Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [27]
‘I know, I know,’ she said, reaching over and gently stroking my hand. She handed me some tissues. Tony was completely silent; I don’t think either of us ever contemplated this possibility.
The doctor was very kind. ‘You have a decision to make,’ she said. ‘You can either go home and wait for nature to take its course.’
‘What does that mean?’ Tony asked.
‘She will miscarry.’
‘Or?’
‘Or we can arrange for you to be admitted to hospital straight away, and they will give you some drugs to induce labour so you can deliver the baby. You may want a while to think about this.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to be admitted as soon as possible.’ I didn’t want to walk around with a dead baby inside me for any longer than necessary. Tony was only home for a couple more days and I wanted him there with me. I couldn’t imagine going through this alone.
‘Okay, I’ll just go into the other room and phone your obstetrician. You’ll be admitted under him.’
The next few hours were a blur. I must have gone home and got a few things and then returned to the hospital to be admitted. I asked Tony to call my mum and Edward, who was expecting me back at work. I was too upset to say the words - that was left to my poor husband.
Greg, our obstetrician, was there to meet us. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘I only wish I could change things so this never happened.’
I was not taken to the labour ward. That would have been unbearable, being with the other mothers as they delivered their healthy, living, breathing, crying babies. The drugs I’d been given to induce labour took a while to work. The anaesthetist gave me an epidural for pain relief. I’d read in all the baby books how labour pain was a ‘good’ pain because it produced a baby at the end, but there was nothing good about my pain. Tony was a darling, staying by my side the whole time, although I was frightened a little by his quietness.
It took several hours. After I’d delivered they asked us if we wanted to see it. I did but Tony refused and left the room. It was tiny and bony but perfectly formed. It…he…was a little boy - our William.
We gathered our belongings together and got ready to leave the hospital. As we were walking towards the door, Greg handed me a prescription.
‘What’s this for?’ I asked, thinking at first it might be a sedative.
‘It’s something to stop your milk coming in,’ he explained, wearing an expression I recognised as professional detachment.
‘Oh, thank you,’ I said. Poor little Baby William wouldn’t be needing my milk.
***
Technically, I had what is termed a late miscarriage. I’m throwing out a challenge to the medical fraternity to come up with a more appropriate term. If I had lost a baby before the twelve weeks’ mark, yes, I would have been very upset I’m sure, especially after taking so long to conceive. But to get almost half way through the pregnancy, to begin to show, to see my baby alive and apparently healthy on an eleven-week scan, to hear his heartbeat at sixteen weeks and then to lose him after all that, it made it so…so…much harder. It wasn’t just a miscarriage. We had lost a dearly beloved baby and a longed for future with our son.
Tony wanted explanations. We sent William off for tests and we had several investigations ourselves, but no cause could be found. Our obstetrician said that this often happened; it was ‘just bad luck’. This infuriated Tony. He wanted to know why and it wasn’t satisfactory to have no explanation.
I was numb and quiet on that first day, but after that quickly turned into a blubbering mess. My husband, on the other hand, remained calm and angry. Not angry with me fortunately - just angry that life had dealt us such a bitter blow. He wanted someone or something to blame and for a while all his focus turned on Greg the obstetrician, which, since he was one of David’s friends, was deeply embarrassing for me. Greg seemed almost as upset by events as we were and I thought it unfair of Tony, but lashing out at the nearest target was clearly his way of