Vicky shares the story of her daughters birth and death
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I wanted to share my story, because to be honest though I feel it is something that is not talked about enough.
I gave birth to our wee girl Amanda on 21st of April after 27 hours of Labour. She is our first child. She was perfect and looked like me but with her father’s build – he is very tall with huge feet and she unfortunnately inherited them. Amanda was born Sleeping .
I had gone through one of those pregancy most people dream of. I found out I was pregant at 6 weeks and had no morning sickness. If it was not for my ever expanding stomach I would not have known I was peganant. Amanda was not planned but we were exicted about meeting the baby – we chose not to find out what we were having. I went into labour the day before bub was due and I rung my husband at work at lunch time to let him know he most likely would not be at work the next day. I had my show about 1 and then by 6 my contractions were around 5 mins apart. We headed down to the Maternity Hospital and were ready for a long night. My midwife examined me and I was 4.5 cm dialated. She then tried to find the babies heartbeat but could only find Mine.
We knew what was going on but did not want to believe it. I had felt her moving that morning and just thought hopefully they were trying in the wrong place. I was sent through to the hospital for a scan – unfortunately this is 2 and a half hours away so I got to suffer through contractions in the back of an ambulance all the way there. We arrived at 11pm and were told by the specislat that our baby had died.
At this stage they were not sure when this had happended or what had caused it but she told us Amanda had most likely been dead for a few days (I adamantly disagreed with this).
I was given pethadine and left for the night to come to terms with what we had to go though.
The pethadine slowed my contractions but by the next morning they were strong and painful so i asked for an Epidural to help me get through the next few hours. I started pushing just after lunch that day but as Amanda had no tone she couldn’t help so we ended up needing forceps to help give birth. I unfortunately then hemmoraged quite heavily and needed to go straight to surgery to try and stop the bleeding.
All of this was traumatic for my husband who could just stand back and watch. I was in surgery for 2 hours and then came back to our room to meet our wee girl – they had told me what I had a girl as they wheeled me out of the door to surgery. While I was in recovery my husband and I named her Amanda Jane – we had not really talked about names too much but had a list of them that we liked. We had both decided on the same name for her without even discussing it.
We chose to have a post mortum done for Amanda so we could maybe find out what happened as there was nothing obviously wrong. We only had that evening and half an hour in the morning with her but we took lots of photos. Amanda was cremated after the post mortum and is with us at home now. I had to stay in hospital for 5 days as i ended up requiring blood transfusions a few days later and i got a spinal headache from the epidural.
We received the results from Amanda’s post mortum 8 weeks later. I had developed blood clots thoughout the placenta sometime after my 36 week scan and as a result she was not getting enough oxygen or nutrients and had slowed in growing. She was still 6 lb 8 oz but had no fat at all. She was 59cm long and perfect in every way. If we for some reason had caught it early then she would have been OK but in the last 2 weeks due to lack of oxygen she had developed severe brain damage.
We miss her every day. She would have been 17 weeks old now but I know she is not far away and is beng looked after.
She has already chosen her brother or sister for us I am currently 7 and a half weeks pregnant. On the day this bub was conceived the music box of angels we were given after Amanda was born started playing by itself, and we think it was her letting us know she was ok and and picked her brother or sister. I guess we will find out which one in March.
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We send our love and tears to Vicky and her husband, and Amanda x x x
