Florence’s Story – Three Point Five

A year ago today, we heard the words that our baby daughter had died. I had just reached 37 weeks’ pregnant and we’d only put the cot up earlier that week because we thought it was safe to assume all would be well.

As the news sunk in, the wonderful lady who became our consultant needed to discuss with us what happened next. It was quite late on Sunday evening and induction wasn’t an option, but the situation wasn’t an emergency as nothing more could be done, so didn’t warrant a caesarean there and then. So, after some deliberation, we decided that we would rather go home and come back in the morning. The problem was, we were both so shaken up that they didn’t want me to drive home again so we were stranded quite a distance from home. Thankfully, my husband’s best friend arrived within the hour and rescued us – and the first thing she did was throw her arms around us both as she met us in the car park. It was so utterly brave of her to walk into that situation and remain calm; I have no idea if she cried when she left us, but she never faltered as she drove us home, offered to make us tea or something to eat and checked that we would be ok before she made her way home.

Once she’d gone, neither of us could face sleeping in our bedroom where the cot and all the baby things were laid out so we took a sofa each and dozed in and out of sleep, listening to the tick, tick, tick of the mantelpiece clock until 7am came around. My older brother, Matt, came to collect us and drove us back to the hospital where we were settled into the bereavement suite we’d briefly visited the night before.

The hours that followed are a blur with midwives, an anesthetist and the consultant visiting, together with the bereavement midwife – who handed us a memory box for use once our daughter had been born. It was a gift I didn’t want to accept; as if accepting the box was tantamount to accepting that there was no coming back from this. Instead of our baby, the box would be the only thing we would be taking home.

I had pleaded for a general anesthetic because I couldn’t face the thought of the deafening silence in the operating theatre as they delivered our girl. When my son had been born seven years previously, there had been happy voices and my favourite music playing as he was laid next to me on the bed – blinking and gazing dozily into my eyes.  A stillbirth robs you of all that joy – there is nothing to look forward to – the delivery is a functional operation – not the celebration you had envisaged only days before.

Florence Frances arrived into the world at 11:58am on Monday 3 August weighing a very normal 7lb 2oz. I was out cold and didn’t get to see her for a couple hours but in that time, the midwife did as I asked – washing and dressing her, wrapping her in the blanket I’d bought and settling her in a specially-chilled moses basket. My first hazy recollection was of coming round and asking to see her. Through the fog of anesthetic and morphine, I looked down at the baby in my arms and none of it seemed real. I don’t know what I had expected in my mind’s eye – perhaps that she would be a carbon copy of her big brother – but I was struck by her thick, dark curly hair – she was the absolute spitting image of her daddy.

Of course, many people forget the father in all this. I may have been the one undergoing the surgery, but I am so sad that we weren’t together when he held her for the first time. I am thankful that my brother stayed with him so he wasn’t alone, but the whole situation was not in the natural order of things – you shouldn’t welcome your child into the world only to have to say goodbye. It was utterly unfair. Why us? Why our daughter?

Guest blog for Footsteps Counselling & Care

https://footstepscounselling.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/growing-upyou-always-want-to-be-part-of.html

Florence’s Story – Three Point Four

It’s taken me some time – close to a year now – to sit down and tell this story. It’s one I know all too well because it runs around in my head most days to some extent. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve come a long way since those dark days in Aug 2015 and I’ve received excellent physical and mental health care from the NHS – but the reminders are always there. That said, it’s not that I choose to remember or forget; it’s often said that parents who have lost a child never forget – talking about it doesn’t remind me because it is always there. It’s not a scar I wear with pride or relish, but still it’s there. Unchanged by the passing of time.

Following our 36 week scan, I’d felt a little unwell over the next couple of days. It was nothing more than niggling late pregnancy stuff, but a tiny voice at the back of my head made me wonder if all was ok. I went for a lie down on the Saturday and downloaded an app on my phone that listens to your baby’s heartbeat. I was certain I’d found it but later on asked my husband to talk to my bump with the silly voice he’d taken to using and say ‘boo’ to try and make her jump. She’d always been quite jumpy; the sound of the washing up clattering often set her off and as she’d been breech for quite some time, made her presence felt by dancing on my bladder. There is nothing quite as surreal as feeling a tiny pair of feet pushing down into your groin and her time of choice was often around 10pm when I was winding down for bed.

