Making Memories: through a father’s eyes

I wanted to write some words from a father’s perspective for this blog; not because I think what happened to Kaitlyn is something fundamentally easier or harder for a Dad to deal with but because my experience is that it can be very different. When your world feels like it has been turned on its head, and you realise that you are 100% reliant on the person by your side who has been through the most unimaginable trauma, the differences between how you deal with this awful shock can be brought into a sharp contrast.

R has already written of the wonderful support we received from the hospital in the days immediately following Kaitlyn’s birth. The care and compassion of the midwifery team, in an environment which has been very carefully thought about for parents to spend time in with their new baby, will be something I never forget. I’m not ashamed though to admit that in the first 24 hours after Kaitlyn was born I absolutely hated the Butterfly Suite and really struggled to take the opportunities which were offered to us to spend time with Kaitlyn. My initial reflection of this reaction is one of deep personal shame, but I have come to learn that grief is multidimensional and judgements on emotions are not straightforward. I wanted to share this experience because I’ve also come to learn that this isn’t an uncommon set of feelings and by giving others the opportunity to read about it then it may be reassuring or comforting.

Over the past few months I have had a few sessions with a wonderful psychotherapist who has helped me try and work through what has happened. One of the first exercises we undertook together was to really piece together what happened on the day Kaitlyn was born, with an emphasis on the smallest of details from each minute of that day. By making myself confront this level of what would undoubtedly be trivia in any other day-to-day situation (the weather on that morning, the type of sweet I was eating in the car, the colour of the walls in the Maternity Building, the clothes that others were wearing) I have been able to preserve some kind of fixed image of the trauma which I can draw on for memories. I remember clearly that I got every decision wrong once Kaitlyn was born – did we want M to come and visit her sister? (No, I want to protect her from this awfulness), did I want Kaitlyn to sleep next to us in a temperature-controlled cot? (No, surely this is just unnatural and wrong?), did we want to dress her, bathe her, take handprints and footprints with her? (No, I can’t handle any of this, I just want to go home back to the life we had 24 hours ago.)

At the time I also recall that somewhere, in the recess of my mind, I thought of Harry Arter the Cardiff City footballer. A month before M was born, Harry and his partner lost their daughter in similar circumstances to us. I was so horrified when I saw him play football on television that weekend that I turned the television off to ensure my wife, who was eight months pregnant with M, wouldn’t even have to think about this. Yet here we were in the same position.  I remembered that he described not holding his daughter as one of the greatest regrets of his life, that he went back to work two days later to play Premier League football and the mental strain that he found himself under. I remembered at the time in 2015 not being able to even imagine how terrible that must have been. I did try and learn from what others have been through, including Harry, and there is a wealth of information and stories online from parents who have walked this road before us.

It wasn’t until much later afterwards (weeks, maybe even months) that I realised how important it was that we made the memories we did with Kaitlyn (and M). At the time, I forced myself to engage – I visualised the things which I had once thought were hard (years of sleepless nights with M, climbing the huge bell tower of our parish Church) and convinced myself that if I could force myself through those experiences then I could make myself do this. This recalcitrance was purely selfish, I simply could not handle the emotion of what had happened. My brain was undoubtedly responding to the surfeit of adrenaline by engaging my instinct to both fight and flight from something which was outside of any scenario I could have possibly prepared myself for. These feelings are both instinctive and physiologically explainable, yet with hindsight I do feel great shame for not wanting to spend every possible moment with my new daughter. I have reconciled myself to the fact now that my brain was doing what it has been well programmed to do; protect and disassociate from the reality unfolding in front of me.

Writing this now, almost four months after Kaitlyn’s birth, I am back at work and engaging with the world in a way which an unknowledgeable observer would regard as ‘normal’. The truth is that life is anything but ‘normal’ and each day brings continued pain and grief for us all. For all of today’s difficulties though I hold on to my time making memories with Kaitlyn with a mixture of both relief and gratitude. For the rest of my time alive I will know that she was really here, that I held her, that she left her physical mark on the Earth. Whatever my brain may attempt to do with its own unique plasticity, there won’t be any way in which Kaitlyn’s presence can ever be forgotten. The memory of holding her in my arms, the footprints and handprints we have preciously stowed away, the photographs of our time together are all inarguable proof that she was here and will always be a central part of our lives.

Saying goodbye: Kaitlyn’s funeral

“Would you like us to phone the funeral directors we usually recommend in these circumstances?” asked the midwife. We stared at her blankly, my darling girl cradled against my chest in her soft blankets, the wet tears on my cheeks layered on top of the dried one. How the hell does one go about organising a baby funeral?

It was always going to be a cremation. I am half Indian by heritage and come from a Hindu family; every funeral I have ever been to (and sadly I have been to quite a few) has been a cremation. Added to which I dimly recall having an entirely hypothetical conversation about burial and cremation with my husband years ago, back in a life when planning a funeral was something we would probably have to do one day, but not for decades yet. We’re the sorts of people who have all our affairs in order, wills in place and so on; a planning conversation about things that shouldn’t happen for decades is not an unusual occurrence in our house. The local creamtorium here is actually really lovely, odd as that might sound, with a peaceful chapel and set in pretty grounds. So the type of funeral and location was set.

