Ending a pregnancy for fetal abnormality

I think in fairness to the, to the agency midwives there who are only, who, sort of, they're only there 9 to 7 so when they go off duty you then get a night nurse, or whomever, and in fairness to them, they did say that I could see the baby when I wanted to. But I forgot about that. I was, I completely forgot about it - didn't even think about it at all afterwards - and it was only a day after being at home when it suddenly occurred to me, 'Oh, my God I could have seen [the baby]- for most of the night I could have, you know, I should have done. My God, you know, where's my maternal instinct? Why didn't I have, why didn't it occur? Why didn't it occur to me to want to see and hold my baby again?'. You know, and I felt racked with guilt about that. 

But I contacted the bereavement midwife at the hospital and was, and she said, “Well, that's not a problem [name]. You come in and you, you can see him now he's still here.” I was told where he would go. We were asked whether we'd like photographs of him, and we said yes we did, which they took. They had to actually re-do them, unfortunately because the ones that the agency nurse took were just, [sighs]… just... I mean, I didn't, we didn't get to see them because they had to re-take them, they were just very... you know there were no clothes on the baby, there was nothing. We didn't get to see those but if, you know, again that was quite distressing. 

But we were told that we could see him whenever we wanted to. And he was taken down to the mortuary and we were shown where the mortuary was. And we were told the names of the people that would be looking after him and... because it was quite, very important to me that, to know exactly what was going to be happening with him. I guess that's the maternal instinct. And they were, they were very good at that. 

So we did go back and see him again which gave me a chance to say goodbye properly, because I hadn't felt that I'd had the chance at the birth to really say goodbye properly, so I wanted to do that. 

And did you feel better, once you'd seen him? Do you feel a bit better, was it any solace?

Yes it was, absolutely definitely. I don't, I think it would have been much harder for me to come to terms with the loss of [baby] had I not had a chance to say goodbye to him properly, and see him again, so that I can picture his face. And he was less bruised when I saw him 3 days after the birth - he was less bruised - he looked much more peaceful. Whereas immediately after the birth he was very... he was quite dark, which again they didn't inform you of. They don't tell you that at all and it's huge, huge shock, huge shock that you're expecting a little sort of pink baby to come out, and that doesn't always happen when they're so little. Their bodies aren't prepared to go down the birth canal, and they get terribly, terribly bruised, bruised to the extent that they look sort of... terribly, almost black in parts. 

And you're not, and I mean you're not informed that that's what to expect. It's quite a shock. And again, as a mother you live with the guilt that, oh, you know the first sight of your baby was a shock, and you think, 'Well, that shouldn't be like that'. You shouldn't feel like that, and that's wrong to feel like that... and I felt, again quite guilty that that was how I felt. 

So I do wish that they had emphasised the-, you know told us more about what to expect. So when we went back to see him 3 days afterwards he was pink and his nose was pink and he was more, he was how I'd imagined he would be born. 

Before we started the induction of labour we'd been asked about our wishes for when the baby was born, and information had been given about how you might want to do that, and also had we got clothes for the baby, which I found really, really odd because my first son was 4 kilos or more, and I'm thinking what clothes could you possibly have for a baby born just half way through a pregnancy, with probable low, very low birth weight, it seemed obscene to me to be thinking about clothes. 

And then, then we'd been asked as I say about our wishes for when the baby was born, and we didn't know what we wanted, and we agreed that it would be best for the baby to be brought back into us at a safe distance, having being viewed by the professionals, by the midwife, to see whether or not we wanted to hold her. 

And when the time came, the midwife had brought the baby back and she same along with a health care assistant and the baby was in a very, very small basket, it wasn't a conventional Moses basket, it was a very small version of a basket, on a quilt, so the baby was kind of raised in a sense to be more visible with, in a shawl, like I think she had a hat on, I'm not entirely sure. And I just asked that they stay where they were, they didn't come too near, and the health care assistant was saying, 'Here's her little hands,' and sort of doing this sort of business. And we just kind of gestured that they weren't to come any nearer, and that we didn't feel able to hold the baby at that point.  

And then they said that they would take a photo, and do prints of the baby's hands and feet and stuff, and put it in a little kind of record book, and then they give you the identification tags, so you've got some, you know, memorabilia really of the event. 

But I think it, you know, for us, irrespective of the fact that the baby physically wasn't , not that I saw her close up, but wasn't hugely deformed in any way facially, it was still a shock to see this tiny mite in this already tiny basket. And I, neither of us were able to have the baby brought any nearer. So we didn't.