Oregon Trail or at absurdly low birth weights, not in Portland at a full-term 7 pounds, 8 ounces after a perfect pregnancy and routine delivery. Not when you ate organic, saw the doctor, loved one another, rose before dawn to rebuild the nursery, heard the heart beat just seconds earlier, not now, not him.

But it was him. Jeanine felt the universe tilt, throwing the Segers into a vast, hidden world of parents whose babies had died. Here, a parent's greatest fears had come true: The child they were biologically programmed to nurture and protect had slipped away in a miscarriage, been stillborn, arrived too soon, died in delivery or shortly after. The losses seemed to touch nearly every family, unseen -- except by other grieving parents.

The Eastmoreland house Jared had remodeled for their growing family, including their toddler Simone, filled with funeral flowers and relatives. More than 100 people attended a memorial -- new neighbors, old business friends and nurses who'd cared for them at Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Health Center. One nurse told them that, in the long days between the death and memorial, she had gone to the hospital morgue, and amid bright lights and stainless steel, opened her arms and held Max.

Four days after the memorial, Jared and Jeanine went to the funeral home alone. They had discouraged family and friends, fearing how Max would look. But he was beautiful -- more regrets. They waited there all through the cremation, falling asleep in their chairs. Jeanine had tucked a letter in Max's tiny pocket.

"My heart," she wrote, "is broken."

—

The old Jared, the old Jeanine, disappeared.

The couple had met climbing a rock wall in Richmond, Va., where he worked in a mountaineering shop and she learned to climb. Jared was a crazy snowboarder from Buffalo, Wyo., who drove east in a 1968 Land Cruiser with no top and no doors. Jeanine Tripodi was from Boston with a degree in criminal juvenile justice who had learned the woods working in wilderness camps. Both had dated people who professed to love the outdoors but didn't really. They compared gear: tents, boots, knives -- check. Kayaks -- check. They were soon running rapids on the James River every night.

She cooked, introducing a boy raised on ranch dressing and Campbell's soup casseroles to fresh garlic, feta cheese, kalamata olives and sautéed shrimp. She greeted him with a hammer and a bucket of fresh Alaskan king crab. He'd never tasted anything so sweet.

When they announced that they were moving West so Jared could finish art school, they recall Jeanine's father asking: "Do you love my daughter?"

"Yes," Jared said.

"Are you going to marry my daughter?"

"Yes!"

John Tripodi leaned forward, pulling on the ends of his black moustache.

"When?"

They married Sept. 24, 2000, at a Virginia botanical garden under crossed kayak paddles. The groom's cake depicted them rock climbing, with Jared showing bare buns. They started their life together broke but confident. Jared gave Jeanine a wedding band with five diamonds: two for them and three for the children they hoped to create.

—

After Max died, they shut down their business remodeling vintage homes. Stayed inside for two months. Didn't answer the phone. Max's bear suit, wrapped in a receiving blanket stained with his blood, lay between them. If it wasn't for Simone, they'd never have gotten up.

When they did, the smallest act bruised. A coffee clerk who asked if they'd had a boy or girl. A friend who complained of stress. "The grocery store was the worst," Jeanine said. "It was so normal, and we weren't."

The more Jeanine needed to talk, the fewer words Jared could find; his anger cooled to mute sadness. He'd climb into his pickup each morning and find himself starting to cry. He'd clean up and go into the job site, but when he returned to the truck at day's end, the tears were there.

How long could grief last? Jared wondered. Then a neighbor spoke of missing a child who'd died 50 years earlier. "So that's how long," Jared thought.

They were driving on Hawthorne two months after Max died, Simone in her car seat, when the rising tension broke. The couple who never argued suddenly screamed at one another so viciously that Jeanine's throat hurt. Jared slammed on the brakes, got out and started to walk away.

"It's over," she recalls thinking.

"That's it," he recalls.

