Tag: Baby Loss

Dear Betty #46

Published on by bettydora2 Comments

Dear Betty,

I never imagined I would have a daughter but the moment I was told you were a girl I had our whole lives mapped out. The adventures, outfits, the bedroom, the hair styles, everything.

It’s been a while my darling. A while since mummy wrote her thoughts about you. Being the worrier that I am, I worry that people will think because I’m not talking about you I’m not thinking about you. I want you to know this couldn’t be further from the truth. From the minute I wake in the morning to the minute I go to bed you are in my thoughts, like your brothers I am thinking of you all the time, but in other ways, you aren’t loosing your school shoes or having a paddy over a prawn cracker, but if you were here I’m sure you would be – I wish you were. Know that every night before I close my eyes I look at your hand holding daddy’s in the picture we have by our bed and I think of you my love, I remember your perfect little face and your jet black hair and I can still feel your squidgy body in my arms.

Time moves so quickly, the time we have spent apart is so much longer than the time we had together – although that was never going to be difficult. But the love we have for you continues to grow everyday. The thought of the lifetime god willing I have ahead of me without you is still scary. I know you are gone, but I will never fully accept what happened to you, to our family. There will always be unanswered questions, the what ifs. These are the hardest to swallow, there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t question what I could/should of done differently. I don’t find comfort in knowing it wasn’t my fault because let’s face it although I wasn’t directly responsible if we look at all the events leading up to that day If I had made different decisions you could be here, but we will never know.

I need you to know that even tho now our grief isn’t all consuming like it was in the beginning and I don’t cry as much as before it doesn’t mean we don’t miss or love you any less. Often the feeling of guilt that straddles a feeling of excitement or happiness feels so awful I wonder if I should feel it at all. I hope you know we wish more than anything that you were here with us, I thought about you on many occasions last weekend as we celebrated your little brothers birthday what would be if you had of been here. Vinnie loves LOL dolls – I bet you would of too, I wonder if you would of laid on the rug in the lounge on your tummies together playing, doing all the American accents like he watches on You Tube or would you argue and fight like him and Archie do! Or would you be the balance in between that boy sandwich! I often think of you in this house along with Archie and Vinnie, thinking about the three of you here with me is just so heartbreakingly sad, I wish you were here my darling, I wish you could of had all your brothers have and more.

I can picture the 3 of you in matching pyjamas at Christmas and I feel so sad to know you will never be in the photo. We still talk about you so much, Vinnie can say your name now, when I ask him where you are he says you are at a party. I hope where ever you are you’re having fun. I still don’t know if I believe in heaven but I like to think of you somewhere where only love exists, where the pain of loss and heartbreak can never reach you.

As your birthday arrives this year, the 4th one without you I promise we will keep your memory alive. Where we live now the stars are so clear and bright. From the very first moment I told Archie where you had gone he told me you were a star and even now when we look up he always looks for you, we all do and always will.

As life after loss continues and our journey and story grows there is one thing that will never change and that is that you were here. I always say I would do it all over again just to hold you and I would, even if the outcome was to be the same. When we had Vinnie we had no guarantees he would arrive to us safely but I believe you helped us with that.

I hope you are watching, I hope you are happy and I hope you feel the love we have for you today and always. Mummy has made so many friends since you left many who have babies in heaven with you, I hope you are all together and feel nothing but love and happiness. It provides a comfort to know you are somewhere, somewhere safe and with those who leave us here and arrive to look after you, this birthday you have your great granny Gi Gi with you. Please keep shining we love you so very much and you are with mummy everywhere I go.

I will never understand why we couldn’t keep you but I’m so lucky that I held you for that small moment in time. Tonight the sky will light up for you and all your friends in a wave of light. You are all so loved.

My beautiful little girl forever our daughter, our baby, our Betty

Mummy X

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Hope #44

Published on by bettydora2 Comments

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Today’s blog is dedicated to hope. My hope came in the form of little Vinnie. Today my Rainbow baby is 3. Not so little anymore! We are so blessed to have this little rocket in our lives but the journey with him has not been easy.

There is no denying having another baby after the death of another not only restores hope but for me it provided a renewed purpose. It has however also added an additional layer to my grief.

Firstly I must explain that Betty was to be our Rainbow baby after suffering a miscarriage 2 years before her. After we lost that baby we were so rocked and in shock we just weren’t expecting it (not that we were the next time) but it really shook us and we didn’t try for several years for another baby because we were so scared. The first baby was a ‘missed miscarriage’ at the 12 week scan it was found that at around 9 weeks the baby had died.

