Blognonymous: Warning – Dead Baby Alert

This post was written anonymously and submitted to Blognonymous for publishing on this blog. Please feel free to leave your support should you wish, in comments below. Many thanks.

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Last week I saw something posted online – it said “some blogs need to carry a ‘dead baby warning’ , makes such hard reading” I understand the sentiment behind the comment, I really do. its not an easy subject to read about, in fact its highly uncomfortable. You start reading, realise where this is going but you still keep going, to get to the end hoping for a happy ending. And its not there. Because there is no happy ending, its about a dead baby.

But that post hit home for me…hard.

You see I am one of those with a dead baby. And I want to talk about it or write about it but its comments like the one above that stop me. I try hard not to make other people feel uncomfortable, I gloss over the details to spare others feelings, I have learnt the art of assuming a smile when talking about it and am an absolute master in deflection and in some cases I just outright lie. And this is what has got me to where I am now. I’m just not sure where that is.

Without going into too much detail I found out I was pregnant on NYE. It wasn’t planned, it was a total accident. But once I got my head around it I was relatively happy. But I felt dark. Like a dark ominous cloud was overhanging me. I put it down to hormones, the shock and the fog did start to lift a little after 4 months but it never totally left me. But I learned to live with it. I often wonder if it was a sign that all would not end well. Fast forward to 26 weeks and it was discovered I had severe polyhydramnios, basically excess water. I was told to not google it (which I did – who wouldn’t?) and to wait to see the consultant. I was at this point transferred out of midwife care into consultant care, given every test under the sun and was assured that whilst my baby (a boy btw) was larger than average he was perfectly normal. My pregnancy continued albeit with fortnightly scans, I swelled like a balloon as did one of my legs (I was told this was perfectly normal) and had a home visit at 34 weeks telling me to expect labour imminently, what to do in the event of a cord prolapse and other scary excess water stories. And 35 weeks came and went, so did 36 & 37. 38 weeks bought a hind waters breaking or “did I wee myself” dash to the hospital – for the record it was put down to night sweats. hmmm. And so 39, then 40. On my due date i begged the consultant to help me, to bring it to an end as I could barely walk and was in so much pain. But she wouldn’t ….or couldn’t…. That conversation is what I regret most. I wish I’d fought harder, stood up for myself, stood up for my baby instead of blindly accepting that she knew best.

And so I was booked in for an Induction at 41 + 6 if nothing had happened. And of course nothing did. We arrived at 8am nervous and excited to meet our boy. We were ushered into our labour suite and I was lying on the bed whilst Claire, our very pregnant midwife (strange, the small details you remember) was trying to get a trace on his heartbeat for the induction. And this is where the story falters, because there was no heartbeat. Senior midwives were bought in to try to locate the heartbeat, then the sonographers and the consultants were herded into the room to double check. At this point I knew. I just knew. I couldn’t watch the scan, couldn’t bear to see the stillness where there should have been a beating heart, I saw it in my husbands eyes, that’s the most painful memory from that day. Then the rest is a blur, I know I called my family, I know I called my best friend. I took control of the situation and I stopped myself from crying. I just had to deal. At some point the enormity hit me that I actually had to deliver this dead baby and that was almost too much to bare. All I really remember was inwardly chanting “you’ve just got to get through it, you’ve got no choice” and the lyrics of some song “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Whilst outwardly smiling and telling people I was ok, just to stop them crying.

And I got through it. After 17 hours of full on drug induced painful labour I got to 3 cm dilated (wow! ) With my uterus contracting every 20 seconds but nothing happening, they finally relented and rushed me off for an emergency section, I was signing consent forms as we entered the operating theatre. I was sedated at this point so all I remember was an eerie respectful silence and an awful amount of pain as my epidural started to wear off half way through. One huge dose of morphine and a large vomit later. our boy was delivered weighing 9lb 10 and was perfectly formed in every way. He just wasn’t alive.

Unaware to me I had haemorrhaged on the table and needed a blood transfusion straight away. I’m pretty sure everyone thought I was going to die. I couldn’t have cared less either way to be frank.

And that in a nutshell was that, I left the hospital after 4 days on the labour suite (they had nowhere to keep me – I couldn’t go to the maternity ward as they didn’t want to put me with new mummies and newborns ) with an empty car seat, a saggy empty belly, milk filled breasts and no baby. But they did give me a memory box, with his hospital tag, some photos they had taken, a tape measure with his length, a lock of his hair and his hand and footprints. Oh and a massive fucking blood clot on my right leg that had been there all through my pregnancy. Turns out I have a blood clotting problem. Go me.

And so continued our lives. the box went in the back of the cupboard and all I wanted was to replace my baby. But we needed to wait for results to have pre pregnancy counselling and I needed to not be taking Warfarin before getting pregnant as it can cause serious birth defects.

