September 2014
I can’t even begin to describe the feeling I had when seeing my “positive” pregnancy test.
I was living with my parents at the time so immediately called for my Mum who was completely over the moon. I then took a picture of the test and sent it to my boyfriend who was in work at the time. He came to me as soon as he could. We were both incredibly excited and decided to go to the doctor so the pregnancy could be officially confirmed.
We arranged an appointment for that day. After taking another test at the GP surgery we were told that the results were negative and it just wasn’t our time. We were gutted, the excitement taken away from us so quickly. It’s surreal how a faulty pregnancy test can make you feel, missing something that you never actually had. Fortunately for us my doctor had made a mistake and around twenty positive tests later and an ultrasound there he was, a little blur on a scan picture, my little blur, my Mason.
January 2015
Being incredibly impatient I booked us in for an early sexing scan and there we found out that we were expecting a boy.
We started to plan everything, even deciding exactly how we wanted our sons nursery to look. We were due his anomaly scan in a few weeks so agreed to start buying everything after that.
February 2015
Everything is all a bit hazy from here.
Day by day the pains I felt in my stomach got steadily worse. I could hardly move. I spent days in tears and the doctors couldn’t understand why I was in so much pain. I think people were starting to think I was being dramatic. Surely this isn’t what being pregnant feels like?
I remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs on the phone to the doctor begging him for help. There wasn’t much he could do. That evening around 11pm I was admitted into hospital. I couldn’t move for the pain and I thought the vomiting would never end. I was there for just over a week before being discharged, while there I had my anomaly scan and was told my son was fine and nothing to worry about. I had extra fluid around my kidneys which was what was causing the pain so they just wanted me to come back in two weeks so they could monitor it.
March 2016
This will forever be the worst month of my entire life.
I arrived for my appointment for a quick scan on my kidneys, the nurse decided to check on my son while I was there just to reassure me that everything was fine.
She fell silent for what felt like forever before telling me that she could see some extra fluid around his brain but this was usually nothing to worry about and she would book me in for a scan with fetal medicine just to be sure. I burst into tears, because I just knew that something wasn’t right. I had known from the moment the pains started.
Fetal Medicine
Sitting in the waiting room I felt sick, I knew it wasn’t going to be good news but everyone was telling me it was going to be fine and not to worry.
It was all very calm during the scan, the doctor asked me if I knew the sex of the baby he even shown me him in 3D and it was amazing. I felt very positive like everything was going to be okay. Then he asked us to come speak to him in a separate room. I didn’t understand most of the conversation. All the words he used I’d never heard before so I just sat there completely blank. It wasn’t until he left the room and my boyfriend started crying that I knew something serious was up. They suspected my son had Edwards Syndrome (Trisomy 18) this was because of the multiple soft markers that he picked up from the scan. I’d never heard of this before I didn’t know what this was. What is Trisomy 18
We decided to have an amniocentesis, this involves taking a small sample of amniotic fluid so the cells it contains can be tested. We were sent home afterward to wait for the results. It took around two days for a call from the midwife. Those two days were the longest two days of my life. I spent hours researching Trisomy 18. I knew the results were going to come back positive, I just knew it and I was right.
13/03/2015
The day my world ended.
The day my sons heart stopped beating.
Saying goodbye
I didn’t want to give birth to him I wanted to keep him inside me where I knew he was safe. I didn’t want anyone to take him away from me but I knew he wasn’t in pain anymore.
16/03/2015 – 12:02am
He arrived and it was silent and his eyes were closed but it wasn’t scary like I thought it would be. I could see he was peaceful, he was so beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at his little face, I didn’t want to let him go. Leaving the hospital to go home was heartbreaking, why did I have to leave my baby there? Seeing other women walking out with their newborns destroyed me, all I had was this box of memories and pictures but I didn’t have him. I couldn’t understand why he had gone and I was still here? What kind of mother am I leaving my son? I should be with him keeping him safe.
Standing in what should have been his nursery without him, this room should be the happiest in the house but it felt cold and dark. I couldn’t even organize his funeral, I didn’t have it in me. My perfect boyfriend did everything even though he was hurting just as much as me.
I don’t think I cried much leading up to his funeral, I felt so numb.
Holding his tiny casket in my arms felt like a nightmare.
Postnatal depression
I am not one to speak out about how I’m feeling and I think that is why I struggled so much. Postnatal depression is very real, I felt like I had lost my mind. I told everyone I was fine and coping well when in actual fact I was having the hardest time of my life. I had really scary intrusive thoughts. I couldn’t stop thinking about killing myself and how I would do it. I didn’t want to die I just knew I was losing my sanity and was in a very dark place. I thought there was no escape from how I was feeling and that was my only option. Every night I could picture my Mason crawling into our bedroom from his, as much as I tried to fight these thoughts they just wouldn’t go. I finally decided to speak to my boyfriend about how I was feeling and we came to the decision that we should leave our home and start afresh.
Cienna
01/01/2016 – 16:22pm
On New Year’s Day my beautiful rainbow baby arrived.
Cienna is now 8 months old and very happy and healthy. She looks very much like my Mason and seeing her beautiful face everyday reminds me of him.
I’ll make sure she knows all about her big brother and his memory will live forever.
x Born Still but Still Born x