Two Precious Days

The relief I felt when the midwife told us that Madelyn had a heartbeat was very short lived.  I soon started to realise that a heartbeat did not mean that everything was going to be okay.  I was desperately piecing together everything that had happened during and after her birth, trying to work out how long she had been without oxygen.  No one could tell us anything more about Madelyn’s condition as she was still being assessed in the neonatal unit, and we were told we needed to wait until the consultant could come to speak to us. 

In the meantime, we sat mostly in silence wondering if we should start letting family know what had happened.  I couldn’t cope with the thought of their reactions and my mind started to wander, almost frantically.  How were we going to tell everyone?  How were we going to tell Noah?  Was he ever going to meet his new sister?  How could I get the Flopsie bunny that Noah had wanted to buy for her?  I hadn’t had time to buy it, and now she might never get it.  What would we do with all of Madelyn’s things at home if she didn’t make it?  What about all the nappies we’d bought?  Should we donate them?  We’d abandoned everything back at the house, who was going to clean up?  How were we going to get the birthing pool drained and packaged to be sent back to the hire company?  As ridiculous as it sounds, I remember thinking about the pram we’d bought for her.  It didn’t fit in the boot of the car without us having to take one of the wheels off it, so I actually thought to myself “at least I don’t have to worry about that”.  Most of my thoughts were completely justified, but some just seemed absurd even to me.

I remember being scared to move from the hospital bed when I suddenly realised that I should probably ask if I needed stitches.  Something I didn’t even want to think about as it was such a cruel reminder of the trauma my body had just gone through, without having my baby lying next to me.  After I told the midwife that I hadn’t been examined, she set up her equipment and asked if a student midwife could come in to the room to observe.  As I prepared myself the best I could, I started to breathe in the gas and air and as the dizzy drunk feeling began to set in, I just felt a huge wave of sadness rising up.  I remember that being the first time that I just cried and sobbed uncontrollably, feeling like I was never going to be able to stop.  Adam held me tight as I cried loudly into him and as I looked up to take a tissue from the midwife, I saw the student midwife wiping her own tears away too.

As we all sat waiting for more news, I became increasingly aware of the lady in the room next to me labouring loudly, and of the empty cot sitting next to my hospital bed.  My Mum left the room for a minute or two and when she returned another midwife came in and apologised as she wheeled out the cot.  We put the radio on in an attempt to drown out the screams of the lady next door, but it didn’t help.  It just meant that, even now, I can’t hear “Marvin Gaye” by Meghan Trainor without being transported straight back to that moment.

Shortly after my Dad arrived at the hospital, Madelyn’s consultant came to talk to us for the first time.  I remember him saying “I know one of the first things you’re going to ask is what weight your baby is, but I’m afraid I don’t know”.  I replied that I didn’t care I just wanted to know if she was alive.  He explained that although when he first saw her, her condition was slightly better than he had expected, there was no escaping the fact that she had suffered oxygen deprivation for a prolonged period of time.  He said that they had begun a treatment, where Madelyn’s body temperature would be cooled down for 48 hours to try to slow down any further brain damage while they tried to figure out how badly she had already been affected.  We went over what had happened during the birth so that he had a better knowledge of what Madelyn had been through, and although he sounded positive at times, he told us that the next 24 hours were very critical and then very honestly told us that he was worried about her.

We decided on our daughter’s name while we waited for the call to say that we could go and see her for the first time since we watched her leaving our home with the paramedics.   We had a list of names that we liked, we hadn’t decided on anything, but as soon as she was born I couldn’t get the name Madelyn out of my head.  I just felt that was her name.  Even before we’d spoken about it in the hospital room, I was referring to her in my own head as Madelyn. 

When we were finally taken to the neonatal unit, I remember looking around trying to figure out what baby was ours.  I was looking at one in particular thinking she looked too small to be my baby, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  Then we were shown over to that baby, our daughter.  She lay there with lots of tubes and wires coming from her, wearing a little pair of ear defenders, eye protectors and she was wrapped in a sort of bubble wrap but all I could look at was her beautiful face.  She looked so much like her big brother when he was a baby.  We took some photos, touched her skin where we could and watched the activity in the unit, a whole new world for us.

It seemed like such a long journey as I was wheeled back to the maternity ward after our first visit to the neonatal unit.  As we passed the different midwife stations, it felt like all eyes were on us.  I was sure everybody must have heard what had happened and it felt like they were looking at us apologetically.  I couldn’t manage to hold anyone’s gaze and looked at the floor with a pain in my throat from choking back tears, until we made it back to our room.  More of our family had started to arrive so we were able to show off our photos of our beautiful daughter.  I managed to talk in short bursts, before breaking down as the shock hit me over and over again in violent waves. 

Over the next two days we spent as much time as possible by our daughter’s bedside, introducing our family to her, explaining what we could about each wire and tube coming from her.  We had numerous conversations with her consultant and it was clear after Madelyn’s first 24 hours of life that things were not going to get better.  Adam and I held hands as we tried to understand what we were being told.  Madelyn had no brain activity other than increasingly frequent seizures, no basic reflexes and was unable to breathe on her own.  I remember nodding along as the consultant spoke, and the realisation of what was to come began to sink in.  In the following 24 hours, the plan was to begin to warm Madelyn’s body temperature again so that we could hold her and spend as much time with her as we could, making memories.  We watched as the consultant relayed this information to Madelyn’s heartbroken grandparents and aunts and uncles, something I’ll always be grateful to him for.  I remember trying to hold my head up while he explained to my family what would happen when her treatment was withdrawn.  I stared at the pictures on the wall in the family room.  I couldn’t bear to see the pain in everyone’s faces as they realised that this was it, Madelyn wasn’t going to make it.

On our second night spent in hospital, I woke up around 3am and couldn’t stop thinking about what we were going to have to do that day.  How could I possibly get my head around knowing that my daughter was going to die and that it would be up to us to decide when would be the right time for that to happen?  My mind went in to over drive so I headed along to sit with Madelyn for a few hours.  I held her hand, cried, spoke to her quietly about all the things I’d wanted to do with her and told her over and over how sorry I was and how loved she was.  I wanted so much to be able to just pick her up and put her back inside my tummy, where she’d been safe.  I wished I could have kept her safe.  In the morning, Adam and I went back to sit by our daughter’s bedside together and as we got to the door of the unit we saw another nurse who had been caring for another baby standing by Madelyn’s bed.  It looked as though she had been talking to our precious girl and as she made her way back to tend to the other baby, she appeared to wipe away tears from her eyes.  That image will always stay with us.  Such compassion shown by someone who didn’t even know us; it seemed she had wanted to say her own goodbye to our daughter.