Children of the Air: The devastation of neonatal death/still-birth

Two of my children lie, side-by-side, in a grave with a makeshift wooden marker.

How is that even possible?

Our two daughters.

Longed-for.

Loved.

How is the image of their father carrying them – in the tiniest of coffins - memory and not nightmare?

Two trips.

Two tiny coffins.

Light as air, and yet...

How did my husband not stumble and fall under their unbearable weight?

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I could have been another Savita Halappanavar. The Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act was passed in Ireland after Savita died. Because she died. And I have first-hand experience of the catastrophic confusion and uncertainty that existed before. The careless management of my longed-for pregnancy caused my daughter’s death and could — potentially — have caused mine. I had already lost a daughter, April, 24 weeks into my pregnancy with her. April's struggle to live ended - in my arms that ached to keep on holding her - just hours after she was born. There was nothing anybody could have done. But another daughter, Petal, was lost because medical professionals assured me that “lightning doesn’t strike twice”. They were wrong.

Their lack of curiosity about April’s premature birth - “just one of those things” - meant they didn’t undertake early enough the simple check of my cervix that would have shown a problem, a problem that could easily be fixed. 22 weeks into my pregnancy with Petal, an emergency procedure was undertaken in panic. First under local anaesthetic and then under general. Words don’t exist to adequately describe the anguish of surfacing from the anaesthetic to be told: your waters have broken, you and your baby must now wait for the inevitable outcome of that. How welcome a return to anaesthesia would have been.

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I didn’t know how to be, in those early days. When I look back at the small and sad and struggling me, my heart aches. It aches because I tried so hard to be good. Cheerful and uncomplaining, finding the lessons, counting my blessings. Supporting others with the awkwardness they felt around my losses, around me. Because maybe if I became a good person, the all-powerful presence who had seen me and judged me and punished me by taking away my babies would notice me again and forgive me and give me my daughters back. I’m not religious, not at all. But I think, when tragedy strikes, it’s human nature to seek a universal, over-arching “why” because the arbitrary randomness of “shit just happens” is impossible for humans to accept.

A friend asked me once if I was angry. And I said no. And, at the time, that was true. My feelings were so tangled together – guilt, misery, shame, longing - that the mass was impossible to unpick without making myself unravel. My relationships became superficial because there were depths where I was afraid to go. My relationships became one-sided because I’d been reset to perpetual giving – good people give, right? - so gravitated towards takers. And then a throwaway and ostensibly innocuous comment, “You’re always so happy!”, and I felt like I would combust. Cracks began to show. And in those cracks, anger’s seeds took root, blossomed, spread. I was furious.

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Discovering that I was pregnant again, at the age of 42, the anger swiftly dissipated to be replaced by round-the-clock anxiety. I couldn’t stomach the prospect of history repeating itself. I knew the impact on my mental health would be catastrophic. And so I forked out a small fortune for private antenatal care over the border, in Northern Ireland. I settled - as well as I could - into what I knew would be my final pregnancy. And I hoped, with all my heart, for the best.

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The title of this piece is inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, “To Any Reader”, whose closing lines will never not break my heart:

        

        And it is but a child of air

        That lingers in the garden there.