Amy’s Story
On the evening of Friday 8th September, I was in a meeting at Projekts until midnight. When I arrived home, Mary-Lou said that she had been having some pains in her tummy for the last hour. We decided to see if they lasted another hour and if so, we’d phone the community midwives. After that hour, the pains were a bit stronger so we phoned the midwives who suggested Mary-Lou should take a bath as a pain relief method, then phone again afterwards.
After her bath, we phoned and Pam, the Community Midwife on call, came round. We chatted a bit then she felt Mary-Lou’s bump and used some equipment to hear the baby’s heart. Pam tried for a while in all sorts of places but the noise which we had heard before of the baby’s heartbeat didn’t sound. Pam said she couldn’t find the heartbeat but that this wasn’t rare and can be because of the baby’s position or faulty equipment. She suggested we went into hospital so they can do an echo scan to find the heartbeat.
We had been on the Domino scheme for childbirth which means the mum stays at home in labour for as long as she can, then goes into hospital to give birth when she is dilated 5-7cm. So I got a bit flustered because I hadn’t packed my hospital bag so I asked if we should bring our packed bags with us and Pam suggested we did because we could be there a while. So I dashed upstairs and got some clothes in a bag and collected all the last minute things which were on the list Mary-Lou had made. While we were upstairs, Mary-Lou said she was scared that they hadn’t found the heartbeat, but I reassured her that things would be OK.
Pam drove us to the hospital at around 3am on the Saturday morning. On the way I remembered that I had forgot to bring the car seat to bring our baby home with us, but I didn’t tell Mary-Lou because I didn’t want to worry her anymore than she already was. When we arrived, I texted a couple of friends to pray for us and for our baby, and I phoned Mary-Lou’s parents and my parents with the news. It was so hard - I had never given such bad news - but I wanted to tell them, not text them, and ask them to pray for us too.
We were taken to the Triage unit of St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital into a room from which you could see West over Moss Side since it was on the 6th floor. Pam made us feel comfortable there as we waited for the obstetrician to come and see us. His name was Brett Winter-Roach and had a very kind and sensitive manner. He came in with the echo machine and said that he would do some scanning for a while, then he would chat to us afterwards.
As he was scanning in silence, I held Mary-Lou’s hand and I began getting more and more nervous, thinking that there could really be a problem. It was quite eerie. Pam was with us too, but no-one was speaking and it was obvious that everyone was very tense.
I was born with a congenital heart problem called Transposition of the Main Arteries, so I am used to echo cardiograms and I know what I am looking at on the screens. As Brett was scanning I wondered whether I should look at the screen, or whether that might scare me. I did glance at it a couple of times, and immediately wished I didn’t. I saw the cavity where the heart was, but I didn’t see and valves flapping around, like I have seen in my heart. I knew it was the heart because the ribs were casting shadows down through the chest.
I looked away and decided it didn’t mean anything. After all, I’m not an expert on echo cardiograms. I began watching him move the scanner around Mary-Lou’s tummy and then noticed that his hand was shaking. I squeezed Mary-Lou’s hand and looked at her. She was just staring straight ahead at the opposite wall. I didn’t know how to feel, all the signs were pointing towards the worst thing, but I was determined that this wasn’t the case.
When Brett had finished doing the scan, his demeanor and eyes were very sorrowfull. He apologised and told us that he could not find a heart beat. Mary-Lou started breathing really heavily and saying “No, no, no.” I tried to hug her but it was very awkward because of how she was lying. I didn’t know what to think or say, I just focused on Mary-Lou and trying to hold her.
Brett said he very sorry to give the news but that it was almost certain that there was no heart beat. He said that they have two separate obstetricians to confirm that there is no heart beat and that he would try and contact the on-call obstetrician to come and scan again. I asked if there was anything they could do for the baby. Brett replied that there unfortunately was nothing that could be done.
Mary-Lou started groaning and almost crying then stopped and just stared at the ceiling, still breathing deeply. I wondered whether it was really a problem since the baby gets is oxygenated blood from Mary-Lou, but the sadness and sorrow from Brett and Pam made me realise that actually, the baby was dead. It then occurred to me that of course this was true because the baby’s heart needs to pump the blood around it’s body, and since it wasn’t, it was surely dead.
As this dawned on me, hundreds of things were going through my head about what this meant, memories of our hopes, confusion about what needed to happen next, fears of it’s implications on Mary-Lou. I felt this was the worst thing that could have happened. The baby was 9 days late by then, and was going to be induced on the Monday. It was full term and fully developed, it had grown these 9 months, and now, nothing.
