have lost my first born son,he was stillborn at 33wks

[shelly24]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to this message board,i'm looking to chat with anyone who has recently lost a baby through being stillborn or who knows what its like from past experience.I'm 24 and lost my first born son Rhys to a liver complication and a condition called hydrops fetalis at 33wks.I've never felt pain so intense and am really having up and down days right now It would be nice to talk with others that have been through this too,I have a really supportive husband,but it would just be nice to hear from some women too.
thanx,hope 2 hear from someone,shelly24.x.x

Shelly.

Please CAT me if you want to. If you look at the top of the screen you will see 'Contact another talker'. Click on that and it will tell you what to do.

One of my healthy twin sons, Bo, died at full-term (39 weeks)during a botched labour in February. His twin brother Elijah survived. I can imagine what you're feeling right now. It's almost a physical pain isn't it?

You have found the best place ever to come and talk about it. There is someone on mnet at all hours so post anything you want to say, no matter how trivial you might think it is. Nothing about the death of a baby is ever trivial of course but the oddest things can occur to you that you need to talk about and here is definately the place to do it. You'll also find areas in mnet which will make you smile and (sometimes) laugh out loud, even when you're feeling so bad and this is important too. It's often difficult to have lighter moments in RL (real life) after something so awful has happened but it has helped me a lot. Laughing one minute and sobbing the next. Both will get you through this.

Thinking of you, your husband and your darling Rhys.

BubbleXXXXXXX

Hi everyone,bk from being out,saw someone that hadn't seen me since just before we went into hospital,so i was heavily preg then,she thought i'd had the baby and was having a night out(bless her-how was she to know)I had to explain everything and it left her speechless,she cried-not me!(felt abit numb actually),i so wish i couild have said,'yeah,hes doing really well',and,'oh hes the spitting image of his dad,but hes got my eyes',..i secretly hope that he did..he really did look the image of my husband and i think that is what upset him the most(he is my rock),but Rhys did have my nose,which i'm so proud of.xxMy arms physically ache-where i'm dying to hold him again ,breath in his smell,look into his eyes,i miss him soo much,more than i could put into words,i keep walking into our spare room which is decorated,ready for him,all for him...i drew lovely characters on the wall only a few months bk,i love his room,but its so empty and quiet..i'd give anything for him to be in ther,looking at mummies pictures she drew for him..

i feel so sad for you shelly...
took dd to a new playgroup today and there was a lady who's 3 month old daughter had just died, she'd never actually come home from hospital as she had many problems, but she seemed very together(probably numb like you) and was showing off her pictures of her..which immediatly made me think of you..so although i cant offer you much in the way of advice, just wanted you to know im thinking of you and wishing you all the strengh in the world.xxx

its funny,you have times like that,i have several pictures of Rhys all taken at different angles so i could look at all his differnt profiles and body parts,he was wearing a lovely romper suit with the words,'made with 100% love' written on the chest,and booties with '50% mummy' on one,and '50% daddy' on the other,..it summed Rhys up perfectly,I loved showing my pictures to others,getting that proud feeling,and other times i just wanted to hide them for my eyes only...Rhys had a condition called hydrops,which is basically swelling and build up of fluid around the organs and under the skin.It was caused because he had a malformation of the liver,and that was caused because blood from the heart was being pumped through an additional vessel(that shouldn't have been there)directly to the liver without passing through capillaries from the heart which would slow the blood flow down(confusing i know!)Therefore because the blood was passing through the organs too quickly it put enormous pressure on the heart,and his little heart just couldn't cope anymore..hydrops is usually associated with a genitic disorder,but in our case,it is incredibly rare..so rare infact that the top cardiologist at kings college hospital,in london,had only seen something like this twice before in his 20years of practising! a chance of it happening being 1 in 50 thousand!!Basically a freak incident that will never happen to us again!Can you imagine having to get your head around statistics like that!!?!(i still haven't,and can't believe that i'm the one its happened to!)It just seems so unfair,especially as there was four of us ladies at work were preg at the same time,one a close friend of mine who is due a wk after i would have originally been(this i'm finding v.hard to cope with)the other 2 ladies have had their babies and brought them in to work a couple of wks before i left..they were beautiful,and then,i knew that i was next in line to be a proud mum,and look what happened!?life is very cruel and unfair right now....

seems innapropriate to put emocions, but i really dont have anything constructive to say and i truly am sad for you both.x

shelly, i am so sorry for your loss

Has anyone else,heard of,or experienced hydrops in the loss of their child,genetic or otherwise?.x

am bumping this for you before i go to bed shelly, hope you get some advice and a good nights sleep..take care sweetie.x

