Ami Rose
We weren’t expecting to fall pregnant so quickly. Our first biological daughter together, Chloe Rey arrived on the first day of UK lockdown: 23.03.20. She joined our little unit made up of, me, mummum, dada and my step daughter Lexi (7). Not forgetting my fur baby Fred.
On 01.03.21 I found out I was pregnant again. Surprise kicked in (it wasn’t planned), but I felt I was pregnant before taking the test and slowly the worry evolved into excitement. I’d had 2 miscarriages prior to my first biological daughter with my ex-husband. They were not handled well and still sit badly with me today, but the experience I’ve just had is one I never in my wildest nightmares could have imagined.
Because I’m an older mum (almost 41) I decided to pay for an early pregnancy scan privately. Due to Covid I was allowed one support person, however, also due to Covid, no children were allowed in the scan. So my amazing, strong, brilliant husband stayed home with our then almost 1 year old and I went to the scan alone.
“Suzi, we are so sorry, but there is no heartbeat”. I was a month further along than I thought I was and had no symptoms of pregnancy loss. I call it pregnancy loss rather than miscarriage as I was still carrying our baby. I was still pregnant. A silent loss.
The private clinic arranged for me to attend the EPU the following Monday for a second opinion. 4 days of walking around with my dead baby in me. I’d transitioned from oven to coffin without feeling a thing. I still looked pregnant. I still had morning sickness. On the Sunday after my scan I had a 20 minute bleed. It started while buying my daughter’s first birthday present. A warm flood with no pain.
Attending the EPU on the Monday we found out that the baby had no heartbeat and we were given our options. Due to the pandemic and my daughter’s first birthday being the following day I discussed the options with my husband, Dan. He said for my own closure that a more natural route might be more beneficial, but he said he would support me in whatever I decided to do with our pregnancy as physically I would be the one processing the loss.
I can tell you that my beautiful, caring husband suffered every blow with me. His mental anguish as valid and real as mine. We opted for the natural process at home then realised I didn’t even have a sanitary towel in the house. Throughout the pregnancy he’s driven out at daft times to acquire my latest cravings. “Let me do this one last thing for you, for the baby.” He drove to Boots in bits and hunted down the most natural pads he could and a big slab of chocolate to share together on the sofa while we had a cry.
I wanted to forget that I was going to miscarry at any point on my daughter’s birthday. The day needed to be about her, celebrating my beautiful baby, whom I hold to be more of a miracle than ever before. We celebrated, we sang, we played. Normality in the eye of the storm.
I ignored “advice” that I should release a balloon for our lost baby from my husband’s ex-wife (this was her pregnancy loss coping mechanism, not ours). I was also still carrying our baby. The idea of letting a balloon go for a dead baby that was still inside me, on my living daughter’s birthday, filled me with rage and sadness. If you talk to any other parent suffering pregnancy loss, offer your ears, not your advice, opinion, or judgment. Parents do odd things when grieving. Let them.
My husband works from home as a streamer; he needed his online community to help him through these dark days and I needed to relax and let nature kick in. Working for ourselves it is very difficult to take time off work. You don’t get sick pay or holiday. If you don’t work, you don’t earn.
My daughter was with me when the bleed started, thankfully the day after her birthday. I was wearing a pair of fancy dress cat ears while singing to her as I sat on the toilet with a sieve between my legs to catch my pregnancy remains. My ex-husband flushed my first baby away without my consent and that has left its mark on me. Never again.
My amazing husband, Dan, said to me, “use the sieve, we can buy another and it means you get to see her if she’s there still”. I couldn’t flush. I understand why people do, but my guilt and hang up from my first pregnancy wouldn’t let me do that. So like a crazy women I started picking through my pregnancy tissue looking for my tiny baby, while my one year old played at my feet. We decided to keep our baby’s remains and plant a rose in a pot for her.
I thought I’d found her in the carnage. I washed off the issue and placed the pieces in a box. She was small and had started to break down. I wasn’t sure it was all of her, but I held her in my palm and said goodbye to my baby that was, but will never be. I thought that was it. 2 hours of passing pregnancy material. I thought it was over. It wasn’t.
