Please talk to me about my babies. You may not see me holding them or see photos of them on social media but they are very much here in my heart. Months have passed and seasons have changed. Perhaps your life has moved on, but my precious little babies still remain a big part of me and my life every day. I will never get over this or move on but I will move forward on a different journey.

Please mention my babies by name, it means so much when you acknowledge who they are. Though they did not get to breathe even a breath of the air we breathe they are still my children. We had planned their names for years. These are the children we had hoped and prayed for all our marriage.

Please remember their birthday as you would if they were still here. I will always know how old they would have been at each coming year and the milestones they would have achieved.

They can’t be replaced by me just ‘having another baby’. There will always be a huge void in our lives where they were meant to be. They will always be my first. And besides our twins were our miracles, not every woman can easily conceive.

You may not realise it but saying words like ‘twin’, ‘birth’, ‘pregnancy’ or ‘baby’ around me with no prior warning or sensitivity can cause a seismic wave in my heart. Although I may look happy and content on the outside, on the inside yes there are fragments of happiness but amidst a field of broken dreams and I have yet to recover from a major trauma.

Yes it pains me to see that you are expecting, but that’s because you are a reminder of who I was when I had the privaledge of carrying my babies. I have vivid memories of feeling my twins kick and move and on the scans every two weeks they would cuddle and kiss. I could see them alive and well, they were perfectly formed. Yet please know that I rejoice that you are going through this amazing journey and will soon meet your baby. You and I have a connection and I understand some of those worries that you may have. Don’t forget too that I know what it is like to go through weeks of sickness, to suffer heartburn, pelvic pain and later to ride the storms of labour contractions.

I love that you now have a baby to take home from the hospital, please celebrate them, shout from the rooftops of the joy they bring, I would have and dreamt of the day I would do the same!  I love that your little one is growing up. Do tell of those cute things they do and say. Yet please don’t forget that I am a mother too.The love I feel for my babies is just the same as the love you feel for yours. The difference is I don’t get to show them. I love them and mother them from afar. Oh how I long for them and miss them each day. I breathe the memories of their short lives each day and I can’t simply dettach from the future vision I had built up of my life that was to be, with them and holding them.

I know for some, children can be hard to cope with and believe me I probably would be moaning by now about the stresses of coping with twins, but please do think before you tell me of your ‘bad’ day with the kids. Oh what I would give to have just one of those days or even an hour with my babies alive again.

Please don’t assume how I may feel. Please don’t pass me by if you don’t know what to say.  I need you and I am still me. Yes these times are hard for me but I am surviving through. Hopefully I will be a stronger me. I cling to hope and my heart is bursting with love.

Let me share with you about my babies. With my streams of tears there also comes a fountain of thankfulness and pure joy at having been part of their lives.

Please don’t forget them. My babies matter as much as the babies you can see. Especially to me. 💗💗

Today hubby and I spent the afternoon working with the NHS maternity bereavement team and a few other bereaved parents to rewrite the survey that goes out to parents who have lost about their care and gave our input to a new toolkit for parents as well as better training for medical staff. This will be put out nationally this summer.
I am so grateful for the amazing care and information we received when our world fell apart in September but in other hospitals this is not always the norm and some things we would want to be done better. We told them of what mattered the most.
We feel privaledged and honoured to have been asked and to hopefully make a difference for future bereaved parents.

For us the medical staff held us emotionally when our babies hearts had stopped and guided us through what we can only describe as a nightmare over the next few days and beyond to go through labour to meet them but then have to say goodbye. Yet amidst all this we remember the wonderful support of the midwives who sensitively looked after our needs as a family and respected our girls to the highest level they deserve and acknowledged who they were by calling them by name.

Being a part of this meeting today and what is to come is just one way we hope to continue to honour our beautiful daughters Chloe and Grace here on earth though they are not here with us 💗💗

Chloe and Grace, we trusted God and took for granted that in 8 weeks we would have you in our lives and arms. We never expected that you would die on the exact day of reaching 24 weeks!

On Friday 23rd Sept we were so happy to have reached a milestone of 24 weeks. Though your cords were entangled you were doing so well.  Your hearts at the 22 week scan had been strong, there was good blood flow and each day I would feel your reassuring kicks to say all was well. The 24 week scan was due on Monday 26th Sept when we knew the risks would go down because if a problem was detected you could be taken out and have a chance to survive.

However on Friday 23rd Mummy worried as you seemed to kick less whilst I was working from home but sometimes you did that. By that evening when on the sofa (a place you loved to kick and move) I came to the realisation that Grace, you had gone quiet. I knew something could be wrong when I felt neither of you kick but had also read that at this stage kicks would be irregular, perhaps you were asleep? I had been reading the momo group stories on line, the miraculous successes but also about the risks. I said to Daddy that on Monday we would need ask the consultant to see you more often, every week instead of having to wait two weeks each time and also discuss if we could be monitored closely in hospital as they do in America.