We decided to start trying for Betty in the January of 2015 and were very fortunate to get pregnant on the first try. Once I got to 20 weeks I really did feel ‘out of the woods’ if you like and I never even contemplated that I would loose her. At no point, it just wasn’t in my thoughts at all – I was so naive.

After Betty died it was strange, you would of thought it would be worse or similar to the scared feelings of the first time, but this was different. Both myself and Scott knew instantly we had to try for another baby. We knew it wouldn’t replace her no baby could do that, but our arms were so empty, the house was empty we decided that we would wait for my period to return if it did (I wasn’t sure if my body would work at all after everything that had happened) and then we would try but not put any pressure on ourselves, if it took a year or longer so be it we just needed to try. To our shock and absolute delight and I guess terror we were so lucky to fall pregnant on the first try again (I don’t even know how this happened) I thought it would take months after all my body had been through.

I was so scared but we had to try this. I needed to give myself hope again. I felt like I had let so many people down this was going to be my chance to restore faith, of course it was so much more than that. I had to blinker my thoughts, Scott would frequently give me pep talks and tell me they wouldn’t let this happen to us again, they simply wouldn’t. We were under a top consultant and from early on we were under the care of the hospital, we had an early scan, then more frequent ones with the consultant. I was tested for gestational diabetes more than once as there had been a suggestion with Betty that some of the results from our post mortem pointed towards gestational diabetes (the test they missed out was the one that would of confirmed this either way which was why it was so frustrating) when we had the 20 week scan me and Archie went together as Scott was working away, when they said it was a boy he said he wanted a sister and I cried because I wasn’t sure how I felt! Deep down I was relieved because I had never thought I would have a daughter and I never thought we would so this just confirmed my intuition. I knew this boy would be strong, although I was anxious deep down I had to believe we were going to take him home.

In a twist of fate the hospital had planned to induce me if I wished at 38 weeks but this was going to fall on Betty’s birthday I explained that I just didn’t think I could cope with going in on or just before or after her birthday, I hadn’t been back in the maternity unit since the day we left her and it was a huge fear of mine. I just felt like it would all be too much and there was no way I could risk taking this pregnancy to 39 weeks. It was agreed I could go in just after 37 weeks and it was a comfort to have an induction date along with going in for monitoring twice weekly from 30 weeks, my midwife would see me mid week every week so I never had to go longer than a few days without seeing anyone and of course if I wanted to I could go as much as I wanted to be monitored.

As much as I found all the extra monitoring a comfort the thing I found most stressful was the extra scans, because they are looking in so much more than with a low risk pregnancy I felt things were being discussed or brought up that wouldn’t normally be discussed the fluid levels were a huge stress for me. I constantly looked at the diamond on the fluid line and it stressed me out every single time I got the piece of paper, I studied every one afraid they had missed something or I had. I didn’t take hardly any pictures of my bump, with Archie I took 1 photo of me right at the end and I wished I had taken more pictures, with Betty I decided that once a month I would do a bump pic but then with Vinnie I was too scared to document my bump incase I jinxed it – so I have this one which was taken on the 11th October the day before he was born!

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We had our induction and everything was pretty straight forward, I had been induced with Betty so I knew what to expect, I had a lot of worries about going back to the ward where we were with Betty, luckily we weren’t in the same bay as we were with her. When we eventually went through to delivery the lovely midwife who delivered Betty and looked after her came in to see us, she had seen we were in and wanted to come and say hello. She told us that she often thought of Betty – this was such a lovely thing for her to do and it strangely put me at ease – I’m sure her name was Jo I just can’t remember. But she told us she is now dealing with a lot more of the bereavement side of midwifery and she was so kind and caring with us I know she will be a great help to others who sadly have to meet her. We were in hospital for a day and a half waiting for the induction to work but once my waters were broken Vinnie didn’t take long to arrive. I cuddled him as soon as he was born but it was clear to us there was something wrong, he was breathing strangely, I knew straight away he wasn’t right he was breathing strangely the midwife said it would just be some mucus but within a few minutes someone from NICU had come down and in an instant they took him away, Scott went with him and I was left alone.

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I think I was too tired to cry, I called my mum and dad and told them what happened and they came straight to the hospital and sat with me whilst I had a shower and waited to go and see him. Scott was with Vinnie and he said they were so amazing in the NICU, they had to put a cannula in his tiny hand and they did it effortlessly. It seemed almost unbelievable that we had waited this long for our baby and now he was poorly too. I was wheeled up to see him and I couldn’t touch or move him I just had to peer into his little incubator and hope he would survive. No one really knew what was wrong with him, he was 7lb 10oz so he was by far the biggest baby in there. Things weren’t meant to be like this, the staff were amazing. They gave me a side room so I didn’t have to sleep in with all the mothers who had their babies and I visited all day everyday. It was on day 3 that I finally held our baby boy. I couldn’t believe it when I went down that morning and they asked me if I would like a cuddle with him! I had been longing for this moment. It was wonderful. The next day I was able to try and feed him as up until that point they had been giving him expressed breast milk through a tube, I had been asking to feed him as I just knew the milk would make him stronger and get him out!

