There are so many I could say but really, what’s the point? I’ve never felt so helpless in all my life. There doesn’t seem to be a single place in any aspect of anything where I can force or provoke a change that would make any of it better.
I can’t help my children to regain the confidence and joy they’ve lost this year.
I can’t force anyone to help them, in fact, I’m making it worse by trying. I’ve begged, literally begged, the people who could do that to help them, and they won’t. Or can’t. Or whatever.
I can’t force my body to get pregnant again.
I can’t force the businesses forward as fast as I’d like because there isn’t enough time.
I can’t cease grieving.
I can’t grieve enough.
I can’t give my children anything to look forward to.
I can’t enjoy the good bits of life because it hurts so much to do it without Freddie.
I can’t make time march forward to a place where none of these things matter quite so much.
This week I had a letter from the consultant who delivered Freddie. He blames his problems firmly on the 90 minutes I was in the pool. I think my heart will break. I don’t believe that, I don’t think any of the other people who have been involved with us really believe that either. Or maybe they are just being nice. But, my god, I never even wanted to go in the pool, I’d written it so firmly out of my plans that it never occurred to me to ask. I only used it because the opportunity presented itself, an opportunity that would never have happened if I hadn’t made two very specific decision about my care – the hospital I chose and to place a level of care between myself and them. Neither of which I regret. Neither of which I blame.
I still don’t understand. In all the times I’ve given birth, my babies or I always signalled if we needed help. How come the one time I was happy, felt safe, felt secure and felt comfortable, the baby did NOTHING to tell any of us he wasn’t safe? No dipping heartbeat, no meconium, no nothing. Just died.
I just want someone to help me understand.
I’m never going to know. I’m never going to know. After all this time, I’m forced into the position of having experienced the one thing I was so broken to have been deprived of and not knowing if that killed him.
I think, I THINK, that it is the misplaced guilt and grief of that consultant speaking. And he has nothing to feel guilty about. But it has utterly destroyed me.
I don’t know if I have blood on my hands. Again.
I don’t know. I can’t ever know, unless I somehow get pregnant again, go through everything again and evaluate the differences. And that would be a rocky, thorny path, even if it worked out. Killing another baby would be right up there on the list of alternative endings.
I’ve got to make a list, tonight, of the things that have to change. Top of the list has to be at least one of my girls who is now being made sadder by the one thing that used to make her happy than I can bear to see. I just can’t stand it. I don’t care how good she is at it, I just want her to be happy. I just want to see her smiling and energised again. That’s all I want. And if that means changing our life somehow, I’ll have to do that. I have no idea how yet.
Somehow I have to get to a place where there is some joy in this house again, where not everything is an uphill struggle against places where our face doesn’t fit, or we aren’t good enough, or we’ve failed. There has to be some place in the world where things would just work out for us. Some place where people will just mind how well we cope. Some place where we aren’t the annoying, needy family who ask too much but don’t really matter that much.
I just want some joy. I just want to see my children smiling. I just want something for us all to look forward to that doesn’t come with strings and anxiety attached.
I just want someone, someone who can actually make a small change that would make a big difference, to see that we are collectively drowning here and help us.
I’m so exhausted. It is just beginning to be nearly impossible to put one foot in front of another. One of my children is so sad that the thing she loves is sapping her of all her happiness, one is reverting to some of the worst Aspie behaviour I’ve seen, one is developing more routines and coping mechanisms than I’m comfortable with, one has lost her dream chance and is still bereft about her brother in a way that I can’t even begin to solve. And one is dead.
Edited to add something I wrote in reply to an email, just to clarify: I was upset when I read the above and didn’t make the source of my distress clear enough. Whatever else I might feel, I hold the consultant in question in the highest regard and if I have appeared to feel blamed by him, I think I need to clarify I think the opposite is true. So…
He hasn’t tried to blame me; I think he feels that he said yes to something that on reflection he could have said no to and maybe saved Freddie. He blames himself, not me. He was the loveliest, kindest, most supportive man ever. I made him write the letter and he could hardly lie. He visited us every day, cried when he did came to Freddie’s funeral. I could hardly have asked more of him. I think he feels terribly, unnecessarily guilty and the letter was him trying to take responsibility for it where that was not necessary. I think he would like to take the blame off me and any decisions I made. I think he fears that had he been less thoughtful, less supportive, less kind, I would have my son here now. And I might. And I’d probably hate a man who wouldn’t deserve it.
My opinion – brutal though it may be – you DO know, in your heart, you always knew. The consultant *thinks* he/she does not KNOW. There is a world of difference. Wishing you peace of mind.
There is more that governs life and death than 90 mins in a pool.
