The best possible outcome from the worst of situations.
Hi. I’m not sure who is reading, or who this will reach, but I want the infinite black hole of cyber space to hear me, hear my silent screams, hear my story. Maybe my words can reach someone else going through this somehow, maybe someone will stop by and think ‘poor woman’. To be honest, I don’t want your sympathy, move on.
I am not big. I am not brave. I am not strong. I am just dealing with what has been set out in front of me.
I am a woman, wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt, friend and I am only human; I am not special, I am an individual, I am just trying to get by.
So how did I get here, talking to the big black hole? I entered my own black hole myself exactly 14 days and 18 hours ago (give or take a few minutes)
I first found out I was pregnant on Easter Sunday, Chris and I had been together around 6 1/2 years, we’d been engaged since November 2014; although no relationship is perfect, I loved our little bubble. We’d spent years creating our home, building a furry family of 3 cats, knitting our family & friends around us. We were due to get married in around 2 months’ time. My job as a PA (or EA, it’s a posher title) enabled me to be what is probably the worst type of bride ever without becoming bridezilla (I think my mum and bridesmaids would disagree, I was the godzilla of brides) I knew what I wanted, eventually, and it had to be my sort of perfect.
On Thursday I’d had my dress fitting, I’d hit one of my many (many) weight goals, I was feeling fantastic, skinny, sexy, untouchable. We’d traveled to the Wye Valley with Chris’s wonderful family for an Easter break the next morning. Saturday I ate, ate more than I had in weeks and gorged on sweets. I felt like I needed to come on, I was waiting patiently for it, all whilst secretly hoping I didn’t. Chris and I weren’t ‘trying’ (I’m not keen on that word) but we weren’t being careful, we’d got it into our heads we’d possibly have a honeymoon baby, but we joked and talked about revealing a little bun in the oven when our wedding day finally came around. I never thought that could be a reality. Chris made a passing comment, I can’t remember what, about my sugar gobbling, I turned on him, vicious and angry and told him I didn’t want to see him. That night I sipped / glugged on a bottle of prosecco, indulging in a bubble bath and listening to my favorite songs whilst nibbling on Percy Pigs.
Sunday morning I woke up, mild headache, nipped to the loo and took a test, I still hadn’t come on, I was annoyed I hadn’t. My usual ritual was to take a test, it being negative, and then I’d release that afternoon.
Then two very vivid pink lines rocked up.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I sank, flabberghasted at what I was looking at, pee on a stick, my pee on a stick, with a positive reading. Shit.
I stalked back into the bedroom, flung the test at a sleepy Chris and said “that’s why I’ve been so ratty”. We sat in silence, staring at each other, a mix of elation and disbelief. How could we be parents, I still laugh at him farting in my face.
We mulled over our wonderful surprise all day, we enjoyed family walks with our excitable nieces and nephews, took in the day, drank in our surroundings before excitement got too much for us and we told everyone that afternoon, my sister in law guessing before I could get the words out, that made it even more special. The night we got home to our little cottage Chris turned to me and said “it’s a girl, isn’t it?” before we fell about in fits of laughter and giggled like excitable school children. Chris & Lauren. Married, husband & wife, parents!
We told my mum on the way home, we told everyone we could. We waited until my dad’s birthday until we told him - we brought him a wheelbarrow and a little ‘grandpa’ sign, took him a few moments to realise but he and his wife were elated when we told them. Everyone was elated, we were elated, we were excited, hopeful and petrified.
We promised to keep it quiet until the wedding, I’d be around 12 weeks then, but we ended up telling everyone, anyone who’d listen, everyone we loved, everyone we worked with. We were so happy.
We attended our first antenatal appointments, confirmed as low risk after a few initial tests and questions, it all started to feel very real. We attended our first scan, a little too early, 1 week later and 2 days before our wedding we watched our little pickle dance around on the screen, heart thumping madly, showing off little arms and legs for the radiologist. We cried happy tears, “hello baby pickle, we’re so pleased to meet you”.
On 9th June we got married, pickle safe & snug, dad walked me down the aisle to meet my husband, father of our little bubs. We had the most wonderful day, our little wonder dancing away the entire time. The next day we jetted off to Indonesia, we’d very luckily won business class upgrades, I was gutted I couldn’t try out the wine menu, Chris happily tested on both our behalves.
Our honeymoon flew, the next 8 weeks flew, I was growing a perfect home for baby, I’d piled on the weight I’d lost for the wedding, I craved tuna (and lots of it) and salt & vinegar snack a jacks. I wanted jacket potatoes - not only with tuna (Id have tuna on ice cream I think if I’d really wanted to) just a plain old jacket, I made Chris bake me one on one particular evening, I ate it like an apple.