Shelly, I have just seen your lovely posts about dear little Rhys. I am so sorry he died and for all you are going through at the moment.
I have heard of hydrops fetalis as it happens. Nearly three years ago my second son Tom was stillborn at 22 weeks for no reason (rather like Chocolatepeanut and Philippa ) and when I became pregnant again afterwards I had a Slapped Cheek disease scare at 20 weeks. This common illness in small children can rarely affect unborn babies before 20 weeks gestation and the rare complication is hydrops fetalis. So I was checked out for this. We were both in the clear.
Very different circumstances from you, I know. It can develop very suddently, I remember being told that. IF I had not been immune, it would have been weekly scans for the rest of my pregnancy. In some cases it can be treated in utero, I was told - but not always, and it is risky. King's (the Harris Centre) is a national centre for excellence in treating unborn babies so it sounds as though you have been referred for explanations and answers to the right place.
Your poem is beautiful.
I hope you and Chocolatepeanut find lots of support here. I remember the numbness so well - I had a similar "Out on your own without the baby?" conversation with my well-meaning but tactless GP and she cried too.
Do post as much about Rhys as you want, as long as it helps you live with your grief on a daily basis.
I should think the hospital has already referred you to SANDS , the national charity supporting bereaved parents whose baby dies before, during or shortly after birth. You can get a lot of advice and support from ringing their Helpline. If you want, they can put you in touch with a Befriender local to where you live. Quite a few Mumsnetters are members or even SANDS staff!
For your dh, SANDS has just published a lovely, moving book called, Fathers Feel Too. If he is experiencing the common phenomenon of people asking him constantly, "How is Shelly?" he might find it helpful.
Sending you and Chocolatepeanut both lots of love at this very sad time.

Thanx alot Marina,for your support and advice,I'm really grateful,I've heard that hydrops can be caused by all sorts,and i started to wonder if anyone else had experienced it,it made the birth of Rhys alittle traumatic as he had alot of fluid under his skin when he was born,and as he had passed away several days before i actually gave birth to him it had caused his skin to come away slightly from around his fingers,toes,slightly around his chin and his tummy.Although to my husband and myself,he was perfect,we worried what others would think of his appearance,he was really red too!!,like a lobster,obviously because he wasn't breathing and so the oxygen would't be going into his circulation.After he was born we decided to keep him in our room with us over night and I can remember waking up every half hour or so to make sure he was still there and that i HAD actually given birth to him!!I got the chance to hold him the next day but i was terrified!!!He was my son,we had created this tiny being and here i was holding him in my own arms,praying it was all a dream and he'd start to breath or open his eyes and whimper at me...he was so fragile because of the hydrops,that any slight movement made his appearance more and more worse,and that wasn't how i wanted to remember him so i asked the midwives to take him off of me...is that a bad thing?!that i didn't want to carry on holding him?...I get terrible floods of guilt sometimes that i handed him back so soon,and didn't spend more time with him..Is that bad? I hope hes looking down on me and doesn't hold it against me that i didn't cuddle him more...sometimes i wish i had of kept hold of him for longer..he is my little boy and I handed him to someone else,it breaks my heart everytime i think of it.
He would have been a very ill little boy if he had survived,as the chances of his survival were so small...right now i can see beyond this..that although we've been told that it will never happen again,that i won't get pregnant again,or that it WILL happen again,does anyone else feel like that?..that you just can't see any positive through such a thick fog of negative?!...just can't shake off the emptiness or dark cloud thats hanging over me right now?... I just want to be pregnant,to be where i was a few months ago,following the path to a whole new future....

Hi
During the first few weeks after loosing my little Rose I kept going over and over everything that happened and everything I did, what anyone said, how I acted - did I do everything right should I have held her more should i have kept her with me and on and on, in the end these feeling just eat you up, there is no right or wrong way to act, you do what you do at the time. I am having a hard week this week, I have been OK more or less but this week I have been very down, I have told everyone that I am pregnant and they are so delighted and while I am so please about being pregnant I miss my baby, its hard to put in words how I feel and i am not doing a very good job of it, i just want to hold my baby and shes gone!
Sorry ....beag

