Looking Back Over Her Shoulder

We should have been twenty-nine weeks today. It just doesn’t seem real anymore. It honestly feels like I was never pregnant; as though I dreamt it all. That person I was back in February is someone I no longer recognise.

This person I once was, cried her eyes out because she couldn’t believe she was actually pregnant after 28 months worth of tears over the dreaded AF arriving.

The twelve week scan showed a healthy, long legged baby kicking away, jumping around like ‘he’ was having a rave at a house party and she couldn’t believe her eyes that that baby on that screen was her baby growing inside her.

A few more weeks passed and she started to feel the kicks. She got to know the baby’s pattern and she loved every single one as though it was the very first time she had felt it.

A few more weeks after that and the pelvic pains started but she brushed them off as growing pains. Bob was still kicking daily so all was ok as far as she was concerned.

Go forward another couple of weeks and her waters broke. She new deep down that they were her waters but didn’t want to believe it; surely if it was then she would be in labour right now … wouldn’t she?

She went to the doctors that afternoon and listened as he told her that no the waters had not broken but she knew deep down that they had and she kicked herself for not going to the hospital there and then but she was too tired to; so she accepted what the Doctor told her. She took herself back home and carried on as if everything was alright although she knew deep down they were not.

Two days later while waiting in the reception for the twenty week scan she knew something was going to happen and yet again she was right. She was told her baby was going to die all because of some stupid infection which she knew she had all along but brushed them off as growing pains. She knew that had she had come to the hospital just two day before things may have been different now.

Ten days she spent in hospital, bonding with her baby which she had known all along was a boy despite both scans not being clear enough to see. She started to gain a little bit of hope that maybe, just maybe her boy was strong enough to last a couple more weeks and then when he was old enough she would explain to him what a miracle baby he was, because despite everyone saying he was going to die, he didn’t. He had lived to prove them all wrong.

She knew on that Saturday she was discharged that she really shouldn’t be going home but she went because she wanted to prove everyone wrong. She went because she missed her surroundings and her OH and she was worried about money of all things.

She knew a week later when she started bleeding that something major was going to happen but that it was now too late to do anything about it. That the journey was finally going to end and that she had no choice but to sit back and go along with it all; because deep down she had always known that something was going to happen and never for one moment should she have got her hopes up that this time it would be any different.

She woke that Thursday morning to find the umbilical cord hanging there and she knew that she should have woken up in hospital that morning because had she stayed as she knew she should have, then they would have been able to do something straight away.

Despite being taken by ambulance and holding onto the umbilical for dear life to keep it warm, she was surprised that Bob’s heartbeat was pounding away. For the first time in twenty two weeks she finally had proper hope that maybe, just maybe he would become her miracle baby.

At 8:45am Thursday 2nd July 2009, as she suffered a panic attack while laying in the hospital bed still holding onto the cord trying to keep it warm; trying to keep Bob alive, she knew this was the moment that Bob had died inside of her. At 10:20am the ultrasound confirmed what she knew all along’ that here was no heartbeat.

Her little miracle had become an Angel and the one thing which she had been dreading for the past three weeks and which she had asked the M/W’s about during her ten day stay, was now going to happen.

21 hours after he had died and 16 hours after the induction started; he was delivered into silence. He was silent, the room was silent. The only noise in the room was that of her screaming and her OH sobbing away to her right hand side, his head buried deep into the side of the bed.

Sarah the Midwife confirmed that the baby was of course a Boy and life since then has become a blur of confusion, of guilt or what if’s.

I’m thankful I no longer recognise this person I write about above. This person and I have serious issues with each other which will never be resolved. Why … simply because this person did not stand up nor speak out when she knew something/someone was not right.

She went along with it all, instead of taking charge to protect her unborn Son and herself.

The new person I now see reflected before me every time I look into the mirror will stand up for what she believes in and she will never let anything like this happen to her or her family ever again.