Jared returned to the car, but they were terrified that their marriage would end. Early on, a therapist friend suggested they join Brief Encounters, a support group for parents with pregnancy and infant loss. Jeanine was horrified at the idea of sharing private grief. Jared pictured "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." They agreed to go -- once -- and told the sitter they'd be gone an hour.

When they reached the 18th Avenue Peace House early on a Monday night, men and women were clustered in the warm, wood-paneled living room on red overstuffed sofas and wing chairs. The Segers put on name tags and looked around stiffly at people hugging, talking, even laughing.

They didn't know that the facilitator, Pat Schwiebert, is one of the nation's premier experts on grief and infant loss. The registered nurse was teaching childbirth classes in the 1970s when she saw that families whose babies died were devastated by the loss. They were further hurt by a world that failed to understand. Schwiebert was convinced that to heal, parents needed to tell their whole story.

The Segers introduced themselves, lit a candle for Max and began to talk.

At 11:30 p.m. they were talking still.

—

Jeanine blinked. She stared at the home pregnancy test. Blinked again. Pink, pink, pink. She felt light-headed, almost giddy. She was pregnant again.

From the beginning, Jared had pressed to have another baby. The couple had always wanted a larger family; they loved being parents and hoped to recreate the kind of Brady Bunch closeness Jeanine had with her brother and that Jared relished as the middle child of five. And at 35, Jeanine wasn't getting any younger.

But Jared also wanted a different ending for Jeanine, who was convinced she couldn't produce a healthy child. She had never blamed the doctors or hospital for Max.

She blamed herself.

Her first pregnancy miscarried. Her second pregnancy seemed perfect, but then Simone struggled to breathe as she was born because of an undiagnosed opening in her diaphragm. The dark-haired girl underwent emergency surgery and spent 33 days in the hospital. She'd recovered fully and was a thriving preschooler. But then, Max.

Jared reminded Jeanine that fear had never ruled their lives. They'd moved 3,500 miles without jobs. They'd plunged into their own business. Now they were expecting again.

They were embarking on an unknown journey, and there was only one doctor they wanted alongside: Rich Hamilton, the obstetrician on call who had delivered Max. The lanky Coloradan stood at the epicenter of the worst day of their lives, but the Segers trusted him. Max seemed to have changed him, too.

They drove to Hamilton's office. Would he see them through?

Hamilton was stunned. He said he'd be honored.

—

The lights went out. All faces turned to the ultrasound screen. A white image appeared and then a butterfly, fluttering. "That's the heart," whispered Jared.

Twice a week, the family walked through the same hallways into the same examination rooms they had a year earlier. As the pregnancy progressed, Hamilton boosted Jeanine's appointments to better monitor her and the baby girl she carried. The visits were designed to reassure, but Jared always felt his stomach clench. Jeanine grew tenser as the weeks passed.

"Usually she's moving a lot more," Jeanine said, brow furrowing. "She was kicking on the way in."

"Wake up, Matilda," Simone chirped to her mother's abdomen. "Get up, get up, rise and shine."

Carrying a child was complicating. They worried about the baby. They also worried about hurting other grieving parents who hadn't become pregnant again and might never. Some mistakenly thought this child would "fix them." Jeanine and Jared were moving on because they had to; life was forward motion, and they had to run their business, care for Simone and this baby.

But they were not "over" Max. The couple wore matching silver pendants that held his ashes. They slept with his bear suit between them. They were still so sad. Jared's parents, Orville and Makayla Seger, felt helpless. Max's death had knocked the spirit out of their son. Schwiebert advised Jared and Jeanine to join a support group for grieving parents who were expecting again.

Meeting monthly wasn't enough, so Jeanine saw other mothers weekly at breakfast. Passers-by might think the young women at a Belmont Street restaurant were carefree mothers sharing the latest prenatal vitamins. What they really shared: photo albums of their late children; rituals to mark anniversaries; and the loss of so many old friends that they had to rewrite their address books. They listened to one another's stories.

Schwiebert had long circulated a truth about grieving parents:

"If you mention my child's name, I may cry. But if you don't, you'll break my heart."