Daddy went out for a drink with his friend. I read more and more and had a feeling of dread – it would really be a miracle if you were born alive, so many don’t make it! For weeks I knew this truth but prayed and hoped and chose to be positive for your sake and for my own sanity! No sense in over worrying I would tell myself and besides God had finally given us these babies he had to see it through!

Yet being a natural worrier and feeling how I now did at the thought of something being wrong quite literally froze me, for ages I felt like I couldn’t move. I stayed up late and watched comedy and tried not to stress. Daddy came home and I told him I was worried. I prayed when I went to bed and spoke to you as I usually do and firmly touched you to coax you to move. I fell asleep.

On the Saturday morning I lay there. Still no movement. I felt like you had already gone. I would usually speak to you by name and rub my tummy and you would kick back. In the days before this you danced and kicked and I could even see you move under my skin. At all the scans you were my dancing babies. You would kiss and cuddle each other. I just knew something wasn’t right but thought still that all would be ok.

Scared, I spoke to a midwife, she said to lay still and time it for half an hour and feel for kicks. I even tried to drink cold water. We decide to go to hospital. That journey was awful, it reminded me of the few weeks before when I had a tiny bleed and thought the worst but Daddy prayed powerfully and reminded me that God wouldn’t give us you and then take you away. I held onto these words as he had way more faith than I clearly did as I couldn’t even think straight.

The nurse did a quick scan, there you were… still and not moving but she quickly stopped and just said she wasn’t great at doing scans and said we should wait for the doctor. The half an hour watching the clock waiting for the doctor (with Daddy frequently checking where he was) was the longest half hour of our lives.

Until this day we never expected the worst. Though you were very rare twins and were very high risk as you shared the same sac we had made a decision to be positive and had all along clung to faith and hope. For six months we had prepared for you, bought and borrowed all we needed to welcome you.

But we received the worst news ever from the doctor ‘ I am sorry but I can’t find their heartbeats’. We felt only devastation and heartbreak. We lost you our twin babies Chloe and Grace.

Screams and wailing burst from my mouth with no control and from deep inside as I can only imagine the women did in the bible when their babies were killed. I curled up on my side in a fetal position grasping at you in my tummy.  Daddy was stood there in shock but then held me close. I could not be consoled yet I had to move, we were told they needed a consultant to check again in an upstairs private room. I entered the lift with Daddy, a lady next to me pregnant with all the hope in the world that I had had only a few hours before. All this had now gone for me. I don’t remember walking to the new room it was a blur.

Again we waited but then a team of midwives and a consultant arrived. I prayed the first doctor had somehow been wrong and that your heart beats could be found. He took his time but again I heard those words ‘I am really sorry’. This time I could not look at the scanning screen, looking at you lifeless would cut my heart into pieces.

All our dreams had shattered. I just wanted you back.

Realisation set in at what this would now mean when the midwives started talking about coming back in Monday morning to be induced and give birth to you. Something i ha made no plans or preparation for as you were meant to be born by cesarean section in 8 weeks. Then we found ourselves having to decide if we wanted a post mortum and a burial or cremation!

We then had the heartbreaking task of telling closest family and friends who we had told already that we were going to the hospital. They were praying for you. For some friends we texted but we needed to call family. I will never forget having to say to Nanny ‘ Mummy, they have died!’ – those words and knowing what that would do to them will never leave me. They love you so much.

The midwives were amazing and sensitive to our feelings and needs. We needed to make decisions and face the coming days which were only to get worse.

I had to take a special pill to soften my cervix ready for the Monday to go into labour. I so didn’t want to take that pill. I felt like I was in the Matrix film. I kept thinking that maybe you would come back to life but me taking this pill would be accepting you had gone and there was no going back. I swallowed hard and faced the truth and my future.

Nanny and Grandpa came to stay for the next few weeks. There would be a day on the Sunday when I would be carrying you though you had died. Mummy and daddy needed them so much to be there for us.

We were devastated. It was like we had entered a terrifying nightmare that we couldn’t wake up from. Part of me just wanted to hold onto you inside me where you had been for 6 months, safe and loved, you were part of me.  Yet keeping hold of you and being aware you could no longer kick or move motivated me to prepare my heart and face the fear of what would be a 17 hour labour to finally meet you, our beautiful babies, on the Tuesday.

We love you always. We will always be your Mummy and Daddy!

We will see you again in heaven. You are now in the arms of the Father and Jesus xxxx

 
>