I started feeling this little creature inside me, I’d sit at work and feel it tumble and dart across my tummy, often poking me when we were hungry then dancing around once I’d fed us. On the Sunday before, we’d attended our friends wedding and I’d been famished most of the day, we sat down for dinner and I ate super quickly; little pickle danced so hard I grabbed Chris’s hand and placed it on my tummy, pickle danced for her daddy, our V danced for daddy for the first and last time.
On Friday, 18th August I’d had a very busy day. I’d had a busy week, with lots going on in the evenings; I’d had a niggling feeling as the day grew on, I’d busied myself with preparing bits for my impending maternity leave, having a conversation with my boss about what we do without me there, I planned and prepped as I do best. By home time I was a little worried. I messaged my little sister (my go-to guru on babies, she’d blessed me with the perfect niece who I admit I am insanely jealous of, but in a good way) she told me to go to the hospital, but I brushed it off, thinking I was being silly. I was 22 weeks, baby hasn’t established a routine yet, I wouldn’t know until I was 24 weeks, I kept reeling off every baby book, mobile app and NHS leaflet I’d ever read. Lottie persisted, telling me I’d regret it if I didn’t. I hesitantly called the hospital, they advised me to pop in - it’s probably nothing. I then dialed Chris, knowing his reaction - he works at the same hospital we were being looked after at, he’d more than likely had a busy day, the last thing he’d want to do is hot foot it back to satisfy my hypochondria - Chris was grumpy, but eventually we popped to Queen’s Hospital thinking we’d be in and out in a few hours & would pick up his much desired Chinese on the way home.
We arrived at triage, got comfortable on the bed and waited for the friendly midwife to reassure my sensitive mind. The midwife came in from behind the curtain all smiles, promptly popped the Dopplar onto my swelling tummy and listened. Nothing.
She looked up at me with a big smile, said “I’m rubbish at these things, I’m just going to get my friend”, before fetching her colleague for another listen. They changed Dopplars, got a bigger one, before a lady in green scrubs emerged with a scanner. I turned to Chris and mouthed “she’s not here, baby” and received a that wonderful scowl of his as he replied “We don’t know that yet, bubs”.
The green scrubs lady looked intently at the scanner, looked up at us and mentioned she needed to get her colleague to take a look as “she couldn’t see anything”. My stomach turned, my toes curled and the back of my neck stood to attention. Before I could breathe we were asked to go into another room, I clasped my husband’s hand, legs of jelly and followed the now growing crowd of doctors into a strangely bedded room, with a birthing bed and another bed, all strung up with wires and equipment, confused I laid down ready to see our baby once more.
Another lady took the probe, she scanned, frowned, scanned, frowned and then turned. “I’m sorry sweetheart, there is no heartbeat”
I turned away from the crowd’s gaze, I felt Chris crumble, I felt the weight in my stomach harden, I felt the world I lived in come tumbling down around me, everything slipping into a vortex of anguish, confusion and despair. All I managed to whisper was “what now?”.
I was in a haze, I was given one option - give birth to your dead baby - it was too dangerous to have an operation. I was spinning, spiraling, twisting, falling, failing.
We called our parents, listening to their screams, their “Oh no’s”, their grief setting in, their “I’m so sorry’s”. They started rallying, before I knew it, our nearest and dearest were in that same room, joining our vortex and riding what we now call “the waves”.
A midwife came in, she was so sweet. She offered me a pill, she told me it would “start things off”
That was the hardest pill I’ll ever have to swallow. My husband and my mum curled beside me, it took me a while to take it. For me that signaled the end, accepting our baby had died, accepting I’d have to go through what I feared most in this world. Accepting human mortality, accepting my baby’s mortality, accepting mine. I stared at that white dot for what seemed like eternity, wishing it would jump off the bed and roll away and wishing I was sat back at my desk at work, wishing I was back there feeling my baby wriggle, feeling the slight bumps against my hand. Why was they not moving? Why was their heart no longer beating? Why us? What horrific and nasty thing had I done to be sitting here, staring at that pill? I wanted to scream at the doctor, tell them they’re wrong, tell them to scan me again, tell them I can feel it moving again and walk out of that room, life and baby in tact.
As I took that pill and I felt my baby become stone.
