Walk away
What has just happened? You could be thinking to yourself. Has this really happened to me? To us?
Loosing a baby, could be the most hardest experience to endure. How do we find the strength to overcome this situation? What event did you encounter to experience such a painful part of your life? Did you experience symptoms throughout your pregnancy? Did you notice something unusual about your baby’s movement and act upon it?
Our own experience
In December 2019, my husband and I experienced our very first loss of a long awaited baby. On 30th December, we delivered our baby born asleep.
Early in December, we had our 12 week scan and we were so excited to see a wiggling baby. It was an early morning scan and we just had breakfast and left home. When we arrived at the hospital, we checked in and handed over our maternity book and waited eagerly to see our bundle of joy. It was such a lovely experience, to see a little heartbeat, baby was eating and placing his hands to mouth and enjoying moving around. This left us feeling happy. The next few days, I encountered a dream whereby my grandma came to visit, smiling and taking the baby out walking on a hill in a red babygrow. Little did I know, that she came to collect the soul of our baby. The next few weeks I would wake up, look in the mirror and could no longer see a growing bump. In my fear, I would talk to my husband and explained how I was feeling and he kept reassuring me that we just saw the baby not long ago, everything could be okay. At this point, I was not experiencing any unusual symptoms and continued with my “everyday duties.
On 28th December, I was experiencing lower back pain and took rest. We had family round for our usual sunday get together and just as it came to dinner time, I needed to listen to my body and take rest. The next morning 29th December, I was feeling okay then gradually as the afternoon approached, I experienced abdominal cramping. Discussing with husband, the pain was getting worse and decided to call our midwife and get checked out. We were advised to go to the nearest hospital and await our turn. Sitting in the waiting area, filled with anxiety, and trying to manage the pain, we finally met a sonographer who undertook our scan. She applied the jelly for the ultrasound and looked in deep sorrow. At this point, I could not see the screen but I looked at my husband who was standing at the bottom of the bed and I could see tears of sad emotion. I looked up at the sonographer as she took my hand and said “I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat.” Gulping down the news we had just heard, trying to digest, the sonographer requested to get another member of staff to confirm what we just encountered and walked out the room. Tears of grief came flooding out, just wanting to scream, not able to hold in the emotions, whilst holding each other so tightly trying to comfort one another. Another senior member of staff walked in and did another ultrasound, then explained the next protocol. As it was very late into the evening, we were advised to come back the next day and another consultant would do an amniocentesis scan and give us a briefing. As the next day arrived, it was very daunting walking back in through the hospital corridors, knowing that there is a sleeping baby inside and working out how we would be delivering this baby. As we saw the consultant, he wanted to try and extract some amniotic fluid and tissue from the baby and was unsuccessful. After numerous attempts, it was clear that the fluid from the amniotic sac has gradually disappeared, which explains why I could not see my bump growing. Once the consultant finished what he tried to extract, we were advised to follow their next protocol, where they would try to induce you. For this, we needed to go back in the next day. We went home and I suffered with more cramping, abdominal and back pain so contacted the midwife team again. This time, I was requested to go back into hospital. I decided to quickly pack a bag with some essentials and as soon as we were leaving the driveway, I was getting contractions. My body wanted to naturally give birth. Not knowing what I was going through at this stage, I used my hypnobirthing birthing techniques to manage each contraction. As we reached the hospital, we were taken into a side room and before anything could happen, there I was standing at the edge of the bed, giving birth to a baby boy. As soon as he descended, the first thing I said “it’s a boy!” looking at my husband, who had endless tears rolling down. Next it was time to deliver my placenta, which took 50 minutes. When you are approaching 55 minutes and above, there would be a need for intervention. So the team were prepping to take me into theatre. I was adamant not to go, so I communicated with the midwife and asked her if I could try and do this myself. After a few pushes, I was able to extract the placenta. With my body feeling weak and tired, we spent some time alone with the baby, took lots of photos, video called all our loved ones and showed them our baby. This was such a precious moment for us and we hold on to this each day. The most hardest thing was to WALK AWAY….
A few weeks later, we organised our baby boy’s funeral to say our final goodbye. We received a lot of support from our family and friends and raised funds for charities like Sands and Tommy’s.
Sadly, some babies are lost during pregnancy, birth or shortly afterwards. Whatever the reason, we can provide support and information for anyone who has experienced the loss of a baby, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death or termination for medical reasons.
Please don’t think that you have done something wrong, or karma has come round, try to remove any negative thought that you could be feeling. If you have experienced something similar and would like to talk, I am only a phone call or therapy away.
