 "It
wasn't meant to be like this!"
Coping
with miscarriage is hard for any woman, but sometimes it can be hardest
for the husband or partner to voice his feelings.
babyworld member Rob Angel talks about losing his son and how he
and his wife Mel managed to cope. His personal account can be distressing to read, but Rob shared
his feelings in order to help other dads in the same situation.
It wasn't meant to be like this
I held his tiny white coffin in my arms, crying as I walked into the
crematorium to lay my son to rest.
I had wanted to grab the doctors by the throat and to slowly squeeze
the living breath out of them. They should have been able to stop my
wife going into labour at only 19 weeks. We think nothing of sending people
into space or building a tunnel under the sea but we couldn’t stop her
labour...
When we found out Mel was pregnant I was scared, I couldn’t
think about anything properly or see anything in the same light again.
When I was in the car I would imagine he was in his car seat next to me and
think of
how careful I would be and how I would look at him. Nothing tore me away
from the ultrasound scans and on several occasions I cried to see him move, when his
hand twitched on the screen and of course when he kicked. He was strong,
very strong; at 18 weeks he kicked for England and I was sure he would
be the first to launch a football into space with a kick.
But something went wrong
But something went wrong, and no one knew what. Mel's waters broke and
she bled and as I chased the ambulance to the hospital I phoned everyone
and cried. I stayed with her for as long as the nurses would let me.
Over the next couple of days they tried to stop the bleeding then, on a
rainy Thursday morning, they brought a scanning machine into the room.
We
could see from the start that all was not going to be ok, and then it hit
home. Someone grabbed my spine with fingers of fire and was playing with
my heart. He had turned around and there were no waters left.
Numbly I took Mel's hand and held it so tight. I wasn’t afraid for
her, I knew that she was strong, I was afraid for me. I was supposed to
protect my family.
We had reached the 12-week mark and it was supposed to be plain
sailing from here, the threat of miscarriage or stillbirth gone. Nothing
was going to go wrong.
We argued with the doctors to find a reason for what had happened, but they either didn’t
want to know or could not find anything. We were exhausted. After the
scan we were told we could wait for labour to begin or Mel could take a
tablet that would make the placenta come away on its own. Either way my
son was lost. We talked and decided that the tablet was the way to go.
But before she could take a pill a contraction engulfed
her; I fought myself and bit my lip. We had needed no pill, Mel's body had
its own plans and it was not going to stop now. At 8.35pm, with
lightening and thunder outside, our son entered the world. He didn’t
have to open his eyes, as I know that he saw through me. All my dreams
and loves and hopes were in him also.
The chaplain arrived and Jack was named and blessed that night. The
midwife cleaned him and wrapped him and made him look peaceful so that
when we held him it felt as natural as it ever could be. But he was
gone. He had died either in birth or just before, no one knows, but we
held him as his body slowed and stopped. As he left us he was in our
arms and he knew that he was loved. All the other mothers on that ward
felt for us and some cried with us. But they couldn’t feel like us, no
one could.
We left the hospital that night so we could return home and just lay
there holding each other and comforting each other.
I carried his coffin
As the days went on I carried his coffin into the chapel and then sat
with my wife and held her as the tears took over. I supported her when
her legs couldn’t hold her and I loved her as much as I could.
We wept and mourned as best as we could but nothing really works but
time.
I had all but given up when only a few months later we found out
that, once again, Mel was pregnant and someone stoked up the fingers of
fire that held me inside.
Now we have a daughter, a baby girl. I couldn’t think of this
pregnancy at all. This time I could not trust anyone or anything. We got to 12
weeks. We got to 19 weeks. We got to 25 weeks and 6 days – and it started
to happen again.
But now we have a healthy (well nearly) bundle of love, Rhiannon Lucy
Kleo Angel. Like her brother, Rhiannon does for me what only her smiles
can, they lift me and show me her love. She is what I imagined her
brother to be: fun, tiring but most of all, my child.
As for my son Jack Luke Angel? I still dream of him but I have no
face to put on the pictures. I have no son to hold when he cries. I can’t
look in the mirror just in case he looks back.
Where to next?
|
