Born Sleeping

My Birth Story,

I think back to that day like it was just yesterday, laying in the bathtub breathing through each painful yet exciting contraction. The time had finally come – we were going to meet our baby girl.

A moment I’d spent my entire life waiting for, a moment I’d been dreaming of for the past nine months. We had so many questions, who would she look like, what colour would her eyes be, what would her smile look like, cry sound like, a lifetime of questions with answers so close.

Thursday 20th April, the night we packed the car with pillows, a baby seat and a baby bag full of the pinkest onesies you could only dream of and drove to the hospital ready to meet our sweet baby girl.

Labour was slow and steady so at about 10pm they sent us home. With what little sleep I was getting the pain was too much and at about 2:30am we went back to the hospital. The midwife checked me out but I was only 2cm dilated. We were given the option to go back home or we could stay the night in the ward and in the morning they would either break my waters or hopefully I would have naturally progressed. We decided to stay rather than go home and by about 4:30am we closed our eyes.

I woke up at about 6:30am thinking today is it – I’m finally going to meet my darling daughter – I’m going to be a Mumma. Something I’d wanted and had been waiting for my entire life.

Friday 21st April, the darkest day of our life. My husband was sound asleep when this gorgeous nurse came in to do my obs. She was fiddling around trying to find the bubs heartbeat – I didn’t think much of it as she had spent the past 9 months making it difficult for midwives and doctors to find it so this didn’t surprise me. The nurse softly asked me “have you felt her move this morning” I remember thinking ‘are you fucking kidding me I’m too busy trying to survive through these contractions’ but I also thought ‘fuck I don’t recall the last time I felt bubs kick’. She went out and got another machine and tried again to find her heartbeat  – but she had no luck with that. By this point, I had woken up my husband as I was starting to become worried – having no idea what I was about to be faced with. Two nurses, a doctor, and an Obstetrician came in with a bedside ultrasound machine and by this stage, you could tell they were important people and something was going on. He had a look on the monitor and turned to me and ever so softly whispered “I’m terribly sorry but there isn’t a heartbeat, I’m afraid your baby has died” Those words I will never forget. I couldn’t quite register what he was saying. ‘What do you mean she’s died? I don’t understand, she was just alive, we only were listening to her heart beat a few hours ago’. My body went into shock and all I couldn’t think about was how this happened to my sweet little baby girl. They started explaining our options and what was best for me and our future babies but all I wanted to do was see her, hold her in my arms and mostly be her mum for as long as I could.

Looking back on it now I can’t help but wonder how long had she been dead for what if we had have cut my stomach open then and there, maybe just maybe we could have saved her. I know that doesn’t help anyone thinking like that but I’m her mum I was supposed to know something was wrong, wasn’t I? Isn’t that what a ‘mothers intuition’ is? Why didn’t I have this? I’d carried this baby for 41 weeks but I couldn’t save her.

My husband asked for everyone to leave the room, and I could almost hear his heart breaking. There was my husband standing over me with tears streaming down his face trying to put together what was happening. I held him, I couldn’t cry I didn’t want him to see my pain, I had to be strong for him, my time would come. We sat there clutching each others hands saying over and over again ‘this can’t be happening’.

They took me to have an ultrasound with a sonographer who confined what we already knew but I was hoping was a mistake.

That afternoon I was induced and about to go through the most heartbreaking thing ever.

At 2:29am on Saturday 22 April, Murphy Grace West, our beautiful baby girl was born sleeping. The sound of utter silence will forever haunt me as my daughter entered this world. A moment I’d been dreaming of for so long, a moment I had thought would be filled with so much joy and happiness was just complete and utter silence.

Murphy Grace was more beautiful than I could ever have imaged. She had the most delicate fingers, a perfect little piggy nose and the most gorgeous juju lips I had ever seen. She was perfect, more than perfect and I couldn’t get enough of her.

How could I give this sweet little daughter of mine a lifetime of love, kisses, and cuddles in just a few short hours. I lay there with her wrapped in my arms looking down at her perfect face thinking this just isn’t fair. Why did I have to lose my baby? What did I ever do? Such a precious life just is gone, a future just gone. What had she done to deserve this.

Murphy Grace was with us for three precious hours and on such a dark day there was somehow some small joy – this was my daughter, I am her mum and no one can take that away from me.

How could I give her back with her in my arms it just felt so right, how could I give back my only child?

I held you in my arms, I kissed your dark pink lips, I nuzzled your cheeks, your nose, and your perfect little ears. I breathed in every inch of you, so hard to let you go.

I felt the weight of her against my chest and her cradled curve in my arms, but I knew she was gone, that perfect soul I had been connected to she had left me, I had lost her and she was gone.

I lay there feeling so empty a body that was once so full of life now full of heartache and brokenness. I clutched onto my soft empty belly and cried. I didn’t scream or get angry I just ever so softly cried and wept over a lifetime of love, joy, and happiness that’s gone and left behind death, heartache, emptiness and the deepest sadness. Sadness for my loss and for the aching distance I now feel between Murphy and I. I was no longer in pain but I ached, I ached to have her next to me, to hear the soft, subtle rise and fall of the chest of a peaceful newborn, the little grunting night noises they make, the twitching and the shifting as they dream, the hungry or I just need you rising cry, but there was nothing just silence and I ached and I wept alone in the silence for the newborn noises, for the noises of my baby.

When it came time to let her go, to let go of the final piece of her, my daughter, I ached. To let her leave my arms meant that the last tangible touch would be gone forever. That the physical distance between us became deeper and further as they carried her away, the density of her body on me. I don’t at all believe that a mother ever forgets how their children feel from the first moment they are placed in their arms. It’s comforting to know that I can at any time go back to that moment and let myself connect, to allow myself to be present and to give myself just one more minute, one more moment with my baby girl in my arms.

We are changed, weaker, weary and in ways scared but in the same breath, we are stronger, closer not just as a couple but as a family. We are together, we have each other. For now with the journey ahead all we need is love and the new found strength between us as we prepare to take each day, just one step at a time together.

For our Murphy Grace born sleeping on the 22nd of April, 2017, our child, our daughter, our perfect beautiful baby girl – I love you. The pain I felt losing you will never compare to the love I feel and the love I carry for you. This was our story it’s not finished, everyday you write a new chapter with me and not a day goes by that I don’t miss you, think of you, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tear or two. I love you but as I cannot hold your hand as we walk together, I will forever carry your beautiful soul in my heart.