Crucially, I’d googled ‘reduced movement at 37 weeks’ and there a multitude of people were saying that babies often slow down towards the end of pregnancy as they have less room. As I know now; this is one of the most misleading and dangerous myths that is out there and it is completely false. But as I thought we’d got her moving, I put my worries to one side for the night.

It had been an extremely warm July and we spent the Saturday with family celebrating my dad’s birthday with lunch at one of our favourite local pubs. I felt pretty normal for someone approaching 37 weeks pregnant. I remember sitting look at my two year old niece munching on her usual pesto pasta and imagined the little cousins playing with her in a year’s time.

On the Sunday, we were invited to a barbeque at our friends’ house. It was a gorgeous afternoon and as my son played in the sunshine with their little girl, we commented on how he was going to be a fantastic big brother. The conversation also turned to how we’d been concerned about her movements and my husband asked if I’d felt her move today. Sudddenly it dawned on me that no, I hadn’t, and our friends suggested we go to the hospital for a check up. It seems insane now, but I was actually grumpy about it – it was late on Sunday afternoon, I was tired and it felt like a waste of time driving all the way to the hospital. Our nearest unit is now midwife-led so I knew that they would have to refer me on to the city hospital 17 miles away if there was a problem and this was something I didn’t relish on a Sunday evening.

I called maternity triage and was asked to head in to see them which we did, packing my son off to his honorary grandma’s. He was just excited about going for a holidays sleepover and we didn’t make a big deal out of where we were going. On arrival at the hospital, we were met by a midwife who got me to lie down (no mean feat at 37 weeks, I can tell you) and she hooked me up to the heartbeat monitor. We thought she’d found it momentarily – a racing heartbeat much faster than my own – but she seemed to be fussing and muttered about getting a colleague to check as she was having trouble. Her colleague returned with her and she too seemed to struggle. All the while, I was getting more angry and anxious because she’d always been elusive and moved away from the Doppler during check ups and I thought this was nothing unusual.

In all honesty, it’s a bit of a blur, but they muttered about the city hospital having better machines and that they would have more success, so we were asked to make the 8 mile journey on to there. As I drove us there, I reassured my husband that I was sure everything was fine and that the midwives were just being a bit useless. We parked up at the hospital and headed into the Women’s Centre – and – as we reached the door – we were met by the consultant who immediately took us in for an ultrasound. As I lay on the bed, staring at those weird suspended ceiling tiles they have in hospitals and offices, I noticed a treasury tag hanging down. I have no idea why it was there, but as I lay there, holding my breath, I suddenly had a terrible feeling that it was something I was going to remember.

The consultant was calm and lovely, but she too needed a colleague to come in and check. And then she turned, put her hand on mine and said gently; “I’m so sorry love, but I’m afraid that your baby has died.” And so our world came crashing in. 

The Ramsays: Losing a child is devastating at any age

 I was truly saddened by the news today that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and his wife Tana have lost their baby son at 5 months into her pregnancy. 

I would hope that anyone seeing the news would feel nothing but heartache for them but I know that there will also be a few people - surprised by the late addition to their family - who will dismiss the experience as simply being 'one of those things'. Sadly, miscarriage (any birth before 24 weeks) and stillbirth is frighteningly common. Statistics show that 1 in 4 pregnancies will end in loss and there are more than 3,600 stillbirths a year in the UK alone. 

Loss at any stage of a pregnancy is a bereavement for a parent - it is not diminished by 'how many weeks' you were or whether you had already packed your hospital bag. Nor is it lessened by already having living children. When your baby dies, you lose a whole lifetime of hopes and dreams for the child that you expected to meet. I know that Gordon, Tana and their children will be grieving for the brother they have lost and will need time to come to terms with the trauma.

For the next few months, in the run up to the anniversary of the loss of our own daughter on 3 August last year, we are running the #footprintsforflorence campaign in aid of the charities SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity), Cruse Bereavement Care and Footsteps Counselling & Care who support parents and their extended family, regardless of their social or economic background, in coming to terms with their loss. The idea of the campaign is that people can do something to make their 'mark', their 'footprint' - be it a random act of kindness, planting wild flowers or making a difference in some way. And, if they wish, make a donation to these charities too. 