Brett said that if it is confirmed that there is no heartbeat, they will recommend that Mary-Lou gives birth to the baby. The horror I had felt as a child when I learnt that some ladies have to give birth to their dead babies flooded over me and I thought “There is no way I’m gonna let Mary-Lou give birth, it is the most horrific thing she could ever go through.” So I asked Brett if she could have a Cesarean section under general anaesthetic so that she could be knocked out while they took the baby out and not have to experience giving birth to the dead baby.
Brett said that it would be up to us, but that every doctor would highly recommend a vaginal delivery since a c-section is a serious operation with risks of complications in future pregnancies, whereas vaginal delivery was natural and far less risky. I then asked about when the other obstetrician might be able to come and scan, Brett then said he would try to contact her as soon as possible.
When we were left alone, we cuddled. We didn’t know what to say. Mary-Lou was still in shock. I started to think about where Jesus was in all this, I really couldn’t work it out. I said to Mary-Lou that I felt I should remind us that Jesus is here somewhere in this situation, but that I couldn’t see it. Mary-Lou hugged me and I began crying. I started repeating through tears “I don’t want this, I don’t want this.” I really felt desperate for things to be different, for there to be no problem.
Eventually Brett and Pam came back having got hold of the other obstetrician and took us to another room for the scan with a more accurate machine. When we entered, the obstetrician was there in a large t-shirt and shorts, as though she had just got out of bed - I think she had. When Mary-Lou had settled on the bed, they turned the machine on, and it took ages to start-up causing an awkward silence, and making Mary-Lou and me more nervous.
The obstetrician scanned Mary-Lou’s tummy for about 20 seconds then said she was sorry, but there really was no heart beat. I asked her if we needed to talk to her about having a c-section, she said it was her but that she highly recommended a normal delivery because it is far less risky.
Back in our room, I phoned our families and friends to let them know that our baby’s death had been confirmed. I had never had to deliver such bad news, and it was hard listening to people cry for us. By this time it was about 8am on Saturday and I was phoning people all through the morning, taking large breaks to re-gain the strength to phone someone else.
Mary-Lou’s contractions were getting stronger so she accepted some Pethidine from our new midwife, Caroline. After the injection, the pain died down and Mary-Lou began sleeping because she was so tired. I was still making the odd phone call and eventually tried to sleep in a chair - but it didn’t work.
I had told our parents that we didn’t want anyone to come to us, we wanted to be alone and go through this together. However, my Mum and Dad decided to drive up to Manchester fromCrewe so that they could help if we needed them. When they arrived at about 7 or 8 am they called, and we decided to see them after all.
When they came in, we hugged then they sat down. Mary-Lou held my Mums hand because my Mum was crying, no one talked much. We told them more about what had happened and what we were thinking. I mentioned that we thought we wanted a c-section and that we didn’t think we wanted to see the baby. After a while, when my parents were about to leave and go back to our house for a while, my Dad asked to chat to me outside the room.
He was troubled that we didn’t want to see our baby. Mary-Lou and I had chatted about it earlier, I had said that I would like to see it, but Mary-Lou didn’t want to because the idea was so horrible. My Dad explained that many couples who go through stillbirth and don’t see their baby regret it afterwards. He explained that before God, our baby was a person from it’s conception, that we will meet him or her one day in heaven and that we should name it and he encouraged me to see our baby and hold it with Mary-Lou.
After my Parents left at around 10am, I told Mary-Lou what my Dad had said, and as I explained, it slowly dawned on me how precious and individual our baby was. We chatted it through and both realised that we had been distancing ourselves from our baby as OUR baby, and that it was a human whom we should honour and respect. This helped us greatly in making decisions later on. One of the first difficult decisions was about how our baby was going to be delivered.
Having realised that we didn’t want to distance ourselves from our child, or treat it as a “thing”, we though the most honouring thing to our baby was to complete the pregnancy through a vaginal delivery. To have a c-section under general anaesthetic was - in our mind - trying to shun our baby and not have anything more to do with it. We felt we would be neglecting the last 9 months of discomfort and sacrifice we had gone through for our child.