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Sure enough he started to turn a corner – I knew he was going to make it. He was such a fighter. Unbelievably we were nearing Betty’s birthday, I had never wanted to be here on that date and it was looking like the hospital wanted me to go home now and just come back to visit. They asked if I could go the next day, the 17th I explained to them that there was just no way I could walk out of that hospital on October 17th on what would of been my daughters 1st birthday and leave another child behind I just couldn’t. They were very understanding and they agreed I could stay a few more days, they would find a way! The 17th arrived, one of the midwives came to see me in the morning, she said she knew what a special day it was and she gave me 2 little knitted characters, a bunny and and bear. Vinnie still has them in his room, I will cherish them forever.

Scott arrived and we walked the corridor to see Vinnie for the day, as we arrived the nurses announced they had a surprise for us, as we walked round the corner Vinnie was out of his incubator and he was laid in a little cot, he had made such an improvement over night. His eyes were the widest we had ever seen them and he was looking at us as if to say, mum, dad I’ve been waiting for you in here. He was going to be able to come back to the ward with us that day. We were on cloud 9 of all the things that could of happened that day it was a sign from our gorgeous girl if nothing else, she was looking after her little brother and he was getting better and he was coming with us where he belonged. If I could ever describe a moment when I had such hope it would be this single moment in time. I can’t explain it properly it was just simply amazing.

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(this was who greeted us)

We wheeled his little cot back to our room – we felt like we were stealing him, it was so strange to have him with us. He was jaundice so we had to stay a few more days and we were moved into the main ward (which was an experience) but it didn’t matter we had him our little rainbow and then the most magical thing happened Archie met Vinnie properly for the first time, he held him and he smiled so much! He was so proud to finally have his little brother in his arms not just peering through his plastic cot. He was so happy because we could tell him we would be coming home, he had missed me and was worried after loosing his sister.

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So a week longer than we expected but we finally took our little Vinnie home to our family, our friends. Home with us where he belonged to start living our lives again. Having a baby after loosing one was never going to be easy, it hasn’t and isn’t easy even now. But as this little bean turns a whole 3 years old today I am so grateful that we got to keep him, he has such a spirit and the last 3 years for so many reasons have been hard but I wouldn’t change any of it. To have this little boy our sunshine in amongst all the darkness. It doesn’t make your loss easier to have another child but it gives you a chance. A chance to give them all your hopes, your dreams and ultimately be a family.

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Without our losses we wouldn’t have our hope. I can’t even contemplate what may of been. He is my light, he is my dark, now he sleeps he is definitely saving my sanity. I would do it all over again for this chance, the chance to have my children, boy or girl it doesn’t matter they are mine and Scott’s, they come out of our unconditional love for one another, they are ours and we are theirs and we have been so blessed to have 3 beautiful children. We will always be forever heartbroken that Betty couldn’t stay but eternally grateful we got another chance and we have her brothers.

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(the first time he had both his boys together – it was a wonderful moment)

Even tho Betty died I would risk it all again to have that moment in time with her, she did exist, they exist and we are a family. A family of 5.

So as I tuck my little 3 year old into bed tonight after ‘the best day ever’ as he put it. I thank him for letting me be his mummy and I look for my star in the sky, she is always with me in everything I do, everyday and I try my hardest to be the best I can for all of them even on the days when I have to tell them off (most days), on the bad, the good and the calm days. Everyday I try to do my best as in my opinion parenting a child that is no longer here is probably one of the hardest jobs of all.

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To be continued..

Jen x

 

Grief… #41

Published on by bettydora1 Comment

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Grief – definition: intense sorrow, especially caused my someone’s death.

I have been grieving for 1384 days. My journey began on the 16th October 2015, the day my daughter died. She was a full term baby, she weighed 9lb 7oz. Her name is Betty Dora Burborough. I have 2 sons, one who came before her and one who came after. I will only ever know what it is like to raise a daughter in my heart, never in my arms. Betty was stillborn, on October 17th 2015 she became 1 of the 15 babies that died in the UK that day. Betty was that statistic, I am part of that statistic. And here begins my journey, my journey of grief, loss, tragedy but ultimately love.