If they had any concept of a Mothers heart they would not have said such a thing.
Wish I could help you.
xx Debbie
The scientific facts don’t add up. Like you say Freddie showed no signs of distress when you were in the pool. He has just given you another thing to torture yourself over and agonize over as if you don’t have enough grief to cope with. Freddie’s death was terrible and tragic Merry but it wasn’t your fault. Somehow you have got to start believing that yourself before you tear yourself apart anymore than you are doing. Furious, angry and sad on your behalf ((hugs)) xx
He does care about my heart. I honestly think he feels so terrible that he wants to take all the responsibility so that I don’t have to. Except that for me, my responsibility over-rides his, because it was me who had the choice about what to do. Whether to lie down and do as convention would have it, or take the chance myself.
I know Tech, I do know I knew. But I have to tread all those paths again now. It’s so tiring. SO exhausting.
All of this pain, maybe, because of a choice.
I really wouldn’t want people to be angry with him.
Really. Please don’t. I admire him enormously and I’m heartbroken in so very many ways at the effect Freddie’s death has had on him. He’s a lovely man who wanted so much to support me, and did, and loved us both very thoroughly and dearly while we were both there. He gave me just the care i asked for.
And he can’t lie. If that’s what he thinks, he has to say it. I just had hoped that time would have made him feel that it didn’t add up.
I think really he has written a letter that leaves me the right to sue the hospital. Which I have no intention of doing and I honestly believe that if I did then the result would be “no obvious answer and no evidence of lack of care or failure to care appropriately” – or whatever the lingo would be.
I would imagine the reason he tried to avoid writing the letter for so long was because he knew how upset I would be at his conclusions.
Then indeed it seems like this man is a blessing amoung the sadness.
Merry,I know that whatever anyone says to you, and whatever the truth is you will still blame yourself, just as I do even though I know it was not my fault.
I know that it’s hard, and I know keeping on keeping on is bloody relentless, but you will, and your girls will be ok, but honey it’s only six months. Six heartbreaking,devastating months. Hang on in there, I’m here and I’m listening, and you have my number. x
I wish I had a magic answer. A reason or a way or a manual of how to make tomorrow different from what it will inevitably be. All of the things you are feeling are a result of Freddie’s death and sadly the only real truth that will ever come of that its this- he is gone and you are not.
So what do we do with that truth? I am not sure yet. I am searching for an answer myself. I sit every day with the injustice of it. Maybe that is what stabs at me the most. Looking at his perfect face- knowing every bit of him was so beautiful and ready and yet still he somehow slipped away. Sometimes the help we need might be found in the person who encourages us to realize that here on earth we are never going to fully understand why any of this happened. To sit with that and accept it alongside us- just to recognize and acknowledge it can be a gift.
We are both mothers to living children as well as our lost boys. Parenting after a loss is heartbreaking in so many ways. We have not just lost a child, our children have lost their sibling as well- their chance at living alongside another person who shares their features, their bloodline, their story. How can we make that up to them? How can we give them back what they too long for? In my heart I know we can’t. We cannot replace a sibling or use the mommy magic to make it all feel better that seems to work in all other aspects of their childhood.
Your children love and adore you. They look to you for comfort and peace. We both know what it is like to seek joy and find only grief. There is only one starting place that I can think of for us to help heal our children. Love. Look at them and try to find Freddie- even if the pain of that is more than you think you can bear. The fact is you are still here. Life just is. Your children are growing and are grieving with you. Love them with every ounce of yourself. See where the love can take you- even if the journey takes longer than you would like. You have each other and you have the memory of Freddie. Celebrate his short life together- create something as a family and see if it can become a catalyst for something more. Create a plan to focus on the trouble of each of your living children as individuals and come together as a family to work through that plan.
Like I said there is no magic answer to the questions that are haunting all of us. I wish I were closer to where you are so that we could walk and talk and try to search out the light that we so greatly miss. Though I am not near you physically I am walking this path behind you and am here to talk whenever you need to. I feel you pain Merry- for each of your children individually and collectively.
Love and grace- L
PS- You will never cease grieving. How could you for you lost half of yourself? Right now I feel as though finding joy in anything makes me a bad parent to Cullen- how dare I experience happiness when he is dead?
I am not beyond that feeling yet- but maybe someday. Maybe the day will come when I accept that I will always grieve, but eventually I will do it in a different way. I hear this from many mothers who are years out in their losses. Look on my blog at the long comment under Ink and Tears. Laura lost her first daughter 34 years ago. Reading about how she is today gives me some hope. She has not forgotten Celeste and she has not left grief behind. But she has found joy and I hope that we will as well. It is just going to take time- and of course a lot of love.
