Margarets Story
You always think ‘things like that happen to other people’. I suppose I had lived life, looking through rose-tinted spectacles really. I had had a secure and happy childhood, had been well educated and had a good job as a school teacher, as well as marrying my childhood sweetheart. Life was perfect.
To add to my bliss I found out I was pregnant in July 2000 and I thought life couldn’t get any better. My pregnancy was fine, with the usual symptoms and then in November I started getting a pain in my side. Convinced it was a urine infection, I popped into the local hospital with a sample, on my way to work. Little did I realise that this day was going to change the rest of my life. After several scans and a number of worried faces peering down at me, I was told that my baby was dead. Dead? But it couldn’t be. I was 19 weeks…….these things only happen in the first trimester. Don’t they?
The rest of the day was a blur. I was taken into theatre for an ‘excavation of remaining tissue’ or something equally as awful and by the afternoon it was all over. It was gone. My life had changed.
That night I watched Al Gore and George Bush fight out their election campaign, whilst I sat in the hospital bed thinking, who gives a damn? Downstairs I could hear the newborn babies crying and lazy mothers buzzing the nurses for help, whilst I felt empty and angry. Why me? What did I ever do?
I came home, we had the funeral, I and tried to ‘get on with things’ but became absolutely obsessed with getting pregnant again. A couple of my close friends were already pregnant and although I was pleased for them, it ripped my heart out to think about my little baby and our loss. At the beginning of March, about 4 weeks before our first baby would have been due, I found out I was pregnant again. I thanked God, as I feared for my sanity, and we held our breath.
Every scan was a nightmare. I would get upset beforehand, as I was so frightened that history would repeat itself. I did not relax until I was over twenty weeks. Even then I didn’t relax. I couldn’t.
My due date (November 5th) arrived and I went into hospital for another scan. The doctor told me to go home and get my bag as my blood pressure was up and he wanted me to be induced. I was delighted!
Nervous, excited, frantic, all of these emotions were running through me at once but I couldn’t wait to meet our baby and see if it was a boy or a girl. The labour was quick but very painful! They lost Anna’s heartbeat several times and at the end they panicked to get Anna out. Eventually Anna arrived and we waited for her first cry……..but it never came. Everything was a bit blurry but I remember looking at my husband’s face and I knew something was wrong.
After several minutes the paediatrician came over to tell me they were doing ‘ all they could’ but for some reason I kept thinking everything would be ok. I suppose I couldn’t believe what was happening.
Anna was transferred by ambulance to Antrim hospital and I followed in the car with my family. I didn’t know what we were going to face when we got there. However Anna was in the Intensive Care Unit of SCBU and for the next two days we didn’t know whether she would live or die. All celebrations were postponed and yet again we held our breath!
Two very long weeks later, we took Anna home. Her CT scan had come back clear and we thought that, although she had a rough start, we were taking home a perfectly ‘normal’ baby.
Looking after Anna was a nightmare! As she was our first baby we didn’t know what to expect, so we thought her behaviour was normal. She had to be held all the time and the only way we could get her to sleep was by letting her lie on me. She had a severe ‘startle’ and jumped at everything, but the ‘professionals’ kept telling me this was perfectly normal. She was very agitated and tight, but it was only when she wasn’t sitting up at 6 months that I really started to worry. A lot of my friends had babies and when I visited I would come home and think ‘Anna isn’t able to put her dummy in her mouth’ or ‘look at the way he was able to reach for that block’.
So, at her seven-month review I said again that I was not happy about Anna’s development and I was referred to a physiotherapist. I just thought it was some little problem that would rectify itself. Never in a million years was I expecting the news we got.
It was Wednesday 20th November. The date will be forever emblazoned on my brain. I had finished teaching that day and had rehearsals after school, as I was producing the school play that year. I remember the very same day one of my best friends had rang to tell me her dad had passed away and I cried for her, not realising what was facing me when I got home.
Bob came in through the door and said ‘they think she’s got ‘Cerebral Palsy’. I stared in disbelief and said ‘What do you mean? What does that mean?’ I looked at Anna and saw a different child in front of me. I couldn’t quite take it in. The images of wheelchairs, special schools, a life I didn’t want, flashed before me and I didn’t know where to look. What to do. Who to turn to. So I went to my friend’s father’s wake and cried with her in silence.
The next few days were spent on the internet reading horror stories and reading medical literature that frightened me. Phone calls were made and tears were shed. No questions could be answered. We just had to let the physios do their job and wait and see how she developed. Thank God for my family and my in-laws! But ‘the show must go on’ as they say and I went back to work on Saturday, taking rehearsals as usual. I just buried myself in work and we held our breath again.
The next year was a whirlwind of appointments, therapy sessions and panic attacks! But we could see Anna making steady, if slow, progress. My mum took Anna to her weekly appointments so that I could work full-time as I felt it was good for me to be away from the situation too. The waiting and uncertainty was the worst part. I kept saying ‘If only they could tell us what we are facing I could deal with it’. I also kept looking at the worst case scenario as I just couldn’t face another ‘slap’.
A lot of people were very derogatory about the health service, but I have to say that my paediatrician, my physiotherapist and the other professionals have been wonderful. I remember going to my first multi-disciplinary meeting and I cried at the end, as I was so relieved that things were looking up. Well….I was also pregnant again and my hormones were raging! You know how it is.
Anna turned two and eventually she started to walk. Tentatively mind you, but she was still walking. I gave birth to my son a month later and I was in good form but everything was very hard work. Anna still needed lifted and laid and with a new baby in the house, life was not easy going. And through all this I had managed to still work full time.
Anna is now four years old. If it is possible, I love her more and more each day. She is such a smiling, happy child and she is great fun to be around. She is very brave and very determined! She constantly pushes herself to achieve and I know she will lead an independent life as her personality will not allow her to do anything else! She attends our local mainsteam nursery school which she just loves, and she will be joining the mainstream primary school in September. She has a statement and was given a classroom assistant, as her balance is still not great.
I feel that it has really taken me this length of time to really, truly accept and dwell on what has happened to us as a family. I ended up going through depression last year, but I think it had to come to that. I had just ‘got on with things’ the whole way through and I now look back and think….my God! How did I do that? But the funny thing is I wouldn’t change my experience and I thank Anna for giving us so much and for introducing us to a world that I knew nothing about. I think it has made us stronger, more tolerant people, who try to look at ‘the bigger picture’ if we can.
Thanks to Margaret, 23rd April 2006
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