Father: One of the fortunate things to come out of the pre-screening and the diagnosis is, you know, everybody, they tried to make a birth plan. Hospitals are quite keen that everybody goes in now with a birth plan and we were, we knew we were going to have a very special birth and so we could tailor not only the birth plan, but we could also tailor the aftercare plan as well.
Because we knew that it was possible we'd only have a few minutes with [son]. It was possible he'd be stillborn. As it turns out we did only have a few minutes. What we really didn't want, if that's all the time that he had, we wanted him to retain some dignity. As it turns out, taking him from us, rushing him away, and putting him onto a ventilator would have made absolutely no difference at all. So during those few minutes that he had--
Mother: He stayed completely with us.
Father: Yeah, he was with us in the room all the time. They just gave him a little whiff of oxygen, a little bit of chest massage, and then it became obvious that, you know, his breathing was just dying away and his heartbeat was just fading away.
Mother: But he did not suffer.
Father: But, and then they passed him back to us, and from then on he was our baby. And he wasn't poked, prodded, there was no invasive testing done on him.
Mother: No.
Father: He, all he ever knew was love and dignity, and that was very important to us. |