We were told to go home and wait until Sunday at 3pm, by now it was 10pm. I had to wait 2 days to come back and deliver my child. I glared at these doctors in disbelief, how dare you send me home to live with this for 2 days? How can you be so cruel to not induce me now? Looking back I’m so glad I went home, as sick as that sounds.
Chris and I wanted to shut ourselves away, hide from the world, ignore our plight but our family wouldn’t let us go. They insisted on staying with us, spending time with these broken shells of the people they knew, I don’t know why. My reaction is to run, but our family rallied. That night we wailed, we cried, we fell apart, we howled at the world, then we laughed.
Chris and I made a pact in the car on our way home, we’d talk about this, we’d tell everyone, anyone who’d listen. We were not suffering this hell in silence.
If there is one thing I want anyone to take away from this rambling and lengthy post - I want you to know that laughing in grief is OK.
We laughed about anything, the good times, the wedding, my mum and sister’s jobs as carers, we laughed at the hilarious antics their residents got up to, we laughed at ourselves, we distracted ourselves from the horrors knocking quietly and constantly at our door.
By Saturday afternoon my anxiety was ricocheting, I was panicking, I convinced myself I was going to die, my soul way dying, my body was failing me, I wouldn’t come away from this alive, I secretly prepared to leave my husband, leave my family and leave this world, with my baby in my arms.
I decided I’d contact Facebook groups, I posted my fate, I reached out to other mums and discovered a world of Angel Mums, all lined up to greet me with open arms, I spoke with maybe a dozen ladies, just like me. They shared with me their stories, they told me it would be OK, they told me what it was like, they told me not to be a hero, to take every drug offered, to spend time with my baby afterwards and to try to take in those precious hours I would relive forever. A few ladies showed me pictures of their Angels, it made me less scared to meet our baby, it helped me prepare. I posted again and again “help, my baby died and I don’t know what to do” - these Angels appeared through the darkness, a glint of light in my dark and frightening world, they carried me forward, reassured and comforted me.
We brought our admission forward to 9am, that night was a haze of small bouts of sleep, rousing and letting The Waves crash over me once more, the reality of our experience showering and swelling around me, I struggled to breathe, I clung onto Chris, I wailed and pleaded with whoever I could. This can’t be happening.
That morning I don’t know how I walked, my mum and Chris guided me in, I leaned on them heavily. I couldn’t compose myself. I walked through the hospital fixated on a door, then onto the next, I remember walking past an elderly couple settled on some seats, I remember their eyes following me through the foyer, I wanted to tell them what was happening, I wanted to tell them my baby had died, I wanted to swap places, I wanted to do anything that meant I didn’t have to travel through the next set of doors.
Once we’d settled into our delivery room, we’d been introduced to our midwife - Donna. Donna - if you ever read this, you are incredible. You are amazing, I trusted you with my life and I owe you more than anything I can physically give you. The church where we’d been married at 10 weeks earlier visited to offer prayers, Chris & I took comfort in their words, but I struggled to listen, instead I focused on the gurgles my stomach was making, with each breath I prayed for movement. I prayed for an escape.
By the time I had been induced (by pessary, in case you’re after every tiny detail) the contractions came fast. Remember I told you to laugh in grief? Here’s why:
We were living out our very own horror movie, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t go to the Winchester and wait for this to blow over, I couldn’t close my eyes and wake up back in my bed like Final Destination, I was staring at my hooded figure, fixated with fear and wonder of the unknown. I had to escape somehow, to somewhere, anywhere but here. As the pains grew stronger, Chris and mum by my side we curled up on the bed I would deliver in, turned on the internet and watched episodes of Family Guy & Impractical Jokers. Each time anyone popped into the room to check on us, we swiftly paused the episode, wiped our weary smiles and become sombre. It felt naughty to be laughing, smiling at the stupidity these programs aired. Looking back we should have kept on playing, there is no book on how to grieve, this was our grief, this was how we were dealing with it.
Once I got onto the gas & air that’s when the real laughs started, I laughed at everything, I made my mum try it, I told Chris he was a pussy for not giving it a whirl, I joked at our situation, suddenly became ravenously hungry, inhaling congealed hospital mac ‘n’ cheese, then demanding a tuna sandwich. At one stage my contractions were coming every 15 seconds, lasting for 10, I held my tuna sandwich with one hand, gas & air in the other - alternated between the two and shouted TUNA at Chris through bleary eyes, noting that perfect wide smile etched onto his face.
By the time I was nearing the final stages of labour my mum, Chris & I had established the perfect birthing team; Chris & Mum working in unison to tend to my few worded demands of ‘WATER’ and lip pouting (smearing blistex onto my lips as gas & air made my lips very dry). By this time I’d had a wonderful cocktail of drugs, gas & air, diazepam, pethedine and PCP morphine (controlled by Chris). I was so. fucking. high.