Mary-Lou’s Pethidine began wearing away, so we decided to try the TENS machine we had rented from Boots. She found that if she switched to the more intense mode just at the beginning of a contraction, it worked quite well, but if she missed that moment, it wouldn’t really work. At around midday, Caroline came and told us we could more to another larger room which was at the end of the corridor and was therefore a bit quieter. We decide to move room, and were very glad we did when we arrived in the new room. It was about 3 times larger than our previous room and had windows along two of the walls looking out over Manchester City Centre and the East of the City. The immediate view however was of a building site since the hospital is having a lot of work being done, so the skyline was mostly cranes.
For me it was refreshing being in a much brighter room with such a great view, and having more space to walk around in was a blessing too. I was still phoning people every so often and reading text messages of condolence and support to Mary-Lou. She had another Pethidine shot and began to get sleepy again.
At around 2 - 3pm my parents came back with some stuff we had forgotten to bring, and some much desired food. It was a quicker visit this time because they knew we wanted our space but it was wonderful to have seen them and to have chatted to someone else who was a part of our, and Amy’s story.
The contractions continued getting stronger and Mary-Lou was dilating at about 1cm per hour, which is the normal rate. Caroline brought Mary-Lou some Gas & Air to help with the increasing pain, we had given up on the TENS machine long ago. She loved it! Not only did it help dull the pain, but it gave Mary-Lou something to focus on - her breathing. We also had another distraction, The X Factor!
By 10pm, Mary-Lou had dilated 10cm, had her legs put in stirrups and was encouraged to start pushing whenever she had a contraction. She initially had a problem in that she didn’t know how or where to push. By this time Pam was on shift again and was looking after us - we were very grateful to have her and not another new person. Her contractions were quite infrequent and irregular so our baby wasn’t really moving much.
At about midnight, Brett came - we were grateful to have him again too - and advised putting Mary-Lou on a drip which would help regulate her contractions and hopefully speed up the delivery, so we agreed to that. After an hour, our baby’s head had crowned and Pam could see the hair - it was like Mary-Lou’s, she told us. Yet even with Mary-Lou pushing really hard and doing so well at it, our baby wasn’t moving very far.
Every time Mary-Lou pushed I kept encouraging her saying things like, “That’s it, push, push, push. Keep going, keep going. You’re doing really well. A few seconds more, keep going. Chin down!” For each contraction, Mary-Lou had time for two pushes, holding her breath. In between the contractions she used the Gas & Air excessively.
When Brett came back he decided the best thing was to do an epesiotamy and use forceps to pull our baby out. We had chosen not to see our baby being delivered so a sheet had been hung over Mary-Lou’s tummy. Eventually, in one giant push, our baby was delivered, no sound, no noise, just Mary-Lou panting for breath and sighing with relief. Our baby was taken away by Pam and when she returned she injected Mary-Lou with something which helps the placenta be delivered quickly.
Once the placenta had been delivered and Mary-Lou was cleaned up a bit, Brett explained that she had suffered a 3rd degree tear and that she would need stitches straight away. We briefly discussed whether to have general or local anaesthetic and decided on local. Mary-Lou wanted me to be with her during the surgery and they agreed that I would be allowed to be with her.
When they had wheeled Mary-Lou on her bed into surgery, I was left on my own in the room waiting for some clothes to wear to go into the theatre. I felt quite lost and lonely and started shaking a bit. I wanted to text people to pray for Mary-Lou while she was in theatre but thought that I would be called to surgery straight away, so I panicked and began writing the text quickly, still shaking. The nurse didn’t come to get me for some time, so I had quite a few minutes after writing the text just sitting in the chair with nothing to do. I realised that I should be taking care of our living baby at this point while Mary-Lou was in surgery, but it was a short lived thought - my mind was racing but completely incoherently, I couldn’t focus on a single thought.
Pam came in to help clear up and take away the stuff they had used for delivery and asked me if I wanted to know what sex our baby was. I said I didn’t and that we would rather find out together, so she had a tricky time telling me how the delivery went and how big our baby was!
When I was called into the theatre, Brett and another surgeon seemed to have already started adding the local anaesthetic. I was given a stool next to Mary-Lou’s head and I stroked her head and held her hand while I told her how much I loved her and how proud I was of her. She seemed to drift in and out of consciousness according to any pain she felt but I just kept stroking and whispering to her, there was nothing else I could do.
The stitches took longer than Brett had expected but once we were back in our room Mary-Lou, already quite dosy, fell to sleep so I decided to go and ask Brett how the surgery went. He said it went very well and that they were very happy with their work. Then he expressed how sorry he was for us and shook my hand. It was quite bizarre since I didn’t feel like I had done anything to deserve having my hand shaken.
