Shared experiences
Very many thanks to all the parents, siblings, families and friends, who have allowed us to share their experiences on this site.
Shared experiencesVery many thanks to all the parents, siblings, families and friends, who have allowed us to share their experiences on this site. |
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LouisFull fathoms five thy father lies, My wife and I and still grieving for our son. In the lines that follow I don't want to be presumptuous enough to offer advice to bereaved parents; all that I can do in the context of these words is to hurt openly. The recollections, thoughts and emotions written here trace events which occurred in the past fourteen months of our lives. Hopefully they give you something of our story. Our son Louis grew to be nine pounds nine ounces. A big baby with my forehead and his mother's chin. And then he died. We talked a lot about babies' birthweights in our antenatal classes; I remember once that another prospective father opined that preoccupation with a new baby's weight was stupid. He couldn't see the sense in it...ten pounds, six pounds eight ounces...so what? I also remember that I disagreed vigorously, stating that I thought it was all a part of giving the new little person an identity...first by sex, then weight. Then indentikit ...Granny's eyes, Aunt Nellie's nose and so on. My forehead, his mother's chin... The memories of those classes! How excited and light-hearted we were! Coming home and comparing ourselves with the other couples, talking about it for hours. Weren't we going to be just the best parents there'd ever been! We loved the whole 'new parent' process...the pregnancy test, the visits to the doctors, the books, the car-seat brochures, the excursions to the baby shops... the scan... I remember how we both gazed for hours at a fuzzy black and white picture of our blossoming offspring, trying to discern physical features. Julie said it had my forehead. I put it down to the fact that father and baby were both bald. After hours more scrutiny I was sure that I could see a little pair of testicles. We turned the picture upside down, held it against the one in the pregnancy book and compared. For hours. We became convinced that we had a boy, but then again... We weren't far off being newly weds when our son died. Married in 1994 we'd conducted what we flippantly call an LDR (long distance relationship). We joked to friends that it was a terribly trendy thing to have (What?? you haven't had an LDR??), but it's something that neither of us would seriously recommend. The main features of LDRs are absence and pain. We'd be together either in Australia or England for a few weeks and then apart for six months. For four years we had a relationship that amazingly stood up to this pressure until we were able to get married. Although I was 39 and Julie 34 it was the first wedding for either of
us. At last we could visualise a future where we would always be together,
and we made our plans. Involving children. We pored over the pregnancy book. It lived under our bed but never got dusty. There were sections in it about what the baby would be like at each stage, what we should look for and so on, and we got worried when it didn't all happen textbook style. Julie didn't get morning sickness, for instance. And as the pregnancy went on, the baby didn't kick as often as it might have done. But we were constantly reassured about this. Some babies are lazy. Maybe it was going to be like me. The pregnancy book had a chapter for fathers. I read most of it with scorn. There was a load of stuff about feeling jealous and left out of the pregnancy process. I felt that this didn't apply to me, but I did find some interesting ideas about . I like singing and do a fair bit of it at 'bonding' folk clubs and the like so I thought I'd sing the baby a certain song every couple of days; I could soothe it and sing it to sleep after it was born and it would get to know my voice. Julie thought it was a nice idea. I used to kid myself that every time I put my lips against Julie's belly to sing the song that he sort of thought, "Goodnight Dad" and felt comforted. I later sang it at his funeral. The day that we found out he had died we were together. It's something we'll always be thankful for We'd just finished moving house and I had a day off school to complete operations, shift a few remaining things and generally tidy up. It was the day that our offspring was officially due to enter the world. We had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch at a rural pub during which some very good friends rang us from Australia. As we drove to the midwife's appointment I remember saying to Julie: "Life couldn't be much sweeter". What sort of a sick joke was it when a few moments later our anguished midwife informed us that she couldn't feel the baby's heart? How did we get to Hemel Hospital in one