Ten

Ten years ago, I went into labour. Aubrey was already dead. Archimedes wasn’t expected to survive. I was 28 weeks pregnant, my waters had broken at 15w.

At 17w, I was told that both babies were dead. My private (expensive, homebirth friendly) obstetrician transferred into the public system for medical management of my “miscarriage”. That same afternoon an ultrasound confirmed two strong heartbeats.

The chances for their survival weren’t high. The risks for me were great. But I was grateful to live in a country where termination was available, and where I also had a choice to refuse it, and give my babies a chance.

I developed sepsis, and labour started. My wonderful specialist had a night off to celebrate her wedding anniversary(Roshini, if you ever read this, know that you were a bright, wonderful, lovely light on my horizon every time I interacted with you, and you made a traumatic experience so much more bearable). I told the duty nurses, I felt “funny”, and was told to go back to bed. I knew then that the signs of sepsis are hard to identify, and hard to communicate, but that feeling “off/funny/strange” was a red flag. My concerns were dismissed until I was obviously in labour.

They didn’t give me antibiotics. They didn’t try to stop the labour. They gave me a surgical consent form, and I had my second caesarian section.

I was wheeled off to recovery, and Archimedes was taken to NICU, with Mark. I was then taken back to the ward. It was hours and hours before I was wheeled to NICU to see them. Mark had been told it was hopeless.

Eventually I was allowed to see him. He died. Fe came and took photos. Family came to meet him. We were allowed to see him, they brought him to me from the cold place, and we did the crossword together. Eventually we said goodbye for the last time. I was due to be discharged from hospital, when my infection returned with a vengeance. I was hallucinating. Having conversations with people that weren’t there.

They tried stronger and stronger antibiotics. I didn’t respond. My doctor signed the paperwork to have me admitted to ICU. They brought in a special drip bag, covered in warning stickers. The staff hovered, I had special authority to use the “in case of emergency” antibiotics, and that afternoon, I recorded my first normal temperature. I got better.

It wasn’t rapid. I still have flashbacks and cold sweats about some of the procedures I was subjected to, and some attitudes from jaded medical staff who didn’t know my story. Who didn’t know how broken I was, how raw.

When they released me, I couldn’t walk 100m to the car park without a rest. I couldn’t go to the supermarket without sobbing. I couldn’t parent my beautiful child, who couldn’t understand why his world was upside down, and why his mama cried all the time. I couldn’t fathom the cruelty of the whispers and stares of the playgroup mums. I couldn’t do anything else but be “that woman” the one who went through that awful thing. The thing that we cannot believe could ever happen to us. The thing that we know we would never survive.

Inigo and I talked a lot. I did my absolute best to try to answer his questions with honesty and openness. One of the hardest things I have ever done in my life was discussing the philosophy of life and death with a three year old with a giant brain, while also not crashing the car through my tears, driving to playgroup, driving to see friends, determined to make life as normal as possible, when nothing was ever going to be normal again.

But we do survive. We don’t know how we can get through another minute, another hour, another day. We’ll lose friends because our sadness is self indulgent, and we’ll have to learn how to exist as a broken person in the world. It starts by breaking down our ideas about the world and how it works. our schemas, built up over a lifetime are shattered, and have to be rebuilt. Our new worldview needs to incorporate the idea that babies die, and that life can continue. And this is WORK. Grief is WORK. It takes so much effort to just exist, to just scrape away at pretending to be normal, and also recreating your mental building blocks.

And then today you wake up and it has been a decade. Our babies would be turning TEN today. And although their birth was followed by so much sadness, the intervening years have shown me the gifts that their birth have brought into my life. Having lost friends, I know who my real, ride or die friends are. Having survived losing them, I know my strength. Having rebuilt my world, I know who I am.

I know who I am.

Happy Birthday Archimedes Hare and Aubrey Michael. I am better for having known you.