Happily Ever After_ - Benison Anne O'Reilly [28]
After William’s autopsy, the hospital organised a cremation. This was not required by law, technically he was too young to be classified as ‘a person’. We scattered his ashes in the rose garden at Tony’s parents’ house. We were planning to eventually sell our Annandale digs and could not have left our little baby behind there.
Edward told me to take as much time off as I needed and in the end I was away from work for a full month. My body had to recover from pregnancy and my mind - well I don’t think I’ll ever completely recover, but I knew I needed to be able to function at work without collapsing in tears every five minutes. Tony, however, returned to flying straight away. ‘I need to,’ he explained. ‘It’s only when I’m in the air that I feel in control and can forget about things.’ I understood this but still felt hurt about his abandonment that very first time he left for overseas.
I stayed at Mum and Dad’s on that first occasion. Mum took leave from work, hugged me and stroked me and made me endless cups of tea. Dad hovered apologetically in the background, unable to think of what to say. Emma gave me manicures and pedicures. I was coddled and nurtured and watched bad daytime television (not the Olympics, I refused to see happy smiling people) and cried my eyes out for days.
Even David dropped by, making an impromptu stop-over on his way back from a medical conference.
‘My poor lil’ sis,’ he said, taking me in a tight hold, ‘I understand how hard it is for you not to have an explanation for why this has happened, but medicine is often unsatisfactory that way. We don’t always have all the answers.’ I wished Tony could have been there to hear this from his friend; it might have helped him.
I can’t explain to you, unless you’ve been through something similar yourself, what a failure I felt. Conceiving a baby and giving birth has been the role of women throughout the ages, yet I’d flunked the course. What a loser. I was such a hopeless mother I hadn’t even realised that my baby had died in my womb. It was clear to me I was not fit for the role. When I dared venture outside the front door I was confronted by the sight - everywhere it seemed - of pregnant woman contentedly stroking their bellies or mothers fussing over fretting babies in prams. They had managed it, but I hadn’t. I hated those mothers for a time.
Then, naturally, I started reflecting back on Pamela’s words. Maybe I should have stopped my exercise routine. In retrospect it seemed horribly superficial to have worried about how I looked during the pregnancy. What if I had exercised too hard and had killed my own baby? Or was it that I had been working too long hours? Or that night I got drunk around the time of conception, maybe I was being punished for that? I must have done something wrong. I was not brave enough to see my mother-in-law for a time. I was in too fragile a state to cope with her. If she had made any remarks to Tony I didn’t want to know. I was certain that blame, if it was to be apportioned, would not be directed towards her son. I was so grateful during that time that he never once voiced a word of recrimination towards me.
I got very low, so much so that Mum got anxious. I was too depressed to even shower or wash my hair and looked a fright. She dragged me off to the GP, who referred me to a wonderful psychologist called Claire. I also discovered a counselling service for women just like me, those who had lost babies through miscarriage or stillbirth. The fact that there was such a service was reassurance in itself, I knew that there must have been lots of other women in a similar situation otherwise it wouldn’t have existed. Counselling ended up being my lifeline. I raged and sobbed and cursed my fate to these counsellors and said all the bad things I’d thought but had not been able to express and they reassured me that it was okay and that it was not my fault and I was not bad and that in all likelihood I would have a baby one day. I was referred to online chat groups where I met a lot of other women who’d been through a similar