If you'd like to get involved, you'll find the link below. 

Donate

Florence’s Story – Three Point Three

Today, as I write, I’m anxious. Not just because it was on my mind that I needed to continue to tell this story, but also because our girl has been on my mind a lot this last week or so. There are so many triggers – but one of them has been those ‘motherhood photo challenge’ posts doing the rounds on Facebook. I trust that those who know me well know that I try not to attach enormous significance to social media – yes, I enjoy it, and it’s sometimes part of what I do for work – but it’s not real life. So I say this without prejudice and with the caveat that it shouldn’t matter – but my lack of nomination was notable by its absence. The silence almost deafening. If someone had nominated me to post a photo which ‘makes me proud to be a mum’; I would have been torn because I don’t have any photos of my children together. I would have had to post two and most people – whoever they are, and myself included – find photos of stillborn babies uncomfortable so it offered an excruciating dilemma. It’s testament to the fact that my virtual and real life friends didn’t want to upset or remind me of my loss, but as I’ve said before; I’ve never forgotten. It’s forever a double-edged sword.

I was now around 22 weeks pregnant – too early to go on maternity leave, but noticeably ‘bumpy’ which frightened employment agencies when I walked through the door ‘just looking for temp work’. They didn’t know what to do with me; I was a walking health and safety risk with two versions of my CV, but the dumbing down didn’t seem to wash. I know they wanted me to go away because in their position, I probably would have wanted that too. The figures speak for themselves; Jobseeker’s Allowance is apparently £72.40 – I think it must have gone up very slightly since I last claimed – but still. Statutory Maternity Allowance is £139.58 but is only payable for a maximum of 39 weeks. I didn’t want to admit defeat and claim too early as this would have detracted from the time I would have at home with my daughter once she’d arrived. So I persisted, but in six weeks of searching for work, I got exactly two days temp admin work. It was now pretty much high summer and I was getting very uncomfortable, so I finally admitted defeat and filled in the terrifyingly complicated form to claim SMP.

In the meantime, I had the ludicrous situation of continuing to sign on. Once a fortnight, I had to wait on a phone call from a work advisor who would ask me what I had done to seek work. It turns out that the DWP were in the process of making redundancies so the guarantee of these calls was patchy at best, but I couldn’t go into the Jobcentre on the Monday and physically sign to receive my money on the Thursday until I’d received this call. And then, having waited in all day, the 5 minute appointment was usually just before school pick up when the Jobcentre was a 20 minute drive away. Frustrating doesn’t even cover it.To his initial credit, the chap who finally got tasked with speaking to me understood the irony of the situation – that I was doing everything I could to seek work but nobody wanted to employ me. And the Richard Whiteley lookalike in the Jobcentre itself was cynical about how well the system was working for people in my situation and always had an encouraging demeanour. I could almost hear the ‘Countdown’ music in my ear as I scribbled on his electronic signature pad…

The summer holidays began and my then 6 year old son was quickly getting fed up with his weeble-esque mum who couldn’t keep up and had to have a lie down even after a walk to the shops. I reassured him that things would improve once his sister had arrived and that we would be out and about with the pram on trips to the park and so on. A small part of me feared my recollections of the dark days of sleep deprivation and how that might impact on my parenting style for a while, but I was sure it was a period of adjustment that we’d just have to weather with the support of playdates and grandparents.

And so, the end of July came around and we were booked in for a 36 week growth scan and appointment with the consultant to discuss delivery. It seems irrelevant now but I was fretting about her due date of 24 August because of where the school year cut off dates fell. I didn’t want her to be at a disadvantage further down the line and wanted a reasonable say in where her birthday might fall. Also, my son’s birth six years previously had been traumatic; he was 15 days overdue by the time he arrived following a failed 4 day induction and emergency caesarean at 3am on Christmas Day. It had been long, painful and frustrating trying to have him naturally, only for it to end in surgery anyway. I’ve since learned that, as I have a tilted pelvis, that it was an improbable task attempting to deliver him ‘normally’ lying on my back on a bed. My mother’s words about ‘upright and mobile’ had rang in my head, but through the fog of gas and air and the monitoring which wasn’t mobile back then, I remained static for 9 hours – no wonder we struggled.