piece? How did we not collapse in a screaming heap when various technological devices at the hospital confirmed that our baby was not alive? I sat on the edge of a hospital bed and cried. After a doctor with the bedside manner of Godzilla sat astride a chair and barked reality at us, the midwife on duty also appeared to cry. That was that, the doctor said. Dazed, we were escorted into the SANDS room. After a procession of hospital people had come and gone, Ita, arrived, tears still trickling down her cheeks. Ita, the midwife/teacher, so supportive to us in the birth classes was to continue to be so as we travelled our painful twilight journey. It was indeed a twilight world that we now entered. Going home for the evening before being induced the next day', facing up to phoning up. Telling those that loved us most that our baby was dead in Julie's body Phoning my parents in Sydney and telling my anxious and excited mother- without doubt the most difficult thing I've ever done. We wept on each other over twelve thousand miles. It was the same devastation for Julie and her mother who was in France. The next morning my brother and sisters rang from home and I tried to talk; I choked, hung up, then went outside to pack the car I found in the garden, Julie placing some newly picked flowers into a mug to take with her. That scene is the saddest poem that could ever have been etched onto my memory. Back in the SANDS room our eyes watched the cricket on TV Our minds rippled out in a million directions. Our hearts broke into pieces. Seven hours passed. I went to the shops and bought junk food and a flask of whisky- there were only so many cheese salads one could eat in a day and I sensed that fortification would be needed soon. Julie slept a little. I wept again, picked up a pad and wrote: No one can take this journey but us; And you, my dear sweet one, I sit here with my own grief - Linda followed me into the SANDS room and asked if I was OK. I said yes. She asked if I wanted a hug. I said yes again and she held me whilst I blubbed on her shoulder. We took the pictures then, and in a strange and sombre sort of way we celebrated Louis' arrival. That night in bed, looking at Julie and reflecting on it all I felt moved to write: As you lie asleep in my arms dear Julie, I was remembering that expression on my wife's face just after the birth. She'd seemed totally transcendent- as if there was some strange, peaceful and unspoken bond between herself and Louis. She remembers feeling like that too. We had Louis with us for five hours in his crib. Unknown to me, Julie had bought me a cricket book. It was Robin Smith's autobiography and when she gave it to me later that day I found a piece of paper inside which said : To. . . The next morning I woke up and found that Julie had opened her heart and expressed her grief on paper. It was unbearably beautiful and sad. This is a part of what she wrote: .. .A strong baby boy weighing 9Ibs 9ozs, you were heavy in my arms as I rocked you to my heart. All my love and longing poured out from me to you. How I wanted you to curl your long Daddy's fingers in a grip on my hand. How I wanted to feel your breath. . .. all these things, but no it wasn't to be. . . After we left the cocoon of the SANDS room, Ita and Linda seemed to be always around to help us emerge painfully out of our twilight world. They visited us on different days. Apart from the steady stream of cards and letters, their visits were the day's only thing to look forward to. We had a quiet funeral with the two of us and a priest. I carried his little white coffin to the grave. On it we placed a bunch of wild poppies which had assumed a deep significance for us. We read prayers and poems and placed flowers from our families and then huge sparse raindrops fell like tears onto his coffin. Our dreams and our joy tumbled into his grave to be covered with earth and clay. We staggered numbly home. It's four months since we buried Louis. I'm back at work and I no longer have nightmares about dead babies. I don't suffer from insomnia anymore. I'm fully recovered from the terrible fever into which I fell soon after the funeral. I am in many ways my old nocturnal self, although we both know that neither of us will ever be the same again. The other day I wrote this: l'm glad to be back amongst you, I'm back with friends and family I'm years and years much older now, I'm older and wiser and sadder now, Louis We don't want to forget our son. We want people to talk about him and use his name. We love him so very much. We also know that we've got to move on, and that we can't do it by being rushed. It hurts when people forget that we can't be normal again- not just yet. It grates when people advise us to have another child. What I say now, in the face of the continual pain of not having Louis, is "we'll see." Louis Peter Henry Jenner Doug
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