Shelly, love, please do not reproach yourself for not holding Rhys longer. Sadly, when babies have died some time before they are born, they can be very fragile. I was not able to hold Tom directly in my arms as he was tiny and had been dead for about a week before he was delivered. My hospital handled this beautifully, I am so grateful to them...the wonderful midwife who delivered him still managed to get us a smudgy little handprint, and he was laid in a doll's soft moses basket, wrapped in a shawl we had brought for him. We could see his sweet face and cuddle the basket but I never dared ask to see all of him and the fact that no-one encouraged me to do so tells me I was right in hindsight not to. Tom was very red too, I think the midwife called it "lividity".
I am sharing this with you (tbh it still makes me tearful after nearly three years) because I want you to know that other people have faced this hideously traumatic experience, and managed to survive the birth, the bereavement, and ultimately go on to live with your grief. Huge hugs to you and your husband Shelly XXX
You LOVED Rhys. You know that. You still love him now, you are still his loving mum. You were deprived of seeing him alive and growing up, and of having much of a cuddle with him because of his poor condition. But that does not diminish the love you felt for him, please don't reproach yourself (easier said than done, I know).
With regards to ever feeling "happy" again, what happened for us is that the first few weeks were frankly dreadful. Then, very gradually, there were minutes when I wasn't thinking about Tom actively, then whole hours, then days. Give yourself time, accept that for a while you are going to be in a bad way because this is normal after what you have been through.
We started TTCing almost as soon as I recovered from the birth. Like you I was frantic to be "doing something" to get us out of our pit of misery. It sort of backfired when I actually got pregnant less than three months after Tom's birth, I had previously had problems and was not expecting anything to happen. After an anxious pregnancy (beag knows what it's like...) dd was born and is now a beautiful, blithe toddler. We will never forget Tom, but we have been blessed with a sister for him and their older brother.
Shelly, it's a long post, sorry. You can Contact Another Talker (CAT) me if you want.

marina
how did you cope through your pregnancy some days i just want to hide

beag, [hugs]. So did I. "Taking it one day at a time" is a cliche but I tried to keep that as my mantra. I'll be honest and say that some days I hated dd for putting me through all this, thought I'd never love her when she was born, then felt guilty for even thinking these thoughts when I ought to feel "lucky" and "glad" (I had those conversations too...).
I was in such a bad way I was referred for bereavement counselling though work, very fortunate and grateful, and saw a wonderful, wise woman every week. That really helped but I could not have afforded to pay for it
Listen, I have a couple of books about getting through a pregnancy after stillbirth/miscarriage.
CAT me if you would like them beag, they helped me a fair bit and I am now in the position of hopefully letting someone else benefit. I used to dip into them and realise that thank God, even my wildest and nastiest moments were nothing new to the writers.
Oh and I loved dd to bits and pieces the moment she was born and had NO trouble bonding with her.

Lots of love XXX

For some reason I thought that i could do this without any help, I do have wonderful family and friends. i dont like to ask for help and I pretent that i am fine, I avoid anything to do with pregnancy and babys, dont look at any books or have anything in the house, my sister in law cleared everthing out for me last time and this time i will not have anything here, i spend all my time trying not to think about it when in fact its all i do.

Shelly
Apologies for not replying sooner.I have just read your messages.
I did not hold Philippa. I was so shocked when I saw her. She had been dead for a week and obviously did not look as she should.At the time I was not prepared for this and turned away. I feel terrible guilt and cry most days feeling I rejected her.Looking back she was just floppy and fragile, why was I so shocked?
Then I think what we have both been through is hard enough without feeling like this.My mind was all over the place at the time and I hope Philippa knows that she was so loved and wanted.

I got all the all clear from the consultant at the end of May and have started trying again. I am counting the days to when I can do a test! Its honestly the only thing that keeps me going. I feel like I am in some kind of pregnanacy limbo. I am still counting the weeks as if Philippa was still inside me.I dont want to wear normal clothes just my maternity ones. I am probably loopy!
Also I was fortunate to get pregnant 1st month with both my daughters so hope it happens this way again.....
I have been reassured by my doctor,the midwifes and the consultant that I will be watched like a halk next time. This is only to reassure me as they dont see why I should not be able to have another healthy baby.But no doubt the nine months would be difficult. I have warned my husband that I might not be easy to live with next time around!

Jane (chocolatepeanut)
lucy 06.11.03
philippa (got her wings 05.04.05)
xxx

shelly hugs]] i cant believe what you have had to go though while your still so young,,you are amazing for dealing with it at all i am so proud of you you must be a very special woman ,,i know you havent chosen to have this pain to go though but youare a wonderful example to us all that complain about small problems compaired to your pain i am so sorry for you to have lost your mum so young too and i hope it helps that she is there to look after your little angel....take care sweetie .xxxxxx