To say my baby girl was beautiful is an understatement. She was perfect. Her goodbye had to be perfect. And it had to include people. I saw this as my one opportunity to create the memory of Kaitlyn in the hearts and minds of our family and friends, who would never meet her. The invite list grew, people expressed their desire to come and support us on what was going to be the second hardest day of our lives. In the end we had around 90 people join us on the day. A big undertaking, but one that gives me absolutely zero regrets. We felt so privleged that so many people wanted to pay their respects to our most perfect girl.

Any event I have ever planned in my life starts with music, and with Kaitlyn’s service it just fell into place with barely any thought needed, almost subconsciously. As soon as Kaitlyn returned from her post mortem we set the date for 4th January; still within the 12 days of Christmas, just about. When M was born just a few days before Christmas, I picked out a Christmas Carol that I call hers. I wanted to do the same for Kaitlyn, and for her we chose Coventry Carol. Together my husband and I carried Kaitlyn down the aisle of the chapel while the choir, made up of people with whom I sing and have sung in the past, perfectly sang the first and third verses

Then there was M. Should she come to the funeral? Was she too young, would it upset her? I instinctively felt that she should be there. This was about our family and the loving bonds that hold us all together. I didn’t know how I would justify it if one day she asked me why I didn’t let her come to her sister’s funeral. I know some people struggled with the idea of a 3-year-old being at the service, which is understandable. Then we met our celebrant, Helen. She was fantastic and put my mind at rest; she set out a plan for how to make M a part of the service, and said that it wasn’t necessary for her to sit still and quiet throughout (although on the day she did just that). Helen came to our house to meet M, spent time playing with her and brought her a magazine. She suggested reading out a children’s story, from M to Kaitlyn. We chose “Playground in the Sky”, a beautiful book given to us by the hospital to help us explain what had happened to Kaitlyn and where she had gone, as we’re not a religious family. Helen really gave me a gift that day; she made it OK for me to have my daughter at her sister’s service. She has removed one more potential regret that I could otherwise have carried with me forever. All M knew was that we were saying a “special goodbye” to Kaitlyn. She chose Kaitlyn’s favourite colour, purple, and so we asked everyone to wear something purple on the day. After the service M went off to nursery rather than come to the pub with us, as it was very crowded and we thought that might be too much for her to handle. Nursery gave the rest of her day some routine and normality; I felt that there was only so much that I wanted to put my young daughter through.

In the days leading up to the funeral I spent a lot of time visiting Kaitlyn at the funeral directors. We spent our time together in the peaceful little chapel of rest, listening together to Kaitlyn’s special lullaby album. I talked her through what was going to happen on the day, and played her all the music so she knew what to expect. I wrote her a final letter to take with her, and so did S and one of our close friends. I cuddled the toy bunny that M and I had made for Kaitlyn before she was born; the bunny went with Kaitlyn in her coffin, and I wanted to fill it with as much love as I possibly could.

The evening before the funeral I was filled with horrendous nerves, like I was going to jump out of a plane. Except this felt a bit like going without a parachute. There was nothing to look forward to on the other side, just the fear of staring into a big black hole afterwards. My journal entry from that day is covered in dried tear marks. That last day visiting Kaitlyn it had taken me almost an hour to actually be able to say goodbye and walk away from her. I had to keep telling myself that this was just her body, that her soul had left already, and was in the playground in the sky. A friend, who lost a little boy a few years ago, sent me a message that evening to say that years in heaven pass in the blink of an eye. It feels to us like a hugely long time to be parted, but to our beautiful children they will simply turn around one evening and we will be there with them. That night I dreamt of that, of a school-aged Kaitlyn turning around and simply saying “oh, there you are, mum, I wondered where you’d gone!”

The day of the funeral was a perfect blue-skied, sunny, crisp winter’s day. It was absolutely freezing. I will forever associate those perfect kinds of winter days with Kaitlyn now. On the way to the chapel I saw a huge shrub full of little garden birds and red berries. The service passed in a haze, I felt like my insides were being rubbed down with sandpaper. Afterwards I worried that I wouldn’t recall the service at all, and in fact the memories have taken some weeks to come back to me fully. I stood up and joined the choir singing; this meant a lot to me, because singing is something I share with both my girls, something that binds us together. I remember feeling completely bowled over by the respect that the funeral directors and our celebrant showed to Kaitlyn, as they settled her onto the plinth at the front, ready for the service to start. We could not have managed any of this without the guidance, expertise and emotional support from these wonderful people; I have such respect for the jobs that they do and the amazing way they looked after my family. Our friends from the village each wore a little spray of purple flowers, one of which now sits with Kaitlyn’s ashes.

Helen had planned a beautiful service and her words were perfect. She conducted a naming ceremony for Kaitlyn at the start of the service, which was a really beautiful idea. S and I both wrote our own words and read them out, and we both look back and are so glad that we managed to do this for our little girl. It was our chance to tell the room about Kaitlyn, what she was like in pregnancy and the days we spent together at the hospital. S talked about the promises he made to his family, that he lives by – they were beautiful words. Oddly I wasn’t at all nervous about doing this; I was so determined to make the service worthy of my little girl. It was the only event I was ever going to give her, all her birthdays and parties and everything all in the one event. And whilst it wasn’t a festive feeling, it was beautiful, and I think we did her proud.

After the service we had some drinks and light food in the local pub, set in a beautiful, quiet little village. It was super crowded, which was lovely in a way. A close friend of mine made amazing cupcakes she had made cupcakes for mine and S’s wedding, and for M’s naming day, and it felt so perfect to have some for Kaitlyn’s funeral too. I felt both numb and tingly inside as I said hello to everyone in the room, which took at least an hour and a half. I remember my wedding day feeling like I said nothing more than “hello” to everyone, and hardly saying much more than that; this was pretty much the same. But I’m glad we did it, it was so hard on the day but it brings me some comfort now to think on all the people who came to mark and remember Kaitlyn, and I am glad that I could at least greet everybody who took that care and made that effort.