—

The C-section was scheduled for Nov. 14 -- 11 days after Max's birthday. But as November neared, Jeanine's emotions flattened and grew cold. She didn't prepare the nursery or layette, pack an overnight bag or want a baby shower. Jeanine worried that anxiety could trigger early labor.

Caroline Falcone Goldstone, whose son Cyrus died Feb. 16, understood. The Segers' pregnancy had given her and other mothers hope, so she organized a blessing for Jeanine to celebrate the courage it took to mother. Seven women gathered, lit candles and summoned the spirits of their children, living and dead. They made bracelets to wear in solidarity until Matilda arrived. They brought special quilt fabric.

From Virginia, Jeanine's mother sent a pocket sewn from a shirt Jeanine wore at 3. Inside, Wilma Tripodi placed a small gold heart that had belonged to her own mother and a letter naming all the strong women instrumental in Jeanine being alive: grandmothers and great-grandmothers, the opera singer and the midwife; women who'd lost children, husbands, who'd been orphaned, women who endured.

Jeanine, she wrote, was one of them.

—

The contractions came, low and hard, tightening like a vise. Jeanine ignored them. It was Nov. 3 -- what would have been Max's first birthday.

Anniversaries are often traumatic, as parents dread reliving every detail or find the world has forgotten their child. Jared woke up thinking the year had been a horrible dream. He turned off their cell phones and braced. But the day dawned autumn gold. Friends left flowers and gifts on the porch. Family called, leaving loving messages. Simone helped bake a yellow cake with double chocolate frosting. They lit a birthday candle, sang "Happy Birthday to Max" and ate with delicious gusto. Then they played in the park.

Months earlier, Jeanine had asked Schwiebert if she would ever feel joy again. Yes, Schwiebert said, a deeper joy. And here it was, amid great sorrow, like winter sunlight.

By the next morning, Jared was insistent: "You're in labor."

No, Jeanine protested.

She was still protesting when they pulled into Emanuel hospital that afternoon. "I don't know why I'm here," she told the nurses. "We're OK if we have to go home, if it's not labor. It's not a problem."

The nurse led her into a delivery room. "It's common for someone who has gone through what you've gone through to want to avoid this," Jennifer Guthrie said gently. "How long have you been having these contractions?"

"Weeks," Jeanine said.

"Weeks?" Guthrie said. "Like this?

"OK, a few days.

"I wasn't going to have her on Max's birthday." Jeanine covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, God, I just want her to breathe. I just want her to breathe."

—

The nurse reached Hamilton, who was at Lloyd Center where he'd been ice-skating with his 5-year-old daughter. Nov. 4 was his 45th birthday.

The surgical team he'd organized quickly assembled alongside the head of the Emanuel neonatal intensive care unit.

"Are you ready?" Hamilton said.

Jeanine grabbed Jared's hand.

Parenthood is always a leap of faith. You trust an invisible division of cells. You usher your most fragile treasure into a flawed world. You open your heart. Jeanine had opened hers to Max. He would always be there, along with her greatest pain for the boy who'd never climb with Jared, ride a horse or play tag with Simone, the newborn she would never nurse.

Joy and pain, birth and death, that was life. Inevitable separation. Still, a parent leaps.

She was ready.

—

She trembled uncontrollably from labor as the surgeons worked.

"How many minutes until she comes out?" Jeanine asked as Jared stroked her face.

"Two," Hamilton said.

Seconds later, he said: "A lot of brown hair on this girl.

"Oh, yeah! She looks great.

"She looks beautiful, her eyes are open.

"She's trying to breathe right now, she's got a good little effort.

"She's looking awesome!"

And then, a cry. A primordial wail, the screech that only a furiously alive baby girl could make. The room erupted in cheers.

"Oh, my God; oh, my God," Jeanine wept as Matilda Mae Seger was handed to her father, who held her to her mother's lips.

Jared wept. He whispered to Jeanine: "She looks just like Simone.

And Max."

—

Julie Sullivan: 503-221-8068; juliesullivan@news.oregonian.com

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