Have had a bit of a bad weekend,just a black cloud hanging over me...haven't been able to look forward,only back and convinced that thsi life is a very unfair one(especially to me right now).I don't feel i need councelling right now,i'm aware of my feelings right now and how hard its going to be for a long time,today was better than yesterday,thats for sure...a friend of mine has just lost her mother in law who she reguarded as another mum,they were very close.\she too died of cancer like my mum,and she looked to me for comfort yesterday as i know exactly what shes going through.I tried to support her and comfort her as she cried in my arms,but ended up crying uncontrolibly with her over my little Rhys,I had to leave in the end,apologising that i couldn't give her the advice and support she needed as i wasn't strong enough myself...i just upped and walked away.My husband chased after me and had to calm me down because i was that upset.I hope she understands,i haven't heard from her today yet,but am feeling really bad because i have always been the 'rock' of the group and people have always come to me about all sorts.I feel like i let her down.
I've slept on it and do feel abit better today,only to find a parcel on the doorstep of clothes that i ordered for Rhys 3 months ago,that got lost in the post and a letter from 'pampers'with a 'countdown to my due date'diary in it!! My first reaction was,'thanks alot!how insensitive can you get!!',but how were they to know what has happened,its not their fault.
All thats in my mind right now is that i want to be pregnant again,a friend of mine said that you are at your most fertile after child birth,is that true?,a friend of hers went for her 6 week check and became pregnant the week after!!When do you usually get your periods back?I bled for 2 weeks after Rhsy was born and then it gradually tailed off to nothing.A few days afer that i had a brownish/redish discharge(sorry for the graffic detail!)that went after a couple of days...could that have been a period!?I'm not sure..need some advice please! My 6 week check up is on the 13th of july...still miles off in my eyes!Everything seems so slow right now,the days are long..the weeks even longer..and at the same time i can't believe its nearly the end of june!!Rhys would have been due on the 1st of july(a day i'm dreading),when i look back on those nine months they seem to have flown by!.I bet if i would have had a normal pregnancy(i would be 39wks this friday!)it would REALLY be dragging by now,especially with all this hot weather recently!! I compare every day right now to how i would feel if i were still pregnant...i miss that feeling so much!!!i'm so empty right now.

Dear Shelly,
I have just read the thread and am so so sorry to read what has happened to you and your husband.
I have not had a stillborn but I had a late miscarriage last year and two others both just before 12wks.
On the subject of your friend no doubt she will understand entirely - you can't be a rock all the time Shelly - you're only human like the rest of us.
On the subject of when your cycle will start it may start as early as 4-6 weeks of Rhys's birth. In my experiecne my body has always been very unsensitive in the way that it just kicks back into normal cycles seemingly very quickly afterwards whilst emotionally I was still trying to cope with what had happened. After my last m/c I only had one cycle before I conceived again so on the basis that all is well with your body there is no reason why you shouldn't be the same.
You may be feeling impatient to be pregnant again - I certainly was - but hang in there Shelly you are so young. Trust your instincts as to when you are ready to try again. People may say it's too quick etc etc - give yourself time bla bla, but you are the best judge of that and your body will let you know when it is ready.
Thinking of you and your husband
xxxxx

Just wanted to ad a message to this thread as it was the first one i started and i've just read it from the beginning again....its given me mixed emotionsthen,because we had so much planned for our little boy and yet it has all been taken away!?....life is incredibly unfair and i really don't know why it happens to the best of people
I miss Rhys every single day,and we always talk about him,it used to make me cry when we remembered back to the past...when we first found out i was preg,how happy we were.x,then when we found out our little boy was ill,how devastated we were...giving birth to him,holding him...and finally saying goodbye only hours after he had entered the world
I wanted to send support to others who have just experienced a stillbirth or have some kind of experience and know how extremley hard it is to get by day to day without falling apart.
I'm trying to look to the future right now,and we are trying to give hope to a new future by trying to conceive again...its a big step,and perhaps one that you may not want to take right now,but that is because everyone deals with their grief in different ways,and moving towards the future is something only YOU can decide in time.x
Lots of virtual((((((hugs))))))))to all those who have experienced a loss...may they always be in our hearts and minds.x.x.
In memory of our first born son:Rhys 14/05/05.x
Mummy and Daddy love you very much.x

Hi shelly, im on tyhe ttc thread and i believe i may have been talking to you previously. my saf is due tomorrow and i was feeling vv sorry for myself, then i sat and read this thread, needles to say that feeling disappeared. i am so sorry for what happened to you your poem was lovely, from the heart and full of emotion that moved me to tears (but in a good way) Rhys will be incredibly proud of his mummy wishing you all the luck in the world xxxx

ps sorry for the shocking spelling still havent got the hang off it

Hiya carly
Yeah have been chatting with you on the ttc pages,this was my first thread on mn,and you know when you sit and think about things,well i was remembering when i first wrote down my emotions and stuff about everything that has happened over the last couple of months(it was quite emotional!!)Read my poem again(which i have in a frame along side Rhys' footprints...its hanging in the nursery.x),and at all the messages i received...mn has really been a help to me emotionally,and i love that i can just sit here on the laptop and let out my emotions to you all.x
Anyway,thanx for your sweet message,see you back on the ttc pages.x