After everything was over and everyone had left, S and I came home and had some quiet time for us before collecting M from nursery. The numbness continued for most of that day, and as it wore off over the next few days, the reality of the fact that we had cremated our perfect daughter hit hard. Collecting Kaitlyn’s ashes was far harder than we had anticipated, and in hindsight it was an event that we did not give enough respect to in advance. That hit us both as well and led to a very difficult week of low feelings in our house. Now, a few weeks down the line, I still feel sick when I remember collecting Kaitlyn. But she is here with me now. And I look at her funeral and feel a mixture of things. Sadness of course, and some disbelief that it’s something we have actually had to do, plan and live through. But I also feel glad that we did things the way we did, I have no regrets, and I feel a closeness in my heart to the people that came to honour Kaitlyn with us. When I want some quiet time with Kaitlyn and I don’t want to be in the house, I go and sit in the beautiful, peaceful gardens at the crematorium, listen to the music we played in the service and think about my beautiful little Kaitlyn.

Festivities and Grieving: the Glass Box Syndrome

The Glass Box Syndrome is a phrase that we use in our household to describe what it felt like to socialise in those very early days of grieving. We were still in shock, and both experiencing different symptoms of PTSD from the trauma of losing Kaitlyn in such a sudden and unexpected way. When I interacted with anyone in those early days, I felt separated from them by a sheet of glass. I could see and hear them, and I knew they could see and hear me. But somehow we weren’t quite on the same plane of existence. Everything was muffled and vaguely incomprehensible. In groups or social settings with more pressure and less safety, the walls of the glass box grew thicker. S describes it as being able to see a life that you could no longer feel. It was an utterly alienating, anxiety inducing, thoroughly unpleasant feeling and it accompanied both of us wherever we went in those early days, espccially throughout the Christmas period. The only thing for which I was thankful was that S and I were in the same glass box and not in two glass boxes separated from each other.

Kaitlyn was born just two weeks before the start of advent. December is a busy time here – M’s birthday is practically on top of Christmas, and she’s at that age now where Christmas actually means something and there are nursery activities to factor in. She has several friends with December birthdays too. All I wanted to do was hide in my bed until Christmas was over, but that clearly wasn’t going to be an option. When I look back on my photos from this time it’s a completely surreal mixture – festive Christmas scenes interspersed with things we were doing in memory of Kaitlyn, birthday and Christmas fesitivities followed by a baby’s coffin. Our three weeks of the Christmas season started with a birthday party and ended with a funeral.

The 1st December happened to be a Saturday and the village was holding a Christmas market. We decided to take M to it. She’d had two weeks of complete disruption – grandparents staying, mummy and daddy hiding away and crying all the time, meeting Kaitlyn and trying to understand what had happened. This was a chance for her to have some fun and normality, and she had a wonderful time playing with her friend and looking at all the Christmas lights, which she loves. This was mine and S’s first attempt at any kind of social activity and it was daunting. We walked around all afternoon inside our glass box; every conversation was a huge mental effort and took all my concentration. I cried as the choir sang Christmas carols; just that morning I had been choosing Kaitlyn’s special Christmas carol, which was Coventry Carol. We made Christmas decorations out of sand; M chose penguins for herself and an angel for Kaitlyn.

The next day we went to buy our Christmas tree. I didn’t want to use the decorations we had been using for the last nine years, somehow they just didn’t feel right any more, so we went and bought new ones. Such a simple sounding activity, but it was completely and totally overwhelming. Shops at Christmas are always pretty horrendous, and when you’re walking around with Glass Box Syndrome they are nigh on impossible. S and I were both completely unable to make any kind of decision, even simple tiny ones, and both kept looking to each other to come to the rescue. We were in the shop no more than fifteen minutes, by which time my nerves were completely frayed and when we bumped into friends on the way out I was so relived to see familiar faces that I ended up in tears on them. Putting up the Christmas tree took us two days, as I got halfway through and couldn’t handle any more. M evidently felt the same as she had a very thorough threenager episode which further stalled things and used a good chunk of my already depleted energy reserves. Still, the thing got put up in the end and turned out to be the prettiest tree we had ever had. S called it Kaitlyn’s tree and said he was really glad that it had turned out to be so lovely. M loved it too, and having assumed I would hate all things Christmas I actually found it very comforting to have a tree that included special decorations for Kaitlyn.

The next daunting event was M’s Christmas play at nursery. It was her first one and there was no way I wasn’t going, but I was absolutely dreading it. I had been avoiding M’s nursery as there are lots of families around with a child of M’s age and a little baby as well; siblings, especially pairs of sisters, is still the thing I find hardest to handle. One family were expecting a baby on practically the same day as Kaitlyn’s due date; thankfully they had a healthy girl, but that was hard to see every day. On the day of the Christmas play we scurried in and had aimed to run straight to the back…but the parents of M’s friends were so kind and lovely, they asked how we were and talked unapologetically about Kaitlyn. It was the best thing that could have happened to make me feel more at ease. I still spent the whole event firmly locked in my glass box, but the raw panic and anxiety calmed a bit and made it possible for me to watch the play all the way through. It turned out M had a fairly significant part in the play, so I am really glad we could be there to watch it.

