She 'phoned yesterday. I still hate the term "stillbirth" as it evokes images of a baby who died in utero well before delivery. Bo was termed a "peri-natal death" because he died in the minutes before he was delivered by CS.
I still find it incredibly difficult to talk in RL, that is why I spend so much time here with all of you. I'm not afraid to cry but I can't get the words out or make sense.
There will be a "review" by a panel of doctors and MW's at the end of this month. Apparently they go through my notes in detail looking at the care we received from the ante-natal period through to delivery. The ante-natal will provide interesting reading. I didn't see a consultant till I was 36 weeks pg. Remember this was a twin pg and therefore high risk. My attempts to contact the comm. MW's were largely unsuccesful. Wrong mob. 'phone no. given and over the Christmas period (when unable to speak to a human being, only answerphones, to get the correct number) I spoke to an old lady up North - owner of said wrong number- on a few occasions. Nice old lady BTW, had a good Christmas, but not a MW unfortunately.
My antenatal care was mainly provided by my GP (not a problem with a singleton and my GP was great but by her own admisssion not experienced enough to be sole provider for a twin pg)
My "care" when we got to hospital to be induced was shocking and fatal for Bo. I have revisited the scene in my head so many times. I am haunted by the feeling that I did not protest and shout loud enough to save him. I know that Elijah would also have died if I had not, when taken to theatre after my babies had been in distress for seven hours , told the anaesthetist to abandon his attempts to site spinal anaesthesia and "get these babies out alive NOW."
My rational voice tells me that I was in their care, they were the professionals and had a care of duty to me and my sons. I know that I could have been a woman who could not speak English and therefore could not have said anything.
I am a Registered Nurse, not a MW. I did 2 months of training as part of my course in a maternity unit in 1986 and yet even I knew that the CTG traces required immediate action.
I honestly felt Iwas losing my mind. I was lying there thinking "Something is going wrong here" and none of the staff present seemed to have any sense of urgency or comprehension of the nightmare scenario unfolding before my very eyes.
When I said to the doctor (senior reg) for the fourth time that I needed to go to theatre for a CS she stood there smiling and saying we would wait for my DH to come back. They'd sent him home - babies in distress - but they sent him home. We believed that they knew what they were doing, We felt things weren't right but assumed they knew something that we didn't.
Sorry. I'm not sure what this post set out to do. Thanks for listening.