Anyhow on our first “proper try” I got pregnant again and felt no joy, no excitement and didn’t dare dream of any type of future of us as an actual family. We didn’t buy a thing, We didn’t dare name him or even think of any names just in case we jinxed it. I asked for 2nd, 3rd opinions on everything. I didn’t trust a single medical person I encountered and was probably an utter nightmare to deal with . Worse was it was discovered that my first son had developed a rare condition – fetal thrombotic vasculopathy – and there was no way of picking up if it was happening again. I absolutely insisted that this baby would be delivered at 38 weeks by C section. I just mentally couldn’t take anymore. I stood up for myself and what I needed but instead of feeling good I just felt an overwhelming sensation of too little too late.

Our 2nd son was delivered safely at 38 + 1 by C section. And that should be my happy ending. But its the start of a new cycle, one of fear, failure & self loathing.

From that first night in the hospital with our new son I was scared of him. I didn’t want to love him or think of a life with him just in case something happened to him. Because thats what happens to me. My babies die. I questioned why this had happened to me and convinced myself that it was some type of cosmic payback for something I’d done in the past. I woke myself up at night to check him more than is healthy, I stood outside his room picturing him dead before I went into his room… to prepare myself I guess, I couldn’t stand him being ill as I thought he would just die, I thought he would die if he cried too much. That I was a bad mother for not giving him everything I had unconditionally, but I couldn’t. What if I did and something happened to him? I knew it would destroy me and there would be no coming back from that. The guilt of a receptionist asking “is this your first?” and me replying….”ermmmm, ummm, yes” Looking like an idiot who can’t remember and in the process denying my first son’s very existence. Or should I say ‘no..I had a stillbirth at full term” and deal with her awkwardness. If I meet a new person that I like, do I tell them? When do I tell them? So I just back away. Its easier that way.

At almost 18 mths old I still can’t bare the thought of leaving him with anyone and so I really don’t have much of a life. My anxiety reached critical levels and finally I started looking for help.

Bad move. First stop – the health visitor, she decided I needed counselling from a midwife and some listening visits. Never heard back from her.

My GP – male – decided I had developed OCD, he didn’t know what to suggest so he said he would speak to the senior GP and call me back. 3 weeks later – nothing.

So I made another appointment with a female GP – she said I had post traumatic syndrome and referred me to a local group of counsellors that specialised in teenage abortions! They couldn’t help me they said – surprise surprise.

All in all it took 12 weeks for me to take the bull by the horns and sort this out for myself. I contacted my local hospital and they put me in contact with their bereavement counselling service. It took 4 weeks to get an appointment but I met the most wonderful counsellor. I don’t know how or why but this woman gets me, she sees through my hidden layers and my deflection techniques, she pointed out that I am so detached from this that I narrate ‘the story’ in the 3rd person, during uncomfortable questioning I smile – something I have trained myself to do as to help the other person not feel quite so uncomfortable. I am the true me when I am with her. She sees my general low self esteem, how much of a failure I feel for not even being able to carry out the most basic function of a woman, how unhappy I am with myself and how I look (2 big babies in 16 months takes it toll on your figure!), how vulnerable I feel and how lost I am. There is no point in hiding anything from her, no point in lying. She has helped me address my anxiety, my self esteem is better, she taught me to understand that my son crying does not mean he will die. She helped me open my heart to him and for this alone I am incredibly thankful. She also pointed out that I had locked my grief in a box, much like the memory box stuffed in the back of my cupboard containing the photos I’ve never looked at. And it was her feeling that I wouldn’t move forward until I opened the box.

And so almost 3 years later, after many tears and soul searching, I opened the box. I looked at the photos of my beautiful, dead baby. He didn’t look like I remembered. I’d airbrushed him in my memory. There was no mistaking him for a sleeping baby as I had hoped, he actually looked dead. And he had big ears, a little like my dad. But the photos didn’t disturb me. I didn’t run screaming like a mad banshee, I didn’t not ever sleep again, I don’t close my eyes and picture him. I just feel sad. Sad for the life and the memories that never were. Sad for the little boy that never knew how much love was waiting for him. And sad that I didn’t stand up for him.

And maybe that’s why I’m writing this post. I’m standing up for all the people who have dead babies that don’t talk about it for the fear of making others uncomfortable. That struggle to find a outlet for their grief. We look for acknowledgement and for acceptance because we struggle to accept it ourselves, we need to talk about it to accept it, to try and go forward with our lives. But we don’t want to just talk on baby bereavement message boards or be kept to a place that is just for us bereaved parents, that just keeps it even more taboo and in my experience, keeps you locked in to a very sad environment. This happened to us in real life, why shouldn’t we talk about it if that’s what we need to do? Should we just keep it buried inside and let it fester because it makes you feel uncomfortable? Do we ask you to tag your posts with “living children mentioned” in case you upset someone who has recently lost a child? What is the right thing to do in this situation? I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.

I’m not angry with the person that wrote what they did, I know it was done out of ignorance. A blissful ignorance. And long may it remain.