Shabs, will be thinking of you and Vicky's family today.
Lunatic- no I didn't take it literally don't worry!!! I wasn't sober enough to post again hahaha. Actuay I wrote a longish drunken ramble post but DP came back and nicked the laptop. I am really pleased that you were able to articuate all the things about Daisy that you are glad about. It's so easy to overlook the positives with such a massive sad ending, but those positives were there and she experienced all of them, too. I find it so hard to remember all the times L was happy before she got ill, it's so hard to go back further than her illness and suffering, but she was happy beforehand and I have to keep reminding myself of the times that were good with her
emma we all probably have 100s of what ifs if you delve into it. They whir around and around in my head at night and every so often they are the only thing I can think about. what if I hadn't taken her to visit family at christmas, she may not have caught her viral illness, what if I had given her my liver instead of her first cadaveric transplant, it may not have failed and she might be alive now, what if I stayed with her overnight in the hospital instead of leaving every evening, I would have been there for her to make sure she wasnt alone and in pain, I would have been there if she vomited and it wouldnt have gone onto her lungs causing pneumonia, eventually causing a cardiac arrest leading to her being back on intensive care and leading to the withdrawal of life support, what if I hadn't consented to the biopsy, what if I had said no to the removal of life support, what if I hadn't breastfed her for so long she'd have been bigger (she was small for her age), what if I had breastfed her a bit longer and she may have been immune to the viral illness that caused her liver to fail in the beginning, what if I.....
it's human nature to try and rationalise the impossible event that is the death of your child. Your child is not supposed to die before you.. they're just not, and so I think your brain needs to process and process and process it. It's fine to tell us your what ifs. It's helpful to get them out, I think. If you don't let them out then you are stuck with them alone, so do tell us. But please don't think that you could have done anything differently and that you could have magically affected the outcome. You want to be able to have saved Thomas, that is your role as Thomas's mummy, but please don't torture yourself thinking that you could have saved Thomas by changing this or changing that. You did what was right at the time. And breastfeeding him is the best thing you could have done for him, you nurtured him and he had the closeness and the brilliant nutrition and antibodies that came from your milk. And you had to consent to the op when you did because it was best for him, you were doing it to save his life and make him well as soon as possible, so please don't believe you should have waited until he had got bigger. You can think it, and talk about it, because you feel it and your feelings are real, but please don't believe that you did anything but the very very best for your little Thomas. He knows that.