Seven Minutes.

Beth left a comment on my last post that got me thinking. She said that she hadn't realised that Emma had died SEVEN minutes before she was born. I'm not surprised. I talk a lot about how I plod my way through grief and I even wrote this post about the person I thought my daughter was or might have been. But I've been reticent about sharing the details of her birth - which was also her death. Partly because I've done pretty well at avoiding the attentions of the malevolent "anonymous" trolls who leave despicable and thoughtless comments on the blogs of grieving parents. I suspect a post about