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She had wanted one photo as a record but did not like it when staff took a roll of photographs of the baby.
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Yeah I think I, while I had been relating to this baby because I was, I was carrying the baby I think that it had been a very big, it had been a big problem in our lives and so my husband had just thought of it in many ways as the, as a problem. And he was, he was just knocked sideways by the fact that there was this beautiful dead baby. I think we were both knocked sideways really.
The midwife had a camera, and she asked if we would like her to take a picture, and we said we would and she took a couple of Polaroid pictures. She then had another camera and she took what seemed like a whole film, and I found that quite upsetting, I didn't want a whole film of this baby, I wanted a record. I thought that it was maybe important for my other children that I had a record that, so they could see what, you know what had actually happened, but I really didn't like that feeling of the camera flashing on this little dead person.
That didn't really seem right at all. I remember thinking it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen. It was, it was almost like there is a depth of sadness and we were kind of on that bottom floor, there was a point you know if it had been a hundred babies it would have been equally sad. |
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Explains that some hours after the termination she heard newborn babies crying and that she felt a strong need to hold and cuddle a baby.
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That night was very difficult because there were live babies on the ward and I could hear them crying and the nursing staff were lovely they were very sweet, they came in from time to time and visited me, I wasn't very good company. And one of them said, I mentioned something about one of the baby's crying and she said there was a lady who'd just had twins and they were very unsettled.
And I had said to her that one of the things that was so difficult was that when you have a labour and you give birth to a baby you have an overwhelming physical feeling of needing to hold the baby and I think that was very much my physiology taking over. And I actually needed to hold a baby. And she was, I told this nurse and she went next door to the lady who'd had twins and asked if I could borrow her baby for a little while [smiles] and she said the babies were awake anyway and that she had explained to this lady the situation I was in. And the lady had said that was fine, I could cuddle her baby which, I've never met that lady but I so appreciated. |
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It has taken many years for her sadness and loss about the baby to shift from the front to the back of her mind.
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I think I don't, I'm not a great believer in expressions like “getting over it” or “moving on” or whatever, maybe “moving on” is not a bad one. But what I've found, and I'm sure its different for everybody, what I've found is that after many years, and it did take many years, this has found a different place in my head. It's all there. But it's not right in the front of my thoughts all the time.
And what sometimes happens is that I will come across a, you know like this Down's syndrome boy and it completely alters where everything is in my head. So it, all of a sudden its there like it was yesterday. And actually that's been difficult and I think maybe that's something that I've had to deal with more than other people because of the job that I do. |
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She found the loss of her baby difficult to cope many months afterwards and said that going to a local support group meeting was a huge step forward.
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But I know I met up, again going back to your question about help, after about a year I went to a group which was run not far, which was based with ARC (Antenatal Results and Choice). Just a few people who'd got together who'd all been in a similar situation and we just met together once a month. And I found that very helpful.
I found, the first time I met up with people from ARC, they had a regional meeting here. I think that was about 10 months after I'd had a termination. And that was a huge step forward for me because I sat in a room with a lot of other people - all of who'd done something along the lines of what I'd done - and they were all lovely people and they were all very upset and very sad. And I was one of them. So it, you know I couldn't feel towards them as I felt towards myself. And that was incredibly helpful, really helpful.
And going to that, it was after that that I went to the, the group that started after that meeting and I found that really helpful. |