Four days later, M’s birthday party, another glass box event. This was a joint party with one of her friends. Again I absolutely did not want to take away M’s chance to have a party, she had been looking forward to her birthday for ages and after everything we were all going through I wanted her to have these things as hers. The party was suitably chaotic and fueled by sugar, and both M and her friend had a wonderful time. I cried before the party and afterwards went straight home to bed – but we got through the party itself and again I was pleased we managed it for M. We lit a little candle for Kaitlyn beside the birthday cake.

In the first two weeks of December we had in the forefront of our minds that Kaitlyn was travelling to London and back to have her post mortem examination. She arrived back just couple of days before M’s birthday, so we had to make a decision about when to hold her funeral. I didn’t want it to be in the same week as M’s birthday. It didn’t feel fair to either of my girls – M deserved to keep her birthday and Christmas as her special times, and Kaitlyn definitely deserved her own dedicated time during which we would focus solely on her. Whatever we decided this year would set the way of things for the rest of our lives. Added to which, I couldn’t bear the idea of people coming to Kaitlyn’s funeral in the day and then popping out to their Christmas dos in the evening. So we settled on 4th January – still within the twelve days of Christmas, but after the hecticness of Christmas and New Year.

For Christmas itself we decided to escape. Some friends offered us the use of their flat in Berlin, and we were very tempted. In the end I couldn’t bear the idea of flying out of the UK when Kaitlyn was still at the funeral home. Berlin has many happy memories for me, having spent my ERASMUS year at university there, and I didn’t want to overwrite them with acute grief and trauma. We got online and googled “best hotels for toddlers in UK” and came up with a wonderful hotel in Aviemore, Scotland. It had soft play, it had swimming pools, it had a fab looking breakfast buffet (sure to be a hit with M!) Best of all it had a Christmas programme full of real reindeers, Father Christmas, fireworks, discos, a Christmas parade and loads more. All our meals were sorted, including Christmas dinner. We saw an opportunity to give M a fantastic Christmas without having to do anything at all. Thankfully I had been completely organised (!) and bought all M’s Christmas presents before Kaitlyn’s due date, and I have to say she had a pretty good haul from family too.

S and I have always enjoyed a good road trip. Since Kaitlyn died we find being in the car gives us time to have good long conversations about her. A little trickier with M in the car, but we had stretches of the long journey when she was asleep or playing games on her tablet with headphones on. I remember quietly crying an awful lot on the journey, while on my lap sat Kaitlyn’s elephant wrapped in her hospital blanket. The highlands was such an appropriate place to end up; S liked the idea of being closer to Kaitlyn up in the mountains, and we both appreciated being surrounded by such beauty. The weather was what I have come to call Kaitlyn’s Weather – freezing cold temperatures with bright blue skies and beautiful sunshine (and no snow).

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We remembered Kaitlyn in lots of ways on that trip and she was always with us. We saw no fewer than four rainbows on the drive up, which we took as a sign that Kaitlyn was following us up to Scotland; I had been to the funeral home before we left to explain to her where we were going and why. We lit a special candle for Kaitlyn at dinner every evening. On Christmas day, while S took M swimming, I sat and wrote a long letter to Kaitlyn and told her all about Christmas, about the Sophie the Giraffe that M had given her as a Christmas present and told her again how much we loved and missed her. M had been opening an advent calendar every day for Kaitlyn alongside her own and every day I wrote in my journal what both girls got in their calendars; we took both the calendars on our trip with us.

It feels odd, almost wrong, that I look back on our Scotland trip now with any kind of positivity. It was absolutely the right thing for our little family, to not even try and pretend to be normal and to take all the pressure off ourselves to put on a Christmas. I am so very glad though that we did manage to give M a good Christmas, as it was the first year that she had a proper grasp of what it was all about. Watching her enjoy the Christmas activities and play with new friends in the hotel gave me little pinpricks of joy in an otherwise awful time. Most critically for me, on our second evening in Aviemore, I realised that I didn’t feel like I was in the glass box. The third evening was the same, and the fourth. I could sit in the hotel bar or in the restaurant, surrounded by people, and not feel so completely and totally separated from them. All the other symptoms of acute grief and trauma remained and no doubt this will be the subject of its own blog post. But I felt like I had at least rejoined planet Earth, and that turned out to be a major step.

The final hurdle of the festive period was New Year. I absolutely dreaded it, more than I had dreaded anything else so far. I couldn’t believe that just a few short weeks after I had lost my precious girl, I was now going to have to leave behind the year in which I had carried her, known her and met her; it made me feel outrageously angry and bitter at the Universe. I kept telling myself that time is just a man-made construct, but it didn’t stop it feeling like another horrible level of separation from Kaitlyn. On New Year’s Eve I wrote a post on Facebook about what we had been doing over Christmas and how we were remembering Kaitlyn. Social media is nothing short of hell for a grieving person at Christmas and I asked myself several times a day why I didn’t just shut down my account and hide under a blanket. But I kept remembering one of the first things I said to S after Kaitlyn was born – that we couldn’t let ourselves become isolated and fall into a black hole, because we both thrive on feeling connected to the world and to lose this would have been the complete undoing of both of us. So I stayed, I cried, I swore at Facebook and I used it to maintain Kaitlyn’s presence during the festive period. Having written my post, I hid away in bed and concentrated on simply breathing in and out until the whole awful New Year affair was over. Once the bank holiday Tuesday was over, we were then into planning the last remaining details for Kaitlyn’s funeral three days later.

