Mi Isla Sola

After a day of feeling pretty well, it’s only natural for me to crash. Such is the night before my long awaited therapy session with a birth trauma therapist, who has experienced baby loss herself.  The night before our appt, I dreamt about the most diffiicult part of my loss. The part I rarely visit in my own mind, let alone speak out loud of. The midwife.  I went and saw the midwife to ask her about the ultrasound I had at 36 weeks. This is the crux of my grief. The most difficult part to accept.  I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not that I had this dream the night before my session, but it certainly made for a difficult day leading up to the appointment…The ultrasound… The wondering, the dreading.. did she screw up? I had an ultrasound at 36 weeks, to be sure of baby’s positioning. That was the *only* reason for that scan. So we would be prepared for a homebirth, not worried about breech. That scan revealed some ‘concerns’, namely, low-normal amniotic fluid, low movement.  It took a long time to get the scan done, and the radiologist had to come in and do some of it herself. Isla still scored 8/8 on the bpp, so my midwife wasn’t worried. The doctor told me I needed to see my doctor (I told her I was seeing a midwife, and she scoffed a bit, and asked if there was a doctor too, and I got my back up).  Because, she said, ‘this is a sign that baby isn’t doing well’.  My mw couldn’t figure out why they thought that, when the score was 8/8.  She left the choice of a follow up ultrasound to me, and didn’t want me freaking out over it, as I had had such a traumatic birth with my son, and wanted to be calm and ready for this new labour and delivery. So we didn’t do anything. This is the hardest part of my whole experience. We may have missed a chance to do something for her. When I went in at 39 weeks with no movement, and the delivery revealed a tragedy beyond what anyone was expecting, I was rocked. What had we done? Had I done this? Had my midwife? This is where I spiral out of control, every few months. This is what I cannot handle, and so please be gentle with your comments, as it is so very tender. My mw ran her notes by the physicial who delivered Isla, asking if she’d missed something, or if he’d  have done anything different. He had no problem with her notes, and said he’d probably have ordered a stress test, which probably (at the time) would have been fine, based on the bpp results, and a follow up ultrasound a week later, which also probably would have been fine, since the “trauma” had probably just happened 3 days prior to delivery,  (after the follow up US would have been) based on the mec- stained placenta. I NEED to remind myself of this over and over again. Like a broken record. For the first 3 months, my husband had to tell me several times daily. I just can’t stop thinking about how that ultrasound was a warning, a chance we weren’t even supposed to have had, as it was purely a positioning ultrasound.  I can’t fathom that my baby girl was in distress, and I chose not to do anything about it. I want to die when I think of that.

So, the therapist, how I love her, helped me reign in my mental storm and redefine everything. She picked up on a pattern I had been employing; that by blaming the mw, I was blaming myself, because I  had hired her. Ergo, I was responsible for my daughter’s death.  She says that as a mom, I am not responsible for the actions of my mw. And my job is to be ‘the mom’. Her job is to care for the pregnancy, and be an expert in her field.  I cannot be responsible for her responsibilities.  I know this. Yet, if I’d been under an OB’s care instead, perhaps they’d have intervened sooner, as they are wont to do, and she’d be here now. Why did I need to have the less interventive route, and have it cost me so much? Again, there are no guarantees it would have been any different; when Isla was born, no one was running around, it wasn’t an emergency, the heartbeat, though a bit wonky, was there on the nst. They checked me for an induction, nope, posterior cervix, and slowly got ready for a section. The OB told me directly that he never expected what he found. He never anticipated for a second that there would be so much meconium, and that that was such a ‘floppy baby’ (a horrible thing to say, but I know what he was getting at). Her heart stopped when they cut the cord. The resuscitation gave us 12 precious hours.

I desperately want to let go of this. I hate that I keep coming back to it, finding ways to make it my fault, or ‘what iffing’ myself to death. Obviously, nothing is going to come of it. I won’t magically find the answer and Isla will be back with us. So, why must grief be so torturous sometimes? Why can I not resolve this? I hate that it’s my husband’s touchpoint too. I wish he was absolutely certain of it all, instead of this being his one sticking point, because at least I could take comfort in his certainty.

I did feel better leaving the appointment.  Things were straightened out again, for now. I hate hate hate that this keeps coming up. I just want some peace with this.