Nearly four years on I am used to how it feels now, I can deal with it, I can control it. Sometimes I feel worse, sometimes I feel ok. I will never feel ‘better’ I will never feel the same. I have just learnt to live and navigate it all. It 100% doesn’t feel as raw as it did in those first few weeks, months, but it’s still there, she is still gone. I have HAD to deal with it, I have HAD to live without her BUT I will NEVER accept and have peace with what happened to me, to us, to my family. Whoever said ‘everything happens for a reason’ – whilst I appreciate so many more things have happened that probably would not had she lived I doubt that person had experienced the loss of their child. I have said this so many times before but a parent should NEVER have to bury their child. It is not the way life was intended, it should be the other way round. I know it’s not always the case, I have done it – so many others I know now have also done it. We are the statistic, but we each have a story, we each have a child who we are desperate to tell you about, share with you, we want you to see them, admire them, tell us how beautiful they are, just like you would with everyone’s living children. The difference is, we only have a handful of images, we don’t have carefully curated photos of them with balloons on their birthdays, laid on a mat with a cute caption each month when they are babies. Their ‘firsts’ were their ‘lasts’. They will forever be ‘our babies’ because for them life went no further.

I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, I don’t need sympathy. I just want you to understand my story so that if you or one of your friends or family find themselves in this position you can help them, be there for them. The death of a child will always be a shock, it will always be in my opinion one of the worst things you can go through or see anyone else go through. But, perhaps myself and others talking about what we’ve been through can help you to guide a loved one or yourself should it god forbid ever happen to you.

 

I’m not here to try and scare you. If you are currently pregnant or grieving yourself then you may not feel you have a place here right now and that’s ok. I understand. But this week I want to try and help, try and educate. I’m not an expert, but I have been through it. There’s no tool kit for loss, but there are some things I would of done differently had I known more about baby loss. That doesn’t mean to say that if you are pregnant you need to read and educate yourself, I don’t want people to go through what should be a wonderful time in your life in fear. I am not here to breed fear. But at least if today or tomorrow or anytime from the moment these words are published you or someone you know find yourself in this position you may be able to help them, this may be able to help them. They might be able to capture the photos I wish I had, or avoid the situations I wish I had.

If you have read this far, thank you. If you havn’t lost a baby but have read this, thank you. Thank you for trying to understand and thank you for allowing yourself to be open to this topic. If you have lost a baby, I am so sorry, I am sorry you have had to come here, I am sorry they died. But please know you are not alone, please know you are going to be ok, please know there is no sugar coating it, life will not be easy from this point, but it will get better. Please don’t feel ashamed, don’t feel isolated, and don’t suffer alone or in silence. In order to grieve we must re-live and talk about our experiences so that we can understand and move forward (not on).

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So welcome, my name is Jen and my daughter was stillborn, my daughter died.

Jen x

Sunshine… #11

Published on by bettydoraLeave a comment


So the title is ‘sunshine’ I am in fact referring to all this amazing weather we have been having this week and not my little (actually it’s quite a big) baby bump! Ha ha! However I can’t help but think of our own little sunshine right now! 

I have to say that personally I think there is no better tonic than that of the sun! It makes the shittest of days feel good (not that I’m having a crappy day) just a normal one, I went to work, met a friend for coffee, then another friend then picked Archie up from his dance class, cooked dinner, etc! Mundane but just everyday life.. Good days come so much more frequently to me now and when the sun is shining it just puts me in such a better mood!

Having had Archie at the end of March so being a spring/summer baby! I was looking forward to having a winter one this time with Betty. I looked forward to cold rainy days snuggled up with my little baby, chilly school runs with her wrapped in a hundred layers and cold family walks, with pics of our red cheeked little munchkins. Of course this didn’t happen instead the dreary days seemed just that.. dreary and depressing, I wondered if they were a reflection of my mood at the time and as the leaves of Autumn fell from the trees to reveal bare, sad looking surroundings it just made me think of myself and my own mood/feelings! There was nothing exciting or magical about the Autumn/Winter it was all one big fat pile of poo! 

But to be honest that doesn’t mean to say if you loose a baby in the summer you will still manage to remain happy because the sun is shining – far from it! You would just Infact hate the fact the sun is shining even more because you couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting out and enjoying it! Not that the winter for me even meant I could stay in and wallow in my own self pity, I couldn’t and actually I wouldn’t let myself (don’t get me wrong every now and again a good wallow and even more importantly a cry) is soothing for the soul! You get it out of your system and then feel a bit more balanced for a while – well in my opinion you do. But with the arrival of the winter and after what felt an eternity the spring (which is by far one of my favourite seasons) it reminded me how quickly things change. 

