Interview 01

Age at interview: 52

Brief Outline: Mother of 4 children. She became pregnant for 5th time in 1993. Amniocentesis detected the baby had Down's syndrome. The pregnancy was ended by induction at 19 weeks.

Background: Pregnancy ended 1993. No of children' 4 + [1]. Ages of other children at interview' 25, 23, 19, 17. Occupations' Mother - speech therapist, Father - TV designer. Ethnic background' White British.

She had wanted one photo as a record but did not like it when staff took a roll of photographs of...

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. 
 

Explains that some hours after the termination she heard newborn babies crying and that she felt...

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. 

It has taken many years for her sadness and loss about the baby to shift from the front to the...

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. 

She found the loss of her baby difficult to cope many months afterwards and said that going to a...

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.