Making Memories

The world I now find myself thrown into with the loss of my baby girl is one I knew absolutely nothing about until just over 3 months ago. I had no idea at all what happened when a baby was born asleep. I’d barely heard of SANDS, and only a little more of Tommy’s. So I had no idea about all the beautiful things we would be able to do with Kaitlyn after she was born.

When we found out that Kaitlyn had died, I knew straight away that M should meet her. When the midwife asked if we wanted to meet and hold our baby, my answer was an instant yes. I didn’t stop to think at all, I knew there was no way I could get through the rest of my life without having met and cuddled my beautiful girl. There are circumstances of our situation that probably influenced that; firstly we were just three days away from Kaitlyn’s due date, and secondly I felt that I knew she had only been gone for a few hours, somehow I just knew she had only died a short while before we found out (something that was later confirmed by post mortem examination). The midwife wanted to look Kaitlyn over before handing her to us, and that was fine, but I already knew that I would make sure I saw my baby even if I had been discouraged.

I said yes to everything. Would we like photos taken straight away? Yes. Hand and foot prints taken? Yes. A lock of hair? Yes. I couldn’t bear the idea of regrets. If I took up all these offers and then in the future found them so hard that I could never look at them again, then so be it, but at least I would have them and wouldn’t panic later at missed opportunities. The hospital had a cold cot, which stayed with us for our whole stay in hospital and enabled us to have Kaitlyn next to us all the time. At night I would cuddle Kaitlyn in the bed with me; once I had finally dropped off to sleep, our midwife would quietly settle her back into the cot to spend the night at my bedside.

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The morning after Kaitlyn was born we were given a beautiful memory box, provided by the fantastic charity SiMBA (Simpson’s Memory Box Appeal). As well as hand and footprints, our midwife made impressions of Kaitlyn’s hands and feet using a special clay kit. There are some wonderful things in her box; little teddy bears and blankets, hospital bands, a birth acknowledgment certificate. All of Kaitlyn’s official documentation is difficult to look at. We were legally required to register Kaitlyn at the registry office just as we had with M, but instead of a birth certificate we walked out with a certificate of stillbirth; seeing my daughter’s name written on a document like that is still deeply upsetting. Her only other piece of formal paperwork is from the crematorium for her “cremated remains.” Official terminology and documentation is the polar opposite of comforting, so I hugely value having something prettier and more celebratory to look at for my daughter.

Sunday, the day after Kaitlyn was born, was her big day for meeting people. A friend of mine, who had her baby the weekend before, was at the hospital for a follow up appointment and so was the first to meet Kaitlyn. Just three days earlier, the day on which I later went into labour, I had been on the postnatal ward visiting my friend, holding her beautiful baby girl and really looking forward to meeting my own. She brought a gorgeous toy elephant for Kaitlyn; the elephant stayed in Kaitlyn’s cot with her until my last visit to the hospital, at which point I brought it home to keep with me. I love cuddling that little elephant, knowing that it spent four nights watching over my Kaitlyn.

S’s parents arrived, bringing M with them as she had been staying at their house since we had come into hospital the day before. M met her little sister first. This was a real clashing of emotions; I was so relieved to see my eldest daughter, to hold her close and feel her breathing, to watch her be so alive, but at the same time I cried so hard for her little sister and for M’s loss too. M was so happy to meet her baby sister, I could see it in her eyes and in the way she had run excitedly into the room. But there was also sadness and confusion; I remember thinking that no 2-year-old should have to process that. M was wonderful with Kaitlyn, whispering to her and cuddling her on her lap. I always knew M would make an amazing sister and this meeting absolutely confirmed it.

Our parents meeting Kaitlyn was hard to witness. They were all so full of love and sadness, and in truth I wasn’t sure how everybody would react to being asked whether they wanted to hold Kaitlyn. But everybody did, including my brother and his girlfriend, whose birthday is on the same day as Kaitlyn’s. At the time I remember really wanting everyone to meet Kaitlyn whilst at the same time feeling a bit resentful for every second I wasn’t holding her myself; this was a product of knowing that our time together was going to be so brief. Now it gives me comfort to know that our families met and held Kaitlyn, that she was a real, tangible being to them and more than just the concept of a baby.

We gave Kaitlyn a bath and washed her beautiful, soft hair. I remember thinking that actually you wouldn’t normally do that with a baby so small, and that we hadn’t with M. But it was our only chance to care for our baby in this way and there was no way I wanted to miss that. The shampoo bottle, bath towel and the hairbrush we used to brush Kaitlyn’s hair are in her memory box now. We put a nappy on her and dressed her in a new vest with elephants on, which I had picked out just a couple of weeks before. I knew Kaitlyn was mostly going to be in hand-me-downs from M, as is the lot of a younger sibling, but I’d wanted her to have something that I had bought for her to come home from hospital in. Over the vest went a beautiful light blue baby grow that S’s mum had bought.

The hospital contacted another fantastic charity called Remember My Baby, who organised a photographer to come and take professional photographs of Kaitlyn. This is one of the most amazing things that exists in making memories with babies who won’t be coming home. Our photographer had herself lost a baby boy so she understood what we were going through. She was caring, professional and kind, and took the most beautiful photographs of Kaitlyn, which are now my most valued possessions.

