My life is going to be like a TV show I will never forget. A show that some days I will replay over again and other days it will just be a show I once watched. Neonatal loss also known as newborn infant death will never be a show you would want to replay but here I am that person that has to face the reality daily that my baby died shortly after birth.
I think the hardest part of the journey is how in such a short period of time (72+ hours) you can vividly recall every little hour, minute, second. Every conversation, every word spoken and every time my eyes filled with tears. I am a mum but my baby isn’t here. I am a mum who experienced neonatal death.
Losing a baby after birth is real. A reality I wasn’t prepared I could even face.
Six hours after birth we were up in the hospitals maternity floor and I laid on a bed in pain from giving birth only hours ago while also trying to calm this beautiful tiny little soul in my arms as he grunted and weeped in a constant pain.
I had no idea how the next hours would unfold. All I had was positivity.
God had blessed us with this beautiful baby we had wanted so much that I convinced myself nothing would go wrong. How could it? He was fine an hour ago? My pregnancy was fine? My labour was fine? Newborn infant death didn’t even cross my mind.
The specialist walked into the room and placed him at the end of my bed as he put a stethoscope to his chest and listened. Everything seemed normal but their was a instinct that something was not. Yet that instinct didn’t come from me. It might have been because I’d just endured labour and my mind was so exhausted but that specialist knew what was wrong before he was even officially diagnosed. Read about what Foxx was diagnosed with and how you can protect yourself here.
He took our baby away and explained he was going into special care and they were placing him into a coma so that they could put cords into him so he wouldn’t rip them out and so he could relax while being treated. Those words are hard to hear. Being apart from a child you carried for nine months is hard. He explained that when we were to come in and see him to prepare it may be overwhelming as there will be lots of sick or premature babies in there. He took him away and we were not allowed to visit him until it was complete. We didn’t know how long it would take. I expected an hour yet it was around six hours later we finally got to see him again.
The specialist came in as I had just gone to the toilet and spoke to Ted. When I came back into the room the specialist left and Ted burst into tears. The first time in my life I had ever seen Ted so upset. I almost fell to the floor with anxiety but he said he was just upset because the specialist said “everything is connected to him now and you can come see him when you like” but he said it was the first time he thought we might have lost our son.
I get so upset thinking the amount of pain that has unfolded with the birth of our first child. The amount of pain that little boy had to endure. The pain my partner lives with. The pain I live with. The pain my family feels. Nothing can quite ease or explain the depth of that pain.
When I remember the pain of the tears behind my partners eyes in the moment that he realised we could lose our son, I just can’t even begin to comprehend it.
You’ve seen the tv shows where parents face distressing situations. It is exactly like that.
I still can’t begin to relive every single moment of those 72+ hours but as I write, I am slowly beginning to express them.
The moment you are told your child can no longer come back from this is the moment you realise life will never be the same. I remember the tears running down my face as I said “no, no, keep fighting Foxx, keep fighting Foxx”.
Repeating it over and over again as my body physically couldn’t bear to let go.
I remember saying that I have seen babies survive things like this! I’ve read the stories! Please do something! As our special care nurse tried her best to keep composed I couldn’t help but to notice the tears rolling down the eyes of those who were meant to keep him alive. I know they felt like they failed him.
I know they would live with this same pain but none of them will ever quite know the lifetime we will have of it.
I didn’t want to settle knowing we would have a lifetime of this pain as I kept whispering those words to him “Keep Fighting Foxx” and glimpsing between his body and the machine where his C02 levels kept rising. I just knew. He was gone. I was really living in the TV show that didn’t have a happy ending. The TV show that never seems to exist. They all have happy endings. Why can’t mine be too?
I had just finished the series of which was the best and worst time of my life.
The pregnancy and amazing labour which you can read about here with our first son right through to the greatest loss we will ever know.