I took our one year old baby, Chloe Rey, to her room. She was agitated as the timing of my bleed meant she had missed a feed and a snooze. She will only sleep on me or daddy. (She had her first nap on nanny when I went for my Monday scan, but until then I’d never left her for any real length of time with someone else. This just added to my distress).
As Chloe nodded off I felt a warm rush into the towel below me. I didn’t want to wake her; I thought this was just the last bit. Then I jerked with pain so violently that she woke up. I messaged my mother in law, who was the nearest to me geographically and had kindly gone to pick up our eldest from school. She instantly advised I called an ambulance. I thought I was ok. I was not.
Messaging my husband while he was live on camera was a necessary move. I was bleeding out and I was worried I would accidentally squash our Chloe is I passed out. The next few hours were a blur. An ambulance arrived.
Things you don’t want to hear in life:
1. She’s lost too much blood and is going directly to surgery
2. Her blood pressure isn’t registering.
3. We don’t have time to hang about.
I don’t recall much else, but apparently I told the paramedics that my husband wears my underwear as he handed me some boxers to put on as I’d bled through everything. Oops.
“She’s got a pulse, but it’s faint.” I can hear you, I thought, but I think I might be dead as I’m floating off somewhere.
I came round on my bathroom floor. I’m needle phobic and didn’t want a line in. My husband told me in no uncertain terms I was to have one. He was very right. The fluids they got into me might be the very thing that saved me. My hysterical daughter was on my naked breast as I lay on the floor. She clung to me like life itself as I started to slip into the black. She was gently handed to my mother in law who took her out the house in her pushchair so we couldn’t hear her cries.
I was moved downstairs precariously in a chair by the paramedics and placed onto a trolly, scantly clad, covered in blood as children cycled past on their bikes. I felt like I was sinking. The smell of the landfill next to our home was almost enough to pass out. I was placed into the ambulance while my husband grabbed some essentials, my phone, a charger and some clean clothes. As the doors closed I could see him as I bled again. His face told me the seriousness of the situation and he will be haunted by the blood bath that was our house, for a long time.
As the ambulance turned the corner I saw my baby in her pushchair with her nanny pushing her. My overwhelming instinct was to go to my baby. I tried to get out of the ambulance in my hysteria and bled again. On came the lights and the sirens. I drifted. I arrived. I was sent to theatre. I made bad jokes and faded in and out. My phone battery was almost as weak as me. My last conscious thought was to ask the kind anaesthetist to plug my phone in so I could message my husband and family when I came round. I sent some “I love you”s to friends and family, then felt the bee sting pinch as the liquid entered my cannula (the one my husband told me to have). They removed my husband’s Back to the Future T-shirt that was hugging me and replaced it with a flappy open gown. I felt pressure on my throat as they slid in a tube and I was gone. No countdown, just fade out.
The procedure wasn’t long. I came round, my phone placed in my hand and I clung to it like a lifeline. The rest of my baby’s remains inside a tub in one hand, my phone gripped in the other.
I felt an empty, numb relief and a pang to be in my husbands arms, dog by my side and my children on my lap. Instead I was rolled down cold corridors into a side room. My back drop – the sound of other patients in pain. The one I’ll never forget in my dazed state, a lady with dementia shouting out “mummy, where are you?” My drug filled response “I’m here sweetheart”.
A nurse enters the room with a menu and a cup of tea. I ordered jacket potato, cheese and beans. She tidied away my clothes and picked up the pot, “What’s this?” she asked, as she tried to clear away the box of remains.
“Please don’t, that’s my baby.”
She apologetically returned her to my side. A year and 1 day ago I lay in bed looking at my beautiful newborn girl on my own due to the pandemic. Today I look at a plastic box with my tiny baby inside, on my own, due to the pandemic. No one should face pregnancy loss alone, yet here we are.
Tomorrow I will return home and instead of focusing on our loss I will celebrate our little family. I will quietly remember these months, they will become part of me, but they will not define me. My beautiful girls, fur baby and husband deserve their mummy and I deserve their love.
With that are new beginnings.
Ami Rose 24.03.21