I really, really wanted to take Kaitlyn for a walk, to let her experience the fresh air and to be somewhere that wasn’t just the hospital bereavement suite. I didn’t think the hospital would let us but they didn’t hesitate in helping. We borrowed the hospital’s pram and wrapped Kaitlyn up snugly in some blankets. The midwife led us out of a staff exit to the building, so that we didn’t have to travel in the lift or out the front door with parents of newborn babies; I was so grateful for this. Our photographer came with us, which was amazing because it means we have professional photographs of Kaitlyn in a setting outside of the hospital building, and we took photos with our phones so that we could have them straight away to look at. The midwife thoughtfully picked up some autumn leaves and red berries, which went into the memory box and are now symbols that we associate with Kaitlyn.

The rest of the time, I simply held and cuddled Kaitlyn as much as I possibly could. I lay on the bed stroking her soft skin and holding her the way I used to hold M when I was trying to get her to sleep. I talked to her and told her all about her family, her sister, and all the things I had wanted to do with her over the course of her childhood and life. I memorised everything about her. We listened to music together, an album of piano lullabies. Now in the times when my heart is breaking all over again, I put on the lullabies, close my eyes and recall those moments of tranquility. I can remember what it felt like to hold Kaitlyn in my arms and kiss her beautiful face.

On Monday night we decided it was the right time to go home. We had spent 48 hours with Kaitlyn and we knew her little body was changing. When to leave the hospital is a very personal decision, and this felt right for us. We also knew that M was starting to find it hard knowing we were in the hospital and not at home with her. We went back to the hospital to visit Kaitlyn on the Tuesday and Wednesday; on Tuesday we took M again, to say one last goodbye. A couple of weeks before Kaitlyn was born, M had gone through a bit of a wobbly patch, coming into our bedroom in the night and asking if the baby was coming, and saying she was worried about the baby. I look back on that now and wonder if my child had some kind of sixth sense about her sister. At the time I took M to Build-a-Bear workshop to choose a bear for Kaitlyn, thinking it might help her to bond positively. She chose and made a gorgeous soft bunny rabbit which she called Oreo, after a bunny she had stroked at a farm park on a family holiday to the Isle of Wight just a few short weeks earlier. That same day I ordered a rainbow bear for M that said “Best Big Sister” on it; I planned to give it to her at the hospital as a present from Kaitlyn. On our Tuesday visit we took both bears and helped our two wonderful girls to exchange their presents. We spent the afternoon together as a family of four, playing, reading stories and drawing pictures for Kaitlyn. Lots of the hospital team, including the midwife that delivered Kaitlyn and the consultant obstetrician that had scanned us on the Saturday morning, came up to see us and to meet M. Kaitlyn kept her Oreo bunny with her, and a few weeks later M and I went back to Build-a-Bear to make another Oreo bunny that we could keep with us.

Our final visit to the bereavement suite was on Wednesday, just S and I this time. As soon as I walked in to the room I knew this was going to be my last visit. Kaitlyn’s little body had changed some more and there was bruising forming on her face. She was still beautiful, still my perfect little girl, but I could feel that her soul had left us. I spent two hours with Kaitlyn that afternoon, making promises to her, arranging the things that she was to take with her. When M was born we were given an absolutely gorgeous, luxury blanket in a beautiful box. Somehow I had never used it with M, fearing that she would ruin it with milk sick or a poo explosion. When I was preparing Kaitlyn’s nursery I thought that had been very silly of me and resolved to use it for her instead. I decided that this was the blanket that I would wrap Kaitlyn in on this visit and that she would therefore stay in forever more. I brought her soft hospital blanket home with me that day.

When the time came to say goodbye, I laid Kaitlyn very gently into her cot. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was playing from Kaitlyn’s special album of lullabies. The tears ran silently down my face as I kissed my beautiful girl goodbye and told her that I would love her forever. Unable to bear leaving her alone, I rang the call bell and waited for the midwife to come in. Then I walked slowly out, as if I had just spent hours getting her to sleep, and softly closed the door behind me, leaving my fondest dreams and pieces of my heart and soul behind. S was waiting for me in a quiet little waiting area near the bereavement suite; we cried in each other’s arms. Then we gathered up our things and left the hospital, without our newborn baby in her car seat, leaving her to the care of near strangers in a hospital building. Over the next few days and weeks it took everything I had not to go back to that hospital, grab my daughter and run away to a place where no-one could take her away again.

I had no idea that you could do any of these things with a baby that was born asleep. Since losing Kaitlyn I’ve met people who lost babies in a time when the baby was simply taken away; meeting the baby and getting a photo were very unusual and some parents didn’t even know whether they had a boy or a girl. People were encouraged to simply “get over it”, to move on and not think about the baby who had died. We have a long way to go in bereavement care and talking about baby loss, but thankfully we have come a long way since those times, especially in recent years. That’s thanks to all the people who have spoken out about their stories and to the charities that have worked so hard to make our experience of bereavement care and making memories the norm. If reading Kaitlyn’s story makes even a small handful of people aware of what happens in the hours and days immediately following a sleeping baby’s birth then it will have been really worth telling our story here. There are some fantastic resources available from Sands and Tommy’s for anyone who wants or needs to find out more about making memories with a baby born sleeping.

https://www.sands.org.uk/support/bereavement-support/saying-goodbye-your-baby

https://www.tommys.org/pregnancy-information/pregnancy-complications/pregnancy-loss/stillbirth/spending-time-your-stillborn-baby

https://www.tommys.org/pregnancy-information/pregnancy-complications/baby-loss/stillbirth/remembering-your-baby-after-stillbirth

Saying hello: Kaitlyn’s birth story

I often describe M’s birth as “textbook”, by which I mean that it was straightforward and needed no intervention. A long latent phase, followed by 15 hours of labour, 9 at home and 6 in the pool in the hospital. No drugs, very little gas and air (it unfortunately made me sick and hallucinate) and M was born in the water. Straight after delivering the placenta I had to go off to surgery to have a tear stitched – that was the most dramatic part! Slightly annoying that I got the baby out without any drugs and then went straight onto a spinal block, but something I’ve definitely relegated to the “insignificant problems” box since Kaitlyn was born.