But I didn’t want history to repeat – I wanted to feel in control of how this birth would take place. What would be the point of another failed labour only for it to end in a c-section anyway? With all that in mind, I was resolved to have a planned c-section at 38 weeks and it was booked for two weeks’ time. We’d seen our little lady on the screen and she was measuring normally for dates; we could see her heart beating and her lungs practicing for the job they would do in the outside world. This was on the Thursday and as far as we were concerned, we were about to meet our little girl. The sonographer was happy, the midwife and consultant were happy and I was to all intents and purposes, having a healthy and low-risk pregnancy. It would be fair to say that at this point, we felt pretty certain that all was well. The cot was up, I had stocked up on nappies and arranged all her things and I just needed to pack my hospital bag. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could prepare us for what actually lay ahead. 

Florence’s Story – Three Point Two

It is, dare I say, a cliché, but losing my brother so young has left me with a lasting indentation of the fragility of life. I’d learned through loss that nothing could be taken for granted anymore. Events don’t always take the course we expect – and I certainly didn’t expect to live my life without my little brother in it. I began to practice reinforcing my sanity somehow by assuming the worst so I could feel surprise and relief when things panned out much better. I realise that makes me sound like an utter pessimist, but in reality, I’m really not. I do however admit that I have latterly become the person who sees an ambulance on an emergency call and immediately feel concern that it could be rushing to someone I know. It’s a fleeting (and probably largely normal) feeling of ‘I hope not’ but still, it’s there; arming myself with a ‘what if’ for the future, hoiking up my belt and braces as I head into the unknown.

There are some commonly-held thoughts about pregnancy announcements and it’s generally the ‘done’ thing that you don’t tell too many people until you’ve had your 12 week scan. I don’t judge people who deviate from that, because it’s a completely personal decision. But, certainly for us, it was a sensible approach as statistics say that 20% of miscarriages occur before 20 weeks and 80% of those are before 12 weeks. We didn’t want to assume anything until we were absolutely sure. There was a small part of me that was a little cocky – I’d had a healthy baby before – I was good at being pregnant – so what could go wrong?

Our 20 week scan was both nerve-wracking and exciting, as it is for any parent, but things were progressing as they should and I had been passing all my check-ups with flying colours, so we felt quietly confident.  I freely admit that once we’d checked the baby was physically ok, we wanted to know the sex and were crossing our fingers that it was a little girl. The rather grumpy and ‘just the facts, ma’am’ sonographer took the sheen off it all with her manner, but we didn’t care – and cheered when our hopes were confirmed. I can’t remember how quickly we settled on the name; I’d heard it a few times and liked it so came home pondering it and mentioned it to G who immediately agreed. Florence it was. And Frances as her middle name – after both our Grandad’s Frank. It’s also my middle name. We tried to keep it quiet; the last vestige of secrecy these days when our Facebook friends knew pretty much everything else.

My pregnancy continued normally;  according to one friend I looked slimmer every time she saw me – well, I’m not sure about that, but I know that the best fix for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) symptoms is pregnancy as it regulates your insulin levels, so in the second trimester, I did feel pretty good. My bump was measuring correct for dates; the early signs of pelvic and back pain had disappeared and I was holding down a freelance job under quite a bit of pressure. I freely admit that my mind wandered, I took my eye off the ball one week and my contract was swiftly ended after three months. But in all honesty, I refused to crack over it because they had barely given a flying monkeys about my pregnancy in the first place (who doesn’t flippin’ ask their colleague how a 20 week scan went?!) and I didn’t want the stress to affect our daughter. My former employer then revealed his true arsehole rating by emailing me while I was sitting in hospital having my glucose tolerance test (GTT) to tell me I was forbidden from using any of the work I’d done for him in my portfolio. Suffice to say I ignored him – I am always honest about my element of input into things, so I had absolutely no intention of claiming to have done more than I had – and told him so. I can't control what he subsequently said about me to clients and whoever sat in my seat next; but I was beyond worrying about the details and amused myself with potential ideas for revenge. I didn't carry any of them out, I would swiftly add. 

