We meet at last – I love you!!

This time, there was no hanging around waiting for a room. We now found out that the hospital had a suite set aside for situations such as ourselves, and my husband could at least stay with me as there was a sofa for him to sleep on. Also, there was no hanging around in inducing me, and despite that it was almost 11pm, I was induced almost immediately. Thankfully, my body responded quickly to the medication, and the contractions started fairly swiftly. I was again hooked up to a morphine pump, and at 6am, thanks to a wonderful midwife, I had our little boy. I know this should have been the saddest moment, but instead I was elated. I was so relieved to finally meet him at last, the love I felt for him was overwhelming. He weighed just shy of 4lbs, but to me he was huge. How do women do it when babies are 9lbs?!!! He looked perfect in every way. He even had dark hair like me, but the rest of him was all daddy – the arms, the feet. But I knew when I held the back of his head that it felt like a water-filled balloon. The horrifying thought occurred to me, thankfully for only a brief moment,that perhaps his head would burst if we weren’t careful. Thankfully that didn’t happen.  We dressed him in a little babygrow and hat I’d bought in Mothercare the day before and we cuddled him. And my initial elation turned into sheer sobbing desolation.

My parents came to see him and so did my sister. My husband’s parents also came to see him. I didn’t want him to be thought of as a pregnancy that didn’t work out. He was a little baby, a real human being, even if his brain was in a very bad way, and I needed them to realise that he existed and that he wasn’t a figment of our imagination.

The hospital chaplain came to see us, even though it was his day off, and I realised that he was the same chaplain who’d written me that kind note two years previously for our other baby. We both knew that we were going to have a funeral, and that it would be for both boys, and he would be the one to conduct it.

We spent the rest of the day cuddling our boy and taking pictures. But we knew we’d have to leave him with the hospital. We kissed him for the last time and returned home.

The Endgame

By now, I hadn’t been sleeping well for weeks. I’d been waking up almost every night between 3am and 5am, tossing and turning, finally getting up to pace round the house, eventually going back to sleep again until the alarm went off at 6.30am and I headed back to work.

I was exhausted, and my memory and concentration were suffering. We wondered over and over what could possibly be causing this. There was nothing we could find in either of our family trees which pointed to cases of congenital mental or physical disabilities. Was it in my environment? Was it mobile phones, wifi, pollution, that piece of soft cheese? What had we done to deserve this nightmare?

A final MRI, carried out at 28wks, showed that the brain's mantle was thinner than it should be at that stage of gestation. This, we were told, was a sign that aside from the ventricles squashing his brain, the brain wasn’t developing properly regardless, and even if they could drain the fluid after he was born, he was going to have brain damage.

Overall, our to-ing and fro-ing went on for 9 weeks before we made a decision. We again decided, extremely reluctantly, to end the pregnancy on the basis that our baby would likely have a very poor quality of life, compounded by the fact that he was probably being afflicted by some sort of genetic condition which would put him at the ‘severe’ end of the disabilities scale.

I knew what was coming. I knew in going down the road I was about to go down I was choosing insanity – a just punishment for taking this abhorrent decision. I was once again given a little pot with a pill inside and a glass of water. I took it. We returned to the hospital two days later and once again I lay down in the ultrasound room. I knew that once the consultant put that needle into my stomach and into my baby that my soul would die with him, and there would be no coming back. We asked the consultant to take one last look at his brain, but the black mass had again grown since we’d seen it last, and there was little brain visible on the screen. He put the needle into my stomach, through to our baby, and put him to sleep forever.

‘I think you should terminate, the brain’s f***ed up’

We went round and round in circles in our thinking. We just didn’t want this to be happening. Perhaps our baby would be ok really? As with our first baby, while my head knew the truth, my heart was not having it. I was now 27 weeks pregnant and we needed a second opinion. So I spoke to a few people about who else, apart from our own consultant, would be good to see. We got a couple of recommendations for the same consultant, a professor with years of experience. We were warned his clinic sometimes overran by 5 hours, but we didn’t care, I just needed another view. Could things really be that grim? As it turned out, instead of seeing him at 4.30pm, we saw him at 9.30pm, so the five-hour overrun warning was correct.  But if we’d hoped for a different view, or even an ounce of sympathy, we were to be sorely disappointed.

He scanned me very briefly and announced, `` I think you should terminate, the brain’s fucked up.’’ Yes, that’s verbatim, I am NOT paraphrasing. To say we were shocked at how he was talking to us was an understatement. We had NOT seen this coming at all. If my jaw hadn’t been on the floor, I would have punched the horrible little *******. In fact I really wish I HAD punched the guy. He continued his consultation with phrases such as ‘when the brain’s this screwed up...’ etc etc. I thought how can you speak about my baby like that?! He may be in a bad way, but he hasn’t done anyone any harm, please be nice to him!!! We paid the bill (yes, we did pay him for his advice), and went out onto the pavement and sobbed into each others’ arms.