M’s birth story has been told over and over again – some of my friends know M’s birth story almost as well as they know their own children’s, and vice versa. Kaitlyn’s story, on the other hand, hardly gets told. No-one really asks about it, which is understandable; before losing Kaitlyn I would have assumed that people wouldn’t want to talk about something so upsetting. But it means I don’t really tell Kaitlyn’s story at all. Some details are stuck fast in my brain and have replayed on loop, in the way that traumatic incidents do, and other whole blocks of the day are complete blurs in my memory. But I laboured and gave birth and so I want to share Kaitlyn’s birth story, as any parent would.

I approached Kaitlyn’s labour with a mixture of confidence, anxiety and dread. Confidence because I thought I knew what to expect and I had managed it before, and besides second babies were meant to be quicker, weren’t they? Anxiety because I really didn’t want to have a bad tear again. Dread because this time I already knew what the pain was like. Second time around lots of people tend not to do NCT classes and the like, and we were no different. I took up the free hospital run antenatal class, and decided to do a short hypnobirthing course to serve as a bit of a refresher – after all, it had been three years, and anything I could do to prevent the dreaded tear was a bonus.

I went into the latent phase of labour at 10pm on 15th November. From the very start it felt completely different to my labour with M. I had actual contractions from the very start, whereas M’s was more of a crampy feeling that built and progressed into contractions. With M I’d had a sweep (not a terrible experience at all, despite some of the things I’d heard) but not with Kaitlyn. I had contractions every 30 minutes or so throughout Thursday night; I did manage to sleep lightly for part of the night, but not very much. The contractions felt different to my first labour as well, much more painful and more in my back and pelvis, not around my middle like I’d had with M.

At the time, S and I were both working full time on a 9-day fortnight, so we took it in turns to have M at home on a Friday. Luckily it was S’s day at home that Friday so he kept M entertained for the day, taking her off to her cooking club and other toddler activities. I spent the day at home in my pyjamas, with contractions every 20-30 minutes or so, and some parts of the day with very little going on for a couple of hours at a time. It was Friday evening that I started to wonder whether things ought to be going a little quicker – at this point the “latent” phase had gone on for almost as long as it had in my first labour. I called the hospital and they weren’t overly concerned. Kaitlyn was still moving around normally so nobody was particularly worried. I described all the ways in which this labour seemed different last time, and the midwife explained that it wasn’t unusual for a woman to have two labours that were completely different to each other. She took all my details and said to call back if anything changed.

Things carried on like this throughout Friday night, with no change. I was starting to feel very tired as I was now on my second night with very little sleep. At 5am on Saturday morning, 31 hours after contractions had started, I had finally had enough. I called the hospital in tears, and they said I could come in for a little TLC and some pain relief if I felt that would help. At this stage no-one had any idea that anything was seriously wrong and I could still feel Kaitlyn moving. So we waited for my in-laws to come and look after M – they’re not local, and the journey from theirs to ours is about 45 minutes. We were so convinced that the hospital were going to check me over and send me home and we wanted M to be looked after with as little disruption to her as possible. As luck would have it, she woke up just as we were preparing to leave the house. As anyone with a toddler will know, once they’re up and about, minutes can disappear as you try and explain what’s happening and extricate yourself from them without issue.

We left the house at 7.45am and called the hospital for the third time that morning (there was an update call at about 7am) to say we were on the way. That particular morning our local hospital were trying to divert maternity services to another site as it was so very busy. Unfortunately this was all happening between 7.30 and 8am. As a result, the hospital called us back when we were halfway there and said that I had to go home again and come back at 10am, because I was deemed a non-urgent case and not in established labour. We asked to be seen at another site, but were told they had the same issues so we couldn’t go there either.

So presented with the choice of sitting around for 2 hours in the hospital without being seen or sitting at home for 2 hours, we chose to go home. We went back in for a pre-arranged appointment at 10am in the day assessment unit. And that was when we were given the news that every parent hopes to go their whole life without hearing, and nothing could ever prepare you for. The day assessment unit midwife (who was, in fact, a truly amazing person) did all the usual antenatal checks (blood pressure, urine test etc) and took my history. She decided to hook me up to the CTG machine to check how the baby was moving. She couldn’t find the heartbeat using the machine, so went to get the Doppler. I felt a wave of cold worry, but told myself to keep calm, it was faulty equipment, just a rubbish machine, no need to panic. When the Doppler produced the same total silence, I knew. Just a tiny, minuscule little seed in the pit of my stomach, but one glance at S told me he knew too. The midwife was helping me off the bed, wrapping a sheet around my middle, walking me briskly to the scan room. I started to cry. She told me not to worry, but I think she knew as well. The scan room was dark, as if we were the first people in it for the day (which perhaps we were), but the machines were on and ready to use. I lay on the bed and silently prayed, begged in my head that some force would intervene and reveal a heartbeat. But instead the worst words I have ever heard: “I’m so sorry, I can’t find a heartbeat.”

