Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [26]
It was no coincidence that the Sydney Organising Committee had chosen September as the month to host the biggest sporting event in town. It has the best weather of the year, warm but without the energy sapping humidity of summer, and is a bumper time for weddings and babies - some of them probably unplanned - falling exactly nine months after the Christmas/New Year holiday period.
The eighteen-week ultrasound for our very planned baby was scheduled for early September, just before the Opening Ceremony. I was looking forward to seeing our little one on the screen again, looking, I hoped, a little more baby-like. I’d begun to feel little movements that I thought were kicks, but they were very faint so it was possibly just my imagination.
The ultrasound was scheduled for a Tuesday so Tony could be there. It was a glorious day, warm and cloudless. I had an early morning work meeting which I couldn’t get out of so we arranged to meet outside the clinic at 11am. I’d drunk two large glasses of water, as advised, and my bladder was busting. In my excitement that morning I’d left my sunglasses at home, so I squinted in the sun’s glare as it reflected off the concrete pavement. Stupid me, I thought, I should have got Tony to bring them along. I watched him walk up the road to meet me and when he kissed me on the cheek I felt a pride of possession that had never left me - my gorgeous husband, the father of my baby.
We caught the lift up and sat together until it was time to be called. I can’t really remember what we talked about. I think our minds were elsewhere. Eventually the technician, a scrubbed-faced, wholesome looking girl in her twenties, called for us and escorted us into a private room. I was advised to lie on the bed and expose my belly.
‘This might feel a bit cold,’ she explained as she spread a clear gel over my abdomen, although I already knew this after our earlier ultrasound.
‘I just have to locate the heartbeat,’ she said, as she moved the probe around.
She started chatting. ‘Is this your first baby?’
‘Yes, our first - we’re very excited,’ Tony said.
Our baby appeared in screen, much bigger now, and I smiled at Tony.
But the technician wasn’t smiling. She stopped chatting and her brow furrowed slightly as she moved the probe around. ‘I’m just having a bit of trouble here,’ she said quietly. ‘Just hold on for a moment…I think I might have to go and get the doctor to have a look.’
This didn’t seem right. I knew she was worried. Had she seen something bad on the screen, a problem with the heart or brain or something? Then she left us in limbo, Tony and me. I was trying not to cry.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Tony, looking at me.
An older female doctor came in and also moved the probe around, but not for a very long time. Then she said, ‘I think it might be best to talk in my office.’
I knew then something was very wrong. Just tell us, I thought.
The gel was cleaned off and the doctor ushered us into her office. She sat us both down across the desk from her and offered to get us a drink. ‘No thanks,’ I said. My bladder was still full.
‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ she said, ‘but we can’t detect a heartbeat for your baby.’
‘What?…But I heard it only the other day at my obstetrician’s appointment.’
‘Yes, but I’m afraid something must have happened between now and then.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Tony, his eyes darting between me and the doctor, seeking reassurance where there was none to be had.
‘It sometimes happens - not often - but sometimes. Something goes wrong at this late stage.’
‘Are you sure you’re not wrong?’ I asked.
‘No…I’m sorry.’
You know how stupid I am? It took me several minutes - or at least it seemed that way - to register that a baby without a heartbeat is a baby that is not alive; it is in fact a dead baby. Sometime in the last few days my baby had died.
‘No, this can’t be happening,’ I whimpered. A tear dripped off