Читать книгу Miles Apart - Annabel Bower - Страница 8

That week, we were in the midst of a heatwave. Josh hates hospitals. They make him incredibly uncomfortable and I’d make a guess that if he never has to enter another one for as long as he lives, he’ll be a happy man. Sitting on the sticky vinyl charts in the Maternal Fetal Medicine waiting room, flicking through the year-old gossip mags, avoiding eye contact with other terrified parents, Josh looked like he wished he could be anywhere else. We both did, because we wanted our baby to be okay, to be told to go home, that it had all been one big mistake.

The head MFM doctor explained our baby’s condition to us in great detail. We were taken to another department in the hospital straight after, to meet with a neonatal neurologist. The neurologist was very clear: our baby basically had no chance unless the clot blocking the ventricles moved of its own accord. The damage from the hemorrhage and the swelling was likely to be irreversible and could indicate incompatibility with life. At this stage of pregnancy, important brain development was occurring, which our baby would miss out on completely. If it had been later in pregnancy, early delivery followed by surgery may have been an option, but at our baby’s gestation period, it would not be strong enough to go through that.

The outcomes were bleak: our baby’s situation was like that of an adult who had suffered an aneurysm and was being kept alive by a life-support machine. In our case, the placenta was the life support machine. Once removed from it, the baby may not survive. The doctor could see how torn we were by the diagnosis. He suggested we come back in a week, after Christmas, for one final scan to see if anything had improved. We would also have the full results of the amniocentesis by then. I think he could see just how painful this ‘decision’ was for me and that we needed time to absorb what had been explained to us so far. Josh, ever calm and practical, kept telling me, “You are not choosing to do this, you are simply acting on the cards you have been dealt.”

I hadn’t told friends what was going on. Lots of people had called for my birthday and were looking to catch up for a pre-Christmas drink (a non-alcoholic one for me obviously). I was ignoring them all. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to people, let alone socialise. Telling people would make it real – and I wasn’t strong enough to encounter adverse opinions. Being forced to ‘decide’ whether to terminate a pregnancy that’s likely to result in a child that is incompatible with life is still an unspoken and taboo area of baby loss. And I still feel uncomfortable with the topic at times, even though I have lived it.

Christmas, like my birthday, felt completely hollow. We had organised well in advance that the boys were going off to their dad’s at noon on Christmas Day, and they were going to stay with him for two weeks. The morning was full of great excitement: the opening of Santa’s presents, the discovery of new bikes and the sheer joy that Christmas is for kids. I watched the boys whiz around the front driveway on their shiny new bikes, with Bonnie trying to keep up on her scooter, and felt completely dead inside. I couldn’t soak up their happiness, I was so broken and empty. I felt like the grim reaper was hovering over me, waiting to snatch this precious baby away from our family before we got the chance to meet him or her. Sitting on the front step, I started crying.

“Why are you crying Mum?” asked Ted, as he rode past.

“No reason Ted, just feeling a bit sad, nothing to worry about.”

“Is it because your baby is sick and it’s going to die?”

“No darling, the baby is fine.”

Ted is very perceptive and obviously quite the eavesdropper, but this still floored me. He had clearly sensed that something was amiss and picked up a few little soundbites along the way. Ted was obsessed with this baby and had been asking so many questions about it. If this baby didn’t make it, his little heart would be broken too.

I love Christmas and adore cooking Christmas lunch and making a big day of it. But my heart wasn’t in it, for obvious reasons. If I could have skipped it altogether, I happily would have. Luckily, Josh’s entire family was on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia. We were doing a very small lunch at my parents’ house, with just my older brother and his partner, over from Melbourne. I’d messaged my brother the day before, to organise a swim and a catch-up, so he could see the kids. I had an echocardiogram at the Women’s at 4pm on Christmas Eve, to investigate an additional issue picked up in the baby’s heart during Thursday’s scan, so Josh brought the kids to see my brother. I told my brother in my message that things were not going well with the baby, and the only way I’d make it through Christmas Day was to not talk about the baby at all.

I wonder now how I will feel towards Christmas in the future. It was such a pivotal day for us, the year Miles was born. I had gone to such extreme lengths to hide my distress from the boys, until they went to their dad’s on Christmas Day. I’d taken them to a movie the week before, sobbing through the whole thing in the dark, only just pulling myself together before we walked out of the cinema together, into the sunshine. I avoided school holiday hotspots, as I was terrified of bumping into people. I always feel obliged to tell people exactly what is going on, so I didn’t want to risk seeing people and having to explain why I was so down, especially in front of the kids. But once we got through the Christmas Day – the last thing we were expected to show up for – Josh and I were free to hide away and no longer had to keep up our brave faces.

A few very close friends knew what we were facing. The lovely ones who took the boys for the day when we had our first appointment with MFM were an incredible support. My best friend was over from London, and I felt I could tell her the full extent of the situation. And of course, there was Anna, the friend who had lost her own baby ten years ago. Our next MFM appointment was on 27 December. Although I knew the outcome was unlikely to change with this final scan, I was wishing upon every star in the sky that it would. The amniocentesis results that came back on Christmas Eve had cleared us of all syndromes, infections, etc. The only possible explanations remaining for our baby’s condition were NAIT (neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia) or a one-in-a-million brain hemorrhage.

Like many do when faced with this kind of tragedy, I began to bargain with the universe. I’m not religious, but I kept hoping that by some miracle, some twist of fate, our baby would be fine. I refused to believe this could even be happening. The why us? question played on repeat. What had we possibly done to deserve this? The answer was simple: nothing.

It wasn’t fair. Even though you hear of people losing babies, you always think it won’t happen to you. The odds will be in your favour, not against it. I wondered if I’d been ‘chosen’ because I am strong and as much as I didn’t want to have to survive this trauma, I knew I would somehow cope if the worst happened. I suppose the other way of looking at it is, why not us? As much as we would all like to think we can pass through life without tragedy or pain, it is unlikely that we will. Many people are lucky not to experience earth-shattering grief until later in life. For Josh and me, it seemed very likely we would face it relatively young.

Someone said to me, “At least you have three beautiful children.” I remember thinking, yes, I am so, so lucky, but I certainly didn’t need this utter devastation to make me realise that, or appreciate my living children. I always have and always will. Having to share the custody of the boys and going through a high-risk pregnancy with Bonnie had already reinforced this. Like all parents, I found my children exhausting and exasperating at times, but I was also so grateful to be their mum. I was worried that if the baby didn’t make it, the grief would crush me so much I wouldn’t be able to parent my living children. I was also worried I’d feel so guilty that they lived but their little sibling didn’t and wouldn’t know how to make sense of the injustice of it. My mind was in overdrive, with so many conflicting emotions vying for attention. But once we had got through Christmas and waved off the boys, our baby and his or her future dominated my every thought, without interruption or distraction.