Blurs and impressions follow. A consultant obstetrician, a kind man; I recall him trying to talk to me but I couldn’t hear him over my sobs. He left. I remember calling my mum, having to find the words to tell my own mum that my baby had died. There were no words, so I took a deep breath and just said it. “Mum, she’s gone. My baby has died.” S calling his mum. Moving to a quiet room. S calling our closest friends, the only other people who knew what had been happening since Thursday night. Little snippets remain in my memory, like a montage that plays round and round. Then we were taken up to the bereavement suite, called the Butterfly Suite.

This will definitely sound odd – I actually have a positive impression of our care from then on. I was looked after by two of the most amazing, compassionate people I have ever come across, who stayed with me for the next 7 hours until Kaitlyn was delivered. Their kindness and competence got us through the most difficult thing we have ever had to go through. The Butterfly Suite was completely removed from the main delivery unit, so I did not once in my whole labour hear another woman giving birth or a newborn baby cry. Unlike in a lot of cases, I was already in labour so we had no time at all to process that Kaitlyn had died, no days in between the scan confirming her death and being induced. We were thrown straight into things. At 2.30pm I remember a midwife confirming that I was 5cm dilated. The next 3 hours are a complete blank in my mind, I have absolutely no idea what happened. I was given a patient controlled morphine drip; I have always thought of morphine as a pretty powerful drug, but it honestly didn’t touch the pain, it just made me feel like I was completely drunk. I think my brain had utterly given up and had no idea how to help my body through labour. That said, I did use a lot of breathing techniques picked up in the hypnobirthing classes – they didn’t help the pain, but they did keep me calm, a bit more focussed and able to keep labour in progress. At 5.30pm, completely exhausted, I had an epidural. By then I had been having contractions for 43.5 hours.

Things became significantly calmer at this point. I could physically calm down, and think ahead to the moment when I would meet my baby. The moment of Kaitlyn’s birth was calm and peaceful, just four of us in the room, with very little noise. We were asked whether we wanted to see and hold Kaitlyn – I was absolutely adamant that I did. The midwife suggested putting the screen up and letting the team check Kaitlyn over before we saw her, which we agreed to. In the moment she was born, I prayed again, this time to hear the sound of her crying. I held my breath and listened as hard as I possibly could, but of course the sound I longed for never came. When Kaitlyn was handed to me, she was absolutely perfect, beyond perfect. She was wrapped in lovely blankets, with her beautiful head of thick, dark hair poking through. S and I both exclaimed at the same time that she looked exactly like M when she was born; Kaitlyn’s hair, nose and lips were completely identical, even though her lips had already started to darken.

I held my baby and cuddled her to me, cradled her, talked softly to her and told her how beautiful she was and how much we loved her. Things were going on – I had an injection to deliver the placenta, drugs were administered, I had a tiny insignificant tear that was sutured. I don’t remember any of it, I’ve taken all of that from my hospital notes. All I remember is holding my baby girl, marvelling at her and giving her her name, Kaitlyn Anya, which we had chosen months before.

My baby was here, after months of looking forward to meeting her. We had been through labour together. My heart exploded with love, and then broke into a million tiny pieces at the sadness of not being able to keep her with me forever. I watched my husband’s heart break too, and wished I could make everything better for this amazing man who had got me through the most difficult feat of my life. I can’t look back on my labour with any kind of happiness, but I can be glad of the decisions we made for mine and Kaitlyn’s labour that day. By the time we could stop and rest it was late, I was exhausted, whoozy, had thrown up lots and couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. With help I settled into the strangely homely bedroom of the bereavement suite, with my baby in my arms, lying the way that I had with M all those months (years, in fact) when she wouldn’t sleep. After many, many tears, wonderful care from the new midwife (who came on shift 10 minutes after Kaitlyn was born) and a gratefully received sleeping tablet, we fell asleep together, as any parents and their new baby should.

The first post

My only blogging experience to date is four weeks of writing in 2012 when I went on a work exchange to Denmark. I suspect that writing about baby loss will be very different to writing comparisons of the UK and Danish healthcare systems. But then I’m also a complete novice in the world of baby loss; I’m sure blogging will be much easier to get the hang of.

When Kaitlyn died, I took to Facebook. It’s not like me at all; I add the odd pointless comment here and there, a bit of complaining about Brexit and whatnot, but I’m not one for putting our lives up on social media. I’ve only ever put up one photo of our elder daughter, M, and only then because it was of the four of us together. I wanted to celebrate Kaitlyn’s birth, and announce her arrival as we would always have done, even though it was ultimately heartbreaking news that I was announcing.

And that was the start really. I want to talk to the world about Kaitlyn, to shout about her existence from the rooftops, and in this day and age I can do just that. Perhaps selfishly I do find it helpful, even therapeutic, to write. Facebook was a good medium for updating people on how we’re doing at a time when I can’t manage individual conversations with everyone and I have found people’s responses to be both kind and curious, which has been really valuable. If anyone has had an adverse reaction to what I’ve posted, they have been helpful enough to keep it to themselves. As time went on and more things happened, the posts got longer and longer. And so this blog was born, to take their place. I’ve really found that when I bump into acquaintances face to face, it’s hard for them to know what to say, especially if they weren’t expecting to see me. If this blog can shine a light on what our lives are like now, spark some questions, help people think of things to say and perhaps help a wider audience to support others through baby loss, then I will be absolutely thrilled with that result.