Now why am I harping on about the seasons? I quite possibly sound mental! Well.. for me in a reflective sort of way the arrival of them with time reminded actually how quickly time moves on, you have to embrace what you are going through at that point in your life and face it head on even tho more often than not it can be scary and not something we want to change or do, along with it come the harder days and then the mundane days which move time along but then you get to a point where summer comes and you look back at the other seasons and realise how things have changed so much in that time but now you have little things to enjoy, warm evenings, colourful flowers sprouting everywhere, lush green trees, bright mornings, less rain (we can hope) the occasional storm will fall but the worst is behind you and now you can in fact just enjoy the SUNSHINE.

Jen X

First blog post #1

Published on by bettydora19 Comments

For so long I have wanted to write my own blog, I have never had the confidence to do it, there’s not much I have to say that people would be interested in reading. I spent much time procrastinating over what I would write about: what would people want to hear? What would they want to know about me that they would want to click and read what I had written? Never in a million years did I think this would be the subject of the illustrious ‘blog’ I never thought I would be penning what has happened to me, to my family in the last few months – its not particularly interesting, its morbid more than anything, sad, upsetting, unnerving but its true and its what happened and with a head full of thoughts I suppose this point is as good as any to start. I promise it wont all be doom and gloom I don’t know where I will go with this I may write this and nothing more, but I want to write it all the same and I hope you want to read it.

My name is Jen, I live in Bournemouth with my wonderful husband, and I have two children. My beautiful son is here very much living, gorgeous, witty, funny, confident, loud and caring, my daughter lives among the stars, she too is beautiful but I don’t know much else about her, I don’t know the colour of her eyes, the sound of her laugh or her cry. She was born but she never lived.

Betty Dora, our darling daughter was stillborn at 40 weeks and 3 days. Today exactly 7 months have passed since her due date; 13 ‘unlucky for some’, 13 has always been my lucky number. It feels like only yesterday that she came into our lives, yet it feels like she has been gone forever. In fact it almost feels like she never happened at all – everyone moves on (as do we) people tell you it will get easier with time, it does don’t get me wrong. But I still find myself sat in a quiet house when Archie is at school (not that I sit still for long) thinking I should be feeding a baby or changing a nappy. I stand in the playground trying not to look at the other babies, wondering what Betty would look like now, It feels so unfair that out of all the babies born that night I didn’t get to keep mine.

We will never truly know what happened to our little girl it will be forever a mystery, her post mortem came back ‘unexplained’, the worst part of reading the whole report wasn’t even the thought of what they had to do to get to that conclusion but it was the fact that every organ in her body was perfect, there was nothing wrong with her – how can this be? The awful fact is that 50% of all stillbirth cases are indeed ‘unexplained’. One of life’s mysteries I suppose. It seems so unfair that something so perfect, ready to start their life and live, can be taken so cruelly. The pain of loosing a child is possibly one of the worst things that can happen to any parent. Explaining to your son why their sister is never coming back from heaven is heart breaking, tragic and just damn right unfair. What a godsend that at the age of 4 life is very much what those around you make it and if mummy tells you something, nine times out of ten you listen, process and accept what you are being told. Until the next thing triggers a thought at which point you compose another tear jerking question catching her off guard.

Thank god for our beautiful boy – the dark days in the beginning were made harder and easier all at the same time for having him. Just to have to get up everyday because he was depending on us, he was looking at us for reassurance that everything was going to be ok. It is going to be okay – its life, just right now its not the life we thought we were going to have the life we had dreamed up in our heads, the plans we had made for our expanding family, with 2 children loving each other, fighting with each other, laughing with each other, crying with each other. A family photo that never happened – a bond that was never formed. You will have more children ‘they’ say – we will take even more care of you next time ‘they’ say. What about this time? How can I think of next time? I want the time that just happened, I’ve just had a baby, why would I want to think about having another one now? If my baby was living would you be telling me I can have another one now? I know people try to say the right things – sometimes I feel ok when they test them out on me, sometimes I am screaming in my head “shut – up why have you just said that to me” I never say it to them, I just process and move on.

Loosing our child will not define us, I don’t want to be the mum in the playground ‘that’s baby died’ we wont ever forget what happened to us, we will celebrate a birthday that never has a bouncy little girl in her party dress running around every year, we will wonder what would have been we will always be the family that lost their baby, but we will also be the family that through tremendous heartbreak stuck together, smiled though the tears, laughed and realised it was ok to and moved onwards and upwards never forgetting their beautiful girl who now spends her nights among the stars and her days in the rainbows (maybe cliché but it makes me smile to think this of her) and so this is where we begin…


Jen