By this stage it was early June and I was around 22 weeks pregnant – it was way too early to go on maternity leave but the chance of finding another contract didn’t look that promising either. I might as well have walked into employment agencies and the job centre with a ticking cardboard box in my hands. They couldn’t understand why the lady with the baby bump wasn’t just resolving to put her feet up for the next 15 weeks or so. The simple answer: money. I didn’t have more than a month’s salary saved – and would only be entitled to statutory maternity allowance – which is slightly more respectable that Jobseeker’s Allowance, but I was still perfectly capable of earning more. To put it simply; they saw the bump and not the person. It was pregnancy discrimination pure and simple. Nobody got it and it was depressing as hell.

Florence’s Story – Three Point One

There are so many parts of my life that I struggle to remember; some simply due to the passing of time and others because I suspect, like so many, I just wanted to forget. Our memories are so specific to us – and I know that in any given situation, people will always recall different facets of a day or experience. And, the more traumatic the experience of course, the more we want – or need to forget. That’s if we can. But, when it comes to Florence’s story, I am torn between remembering the detail of our little girl’s all too brief existence and forgetting the pain and trauma of what eventually occurred.

I met my now husband G when my son H was three. It would be fair to say that his permanence didn’t initially go down too well with H. G vividly recalls one early encounter when H turned to me and said, quite loudly and deliberately “when is he leaving?”… he’d more or less had me all to himself up until that point, so in his mind, it was a fair question I suppose! I had always wanted another baby and was always amazed when, as a single parent, people asked me if I was planning to have any more. The answer was, no, I’d like to actually be married to someone next time as my son was an unexpected but very wanted ‘happy accident’ and it had, at times, been a massive struggle. Fortunately G was on the same page as me when it came to marriage and babies, so it didn’t have shades of bunny boiler when those important conversations about the future were happening quite early in our relationship. I knew that while a resentful toddler had the potential to scare him permanently off parenthood, actually G was excited about becoming a dad.

Without going into icky specifics, we found out we were expecting just two months into trying. We were thrilled – especially as our fertility wasn’t guaranteed for a number of reasons. It had been the best part of 7 years since I’d last been pregnant, but I thought it would all be quite familiar. The truth is, it couldn’t have been more different. I was older for a start and my starting weight was heavier (the post-wedding dress pounds had snuck back on but I had been a good size smaller than that last time anyway). But nothing prepared me for the constant feeling of nausea – it was literally all day. I pretty much ate nothing but potatoes, pasta and cheese for three months and fell asleep on the sofa every night. G began to think he was married to some kind of carb zombie with the attention span of a goldfish. 

The week when we were due our 12 week scan arrived and we were pragmatic about the potential outcome, but what I really didn’t expect was the meeting at work announcing that there would be redundancies – most likely in the (small) marketing department where I was working. I remember getting back to my desk and immediately bursting into tears. I was an old hand at redundancy so it was perhaps a heady mix of hormones and realism that hit me in that moment. I had been there exactly a year and in a permanent contract with a good salary, so it had felt like a ‘responsible decision’ when we decided to try for a baby. Suddenly all that was thrown into question. I looked around me and knew that, ultimately, it was most likely me that was going to be leaving and what employer would take me on permanently knowing I was pregnant? 

I immediately wanted to take control of the situation rather than wait for the inevitable outcome of the consultation period; partly because I was worried about stress affecting the baby and also because I figured I was more employable if I could leave sooner rather than later. As it goes, I managed to secure something else quickly (which didn’t turn out so well either) but the initial worry of the financial situation didn’t entirely help matters. So we attended the scan with some trepidation – we had agreed to be pragmatic and not take anything for granted because I had already spent a night in hospital with bleeding at six weeks. But there it was - she was, although we didn’t know it yet – a tiny heartbeat on the screen and the little person we hoped would complete our family. For the first time, we had the first glimmer of hoping – daring to hope – that it was going to happen. And it felt perfect.

Florence - 12 week scan