Baby Baby

I was 12 weeks pregnant when I decided it was about time I told my parents I was having a baby. I was 19, had no real idea about life. I was still with the dad, but he wasn’t bothered, once telling a friend he would “push me down the stairs” if it meant it would get rid of the baby.
I couldn’t get rid of the baby. It was my mistake, and one I was willing to step up and deal with.
After about an hour of pep talking myself in the toilet, and pacing the halls counting down from 10, several times, I burst into my mum’s room, and burst into tears. As soon as I told her I felt instant relief, but the hurt in her face told me how she really felt. She hugged me through fake understanding, and told me everything would be alright. I almost believed her in that moment.
Telling dad was even harder, and once the cat was out of the bag, he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night. This was expected, and a relief from the lecture I could have got, but didn’t need.
The next morning I woke up, and realised I was bleeding. Nan came with me to the hospital, where they told me it was likely I was losing the baby. They asked if I wanted surgery to remove “the remains” but I opted for the conservative route, and thought it would be a straight forward thing, a bit of bleeding and its all over. After about 6 hours of being in hospital, weeing into a kidney bowl so they could inspect the remains of my baby.
Eventually a doctor came in with a scan machine, and also a whole team of medical students (there must have been at least 6 of them.) They all watched whilst he scanned my tummy, found the baby, and then decided he couldn’t see very well and would have to do an internal scan, but he was pretty sure that “its a spontaneous abortion” When he pulled my night gown back over my tummy he pulled a little too hard and exposed my breasts to the whole team of people, who just stared at me like I was a specimen from an exam and not a human being who was losing a baby, I have never felt so alone and ashamed.
They sent me home and told me to come back the following day for a follow up scan.
I went home and had a bath, whilst in the bath I remember talking to my tummy, willing my baby to make it, to stay alive. Although this baby wasn’t planned, I sure as hell didn’t want to lose it. I pushed on my tummy crazily believing that the rhythmic pressure might be enough to start its little heart back up, I didn’t even know if it was dead. They sent me home without even telling me.
The next morning, I went back into the hospital, and went for my internal scan. That was the moment I saw my darling baby, lying flat at the bottom of my uterus, not moving, no beautiful little heartbeat, no life. 8 weeks 3 days she had lived. Missed Miscarriage they labelled her as. The scan lasted seconds, once they established there was no heartbeat, I was discharged without a second thought, I just wanted to see her for 5 more minutes. To have a picture of her. The nurses after inspecting another days worth of blood loss and clots were decided that I had passed the main part of the pregnancy and that I was safe to go home.
I immediately went home, I made the bed my new home, I didn’t wash, all I did was cry. Sometimes I wailed in pure heartache, sometime I sobbed while I thought about what my baby would have looked like, what sort of a mum I could have been. Thoughts of “why me?”, blame on everything I could think of. \most of the time I just cried, it was all I could do. I couldn’t eat. It felt like I had lost a part of myself, I hope I never have to experience grief like that again. It physically hurt my body.
The bleeding stopped, the crying eventually subsided. And eventually after 5 weeks, I went back to work.
I still didn’t feel right. The morning sickness wasn’t subsiding, my breasts were swollen, I was convinced my tummy was still growing. I still felt pregnant. I was convinced that they had made a mistake and took a test. Positive.
My mum took me to the doctors, and I explained to them my symptoms, the doctor ignored me and asked my mum if she thought I was dealing with the miscarriage properly. There was mention of anti depressants. Im not sure mum was even convinced by me after the appointment. It was all in my head. I hadn’t dealt with the loss properly.
So, I went back to work, 2.5 months after my first visit to the hospital, I started bleeding again. My period had arrived. Finally I was going to get back to normal. Start feeling like my old self.
1st July 2006 – England was playing Portugal in the world cup. We lost. I was wearing my shirt with pride. That was until the pains started. Excruciating pain, coming in waves. Breaking my back with every tide, I was crying in anticipation of the next one. I went home from work, and said to my nan that I thought I was in labour. Dad drove me to the hospital, I was in A & E rolling around on the floor. I was prescribed painkillers for a painful period. Nobody believed the pain I was in.
So I went home, barely breathing through the pain. I was so hot, I went to lie under the fan in my mums room and passed out from the pain. I woke up with a massive urge to push and rushed to the toilet.
I gave birth to my baby on the floor of my mums bathroom, all alone and with no idea what was happening. I was 19. I held my little baby in my hand, still fully intact inside the sac. I could make out her stumpy little hands, her eyes, even her ears. I couldn’t even cry. I was horrified. Had she been alive this whole time? Had this been a second baby that they missed? I will never know. Maybe if they had checked properly my darling girl would be alive today. My England shirt bore the scars of my labour, a loss for England. A loss for me.
I screamed for my Nan, and in my delirious state I put my baby inside a sandwich bag, and took her to the hospital. What the fuck possessed me to put my baby in a fucking sandwich bag? I was in shock?
At the hospital, they were disgusted with me. I could tell by the way they looked at me. They said that all this was normal. They booked me in for a “Evacuation of retained products of conception” to make sure the last of my girl was removed.
3 months after telling mum and dad I was having their first grandchild, they drove me to the hospital with her, dead, in a plastic sandwich bag, after I gave birth to her on the bathroom floor, alone and scared.