To anyone facing this, take all the drugs, it makes you not care. I felt getting ‘out my tree’ helped me first hold my baby when she arrived, it helped me bond with her, fall in love with her and not care that I was cuddling my dead child.
At 6.28pm, our daughter arrived. Chris & I chose not to look at her straight away. My mum had asked if she could wash our baby when she arrived, I asked my mum to tell us what we had, even though in our hearts we already knew. Our baby Vera was here. I’d been in labour for around 4 1/2 hours, officially in active labour for 8 minutes.
Vera Maggie Marston, born sleeping, Sunday 20th August 2017 at 6.28pm, weighing 640grams (or 1lb)
Chris held onto me as if he was going to fall away, I held onto him just as tightly until mum placed the tiny human into our arms. I fell completely and utterly in love. I looked past her dark skin, her eyes squeezed shut and her tiny eyebrows and eyelashes perfectly formed. I fell in love with her button nose, noticing her pout that had so prominently shone in her scans just days before. I traced her lips, felt her tiny hands wrap around my fingernail, examined her legs until I noticed her big-ass feet - exact copies of Chris’s. I looked intently at the joints forming her limbs, counted the bones on her hands & feet and squinted to see the smallest of fingernails. My baby girl was perfectly formed, perfectly still, silently sleeping.
Our Little V met our family, I couldn’t say much except “I am so. fucking. high” but I wanted everyone to see her and cuddle her and love her just as much as I did. I knew people were scared, but I’d not thought to care like I did before and like I do now. Maybe it was the drugs.
We were transferred into the Snowdrop suite. Chris had been at a seminar just 2 days before, listening to a medical photographer explaining a particular harrowing time at the snowdrop suite, meeting devastated families. The seminar is designed for clerical employee’s like Chris reconnect with the environment they were working in, remembering they are working in a hospital with real people, real stories, real tragedies. We were now one of them.
Chris and I spent some hours cuddling our newborn, telling her all about our family, telling each other what Our V could have been, what she should have been, she would have mummies intelligence, with daddies competitive streak and stubbornness...! We then tucked her away into her cold cot - it should have been a real cot - and snuggled in bed together. I was still pretty high, I wished I’d hear some little snuffling noises coming from that cot, but was met with silence. I woke at every sound, wishing my baby to start crying for my attention, I wanted to pick her up, put her to my breast, change a dirty nappy, anything that would signify that she was alive and not sleeping so quietly.
Monday came in more Waves. Friends, family and colleagues came by, each taking their turn to say hello and goodbye to our baby, some cuddling, some looking and some fixating gazes on Chris and I. We spent that day laughing, I don’t remember crying until the medical photographer came in, delicately placing V’s hands and feet, getting a profile shot and our first and last family pictures together. At one stage he asked us both to look at the camera, I turned to him firmly declining, how could I stare into a lens, pretending to smile whilst holding our baby like this? All I wanted to do was stare at her, drink every inch of her being, remember every detail, every crinkle, every vein.
Chris & I tried to be positive throughout our story, we told each other it could have been worse, we read through a book of remembrance given to us in the Snowdrop Suite, we read others’ stories, of babies born at full term, not surviving the birth, babies born and ripped away from their mothers to NICU, to only pass away days later. Chris & I thanked ourselves that Vera never knew pain, she didn’t feel her death, she didn’t know how it felt to be sad or cold. We told everyone it could have been worse, I could have gone into spontaneous labour, I could have bled out, died, got an infection, not delivered my placenta in full, not been able to see our baby. We named our story the best possible outcome from the worst of situations. We were going through hell, but it could have been so, so much worse.
We gave ourselves until 6pm on Monday to get to know our daughter. By the time it came around I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t want to leave her, but knew I had to. We were offered to take her home, but I didn’t want to be chasing ghosts & I didn’t want someone to come to our home and take my baby away. I wanted to walk from my baby knowing she was sleeping safely in the arms of the incredible midwife team.
We asked the midwife to change her blanket, so we had Vera’s smell to cherish forever. I also loved the blanket she was in, and didn’t want it to go with her to the crematorium.
We held her one last time, we told her how much we loved her and how sorry we were that we we couldn’t keep her safe, we promised we’d always have her at the center of everything we did. We tucked her in one last time and we walked out, hand in hand, closing the book on our short family chapter, walking away broken, fragile and uncertain of where we were going next.