After only 5 minutes with Brett, I came back to our room to find the lights off, the drip machine beeping loudly and Mary-Lou panicking and moaning for help. My heart sank immediately with guilt for not being there and I rushed over to her bed and pressed the button to call for a midwife. I kept telling her that I was here with her as she was hyperventilating and looking into my eyes as if asking why I wasn’t there when she woke up.
Once Pam had come and sorted out the machine and helped to calm Mary-Lou down, she got me a camp bed to lie on, so for the first time in over 2 and a half full days, we both got some proper sleep…for 4 hours!
When we woke up, we were happy to realise that Caroline was looking after us again. Mary-Lou was bleeding alot and was very uncomfortable despite the pain killers she was given. She also had to take a pill which would stop the production of milk, which can be very distressing for mothers who produce milk but with no baby. After our hospital breakfast, we asked Caroline to tell us about our baby. She told us we had had a “wee girl” who was 10lb 3oz - not so “wee” after all! When we heard we had had a girl, Mary-Lou burst into tears and I couldn’t quite take it in. We had both hoped for a girl, but as the pregnancy went on, we became more and more convince we would have a boy.
I started wondering what we would name our daughter, we had got names for a boy or a girl, but I wondered if it was “worth” giving the name to our dead daughter, or saving it for a future daughter. But when Mary-Lou told Caroline we would call her Amy Isabel Gibbs, I realised and felt that it was entirely right. Caroline asked if we wanted to see Amy, but we didn’t feel ready too, it was something that had a sense of fear and dread for us both, to see a dead baby - our dead baby.
Later on that Sunday afternoon, after lunch and organising for some friends and my parents to come and be with us in the evening, we decided to go and see Amy. Mary-Lou was very scared about it, but I really wanted to see Amy at this point, and Mary-Lou didn’t want it to just be me who saw Amy. Caroline took Amy to the room next door and dressed her in a body suit and hat we gave her from the bag of clothes and nappies we had bought with us. Then Caroline came to get us and we helped Mary-Lou walk next door.
Caroline had explained that Amy looked a bit red and that the forceps had left a scar on her right cheek and scalp, but as we went into the room and saw the Moses basket, then walked further in to see Amy in the basket, we were both quite shocked. Amy looked more purple than I thought she would, and her parted lips were very dark. She wasn’t actually purple, but wasalot darker than I expected. The initial shock was quickly washed away by amazement at how much she looked like Mary-Lou! She was definitely Filipino looking with Mary-Lou’s mouth and lips, and long black hair. And she was huge! She completely filled the body suit we had given Caroline, and the hat we gave was obviously too small, because she was in a completely different hat!
After just looking at her for a while, Mary-Lou said she needed to sit down, so we sat on a sofa at the end of the room and hugged. Caroline came and sat next to us and asked us how we felt and if we wanted to hold her. We said we didn’t want to hold her, but I asked if her hat could be taken off so we could see all her hair. So Caroline took the covers and hat off her and we got up to see her again.
I remember bending over to look at her face closer with my hands behind my back, as though I was inspecting her. I felt quite sad now and afraid to touch her, as though I wasn’t allowed to. After a few minutes Mary-Lou need to sit down again and Caroline asked if we wanted her to leave so we said yes. When Caroline had left, we hugged closer and Mary-Lou cried. I didn’t feel the need to cry, it was all a bit surreal. When we went over to Amy again we looked at her in silence, then I plucked up the courage to pick up her left hand from on her chest and began talking to her, saying how much we loved her, how beautiful she looked (the initial shock had completely dissolved into pride by this point) and I thanked God for giving her to us and asked Jesus to look after her and let her know how much we love her. Mary-Lou then held her hand in mine too but was too upset to say anything. So I said Goodbye to Amy, rubbed her hand with my thumb and put her hand back onto her chest.
We called Caroline back then went back to our own room and chatted about what she looked like and about how glad we were to have seen her. Then we cuddled and I began crying as it all began sinking in. The tears and snosh and dribble - which I had seen so many times on Mary-Lou’s face, and wondered how annoying they must be - didn’t bother me, nor did the fact that I heard someone come in our room, and hastily leave after seeing me crying. I was overwhelmed with grief and pain like I had never felt, I just wanted to be held by Mary-Lou, nothing else seemed to matter.