I write this from St Thomas’ hospital in London, a few hundred meters from Big Ben, the London Eye and the centre of London’s iconic fireworks, which we watched a few hours ago.
My wife and I are here for the birth of our baby daughter, which will complete our family after being lucky enough to be blessed with two beautiful sons (aged 3 and 5).
My god the NHS in the UK is a miracle. We’ve had two difficult births previously, in Cambridge Addenbrooke’s hospital. We’ve always tried our best to have babies at the best local hospital (within 30 miles or so) with the best staff in the event something goes wrong. We’re at St Thomas’ after recently moving house.
After the two difficult previous births we gathered as much data as we could for this one, using a Data Subject Access Request on my wife and each baby to get huge volumes of data. We analysed this data, got insight from AI, spoke to experts and built our birth plan for our daughter around the data. Since our two previous difficult births were overdue, it was agreed my wife would be induced on the due date, if Labour hadn’t come along naturally.
That due date was yesterday, we spent the previous night in a top London hotel across the road from the hospital enjoying some time just the two of us, going out for dinner and some walks around London to get the oxytocin flowing.
We arrived at the hospital yesterday afternoon ready for induction, and heard the worst news imaginable - the baby had no heartbeat. Scans confirmed we had lost our daughter, most likely in the hours previous.
In the intervening 36-hour gauntlet, my wife has laboured, suffered and successfully given birth to our beautiful daughter’s perfect but lifeless body. My god, women are strong.
We were able to spend precious time together and dress our daughter. The services at UK hospitals for this type of tragedy are truly a wonder to behold. The nurses are some of the kindest and most dedicated people I have had the pleasure to meet.
Before all this, we joked that it would be my wife’s style to give birth to the baby during NYE overlooking the fireworks in a blaze of drama, with everything perfect and finished in time for a glass for champagne.
Instead, after we had created the memories we wanted to (around 23:30 UK time) the nurses invited us to a private darkened hospital room overlooking the London Eye. I carried our daughter to the room and brought my wife separately a few moments later. We watched the fireworks together, just the three of us, and comforted each other.
I know this is a sad story, but its purpose is not to be sad.
My wife is the eldest of three daughters, who were all expecting daughters within six weeks of each other in reverse order. The youngest went first with her first baby. The second sister went second with her second. And the eldest (my wife) went third with her third. Thankfully, the other two baby girls arrived safely and happily around their due date.
The purpose of this story is to raise the question that I can’t get away from in this last 24 hours – is [fate / the universe / the simulation / sod’s law] just forced to create perfect tragedies like this? Where the events would otherwise be so perfect as to be unbelievable, and so you are put back in your place?
It certainly feels like that at the moment.
My wife and I are strong and will get through it, thanks in no small part to the way the fantastic NHS has supported us on this harrowing journey. We will again gather as much data as possible and based on that, decide whether to rebuild our will and faith to try again. Either way, our family will be complete.
I’ve been comforted somewhat thinking of the scene in Only Fools and Horses where Del describes a similar situation to his bereaved brother Rodney as:
“A dropped stitch in life’s tapestry”
I have come to this site daily for ten years to be inspired and intrigued. So, thanks HN.
[I’ve sent this from a newly registered account because it’s too much for me to share publicly, or even discuss with family and friends at the moment, but somehow helpful for me to write words for strangers to read. I’ll email dang my other account to show I’m not some tragedy LLM bot!]