Nothing sensible to say, just love and *hugs* xx
If it was the time in the pool, then how? I’ve always felt a bit iffy about water births because they appear to slow it down a bit. But that was just my own experience. If there is a contra-indication to water births, then what is it? His letter seems to ask more questions than answer them. Bit insensitive of me to fire these questions off, of course the letter leaves the hospital wide open for legal action, but if this is what is concluded then does that mean pool birthing is going to be off the menu at the hospital? These are an outsider’s questions, just reading what you have documented. Wishing you answers to your own questions and more joyful times soon.
No, not because of the water, just WHILE I was in the pool(unless it was too cold, I know S worried a little about that, but really, I don’t think so.) I was in it for 90 minutes, from 2-8cm. I think he felt that things must have gone wrong for Freddie during that time and had I been a constant monitoring, they’d have heard something and known he wasn’t coping. But the midwife, D, listened lots and I know that the very first time she was at all worried, she got me out – and then no one was worried after that. There is a trace post pool which shows his heart beat doing exactly what you’d expect of any baby just before delivery. No one saw any reason to panic in the 40 minutes after that; in fact, it was only as he was almost out that either of the people caring for me decided to just step up the monitoring a bit, in case they were listening to my pulse not him (they were I think, there is a patch of pulse like trace but with perfectly okay baby heart on each side of it.)
Originally though, he felt that Freddie must have been in trouble before I even got to hospital. I think that too – he was quiet in the morning, I just didn’t believe it, I thought I was over-reacting. The night before, after a quiet day, I cried that I thought he wasn’t safe. But of course, he could have been fragile but if I’d gone in that night and said “I’m worried, get him out” – maybe he’d be here now.
And maybe he’d be here facing a lifetime of tube feeding and wheelchairs.
Oh, I don’t know. Even having a c/s at 39 weeks, that owuld only have been to stop me going into labour to protect ME. Not him. How was I to know if 2 days overdue was too long for him.
None of it makes sense. And anyway, the clincher in the end is that even sick babies damaged at birth but not enough to be stillborn don’t normally die of chest infections at 11 days old. That surprised everyone.
There has to be more to it than his birth. But I don’t know if that is just me kidding myself 🙁
Trying to do what is right for you while grieving and what is best for you children at the same time just seems like an impossible task. I worry constantly that the way I am dealing with Reid’s death is permanently damaging my living child, but I still can’t make myself do things any differently. (and she is so much younger and understands much less than your girls). I obviously don’t have any answers on how to deal with this any “better”, I just hope it helps you a little bit to know that you aren’t the only one who feels like this.
Oh Merry. I just want to reach through the screen and hold you tight. Whenever you write about Freddie’s birth, I nod at the screen. So much is so similar to us – I was in water at home but nothing seemed abnormal when I got to the hospital. I just don’t know. I’ve learned to live there mostly but every so often it just floors me all over again, that something so “normal” went so wrong. Six months out, that still broke me into little pieces every day. And it hurts more than there are any words for, to watch our children – our wonderful, innocent, precious children – living through this. It’s just six months, Merry. Please be gentle on yourself. From what I read here, you are an amazing mother and bit by bit you’ll find a way through this. I truly believe that you will have joy and hope again in the future – it can be very hard to believe that when you’re at the bottom of the pit, struggling to even look up.
We believe it for you.
Cara, it does. Thank you 🙂
Jill, I want to believe that. And I do know, I keep telling myself, that I ended up as I did, with misgivings about a baby I was too afraid to voice, because of the hospital where I had the girls. I still blame them. Not where I had Freddie, who tried so hard. I blame the people who needlessly ripped my confidence away from me on at least 2 of 4 times.
But, about the future – I don’t know. When I wanted another, it was almost as if I felt Freddie hovering in the future. I knew someone had to come. I even knew it would be a boy. Now… I feel no one. I can’t sense anyone else. I used to look at the girls when I was pregnant and think “no, you are a 4. How can you become 5?” I’m not sure there is anyone else. I think I’ve had my lot :/
massive hugs.
I think it’s not down to being in the water, or less monitoring while you were in the pool. I think it’s possible Freddie was a surviving twin, as you mentioned once, and that early bleeding could have been his twin not managing to hang in as he did. I think he had extra problems/challenges from the begining, that your misgivings throuought the pregnancy may have been magnified due to your general tendancy to worry, and previous experienced, but sprang from something you geniunely sensed.
Maybe in alternative universe you did things differently but the outcome was the same – or he lived for 9 days or 12 days. Who knows 🙁
It’s hard to do this game, but impossible not to it seems.
I think joy is deffinitely in your future because joy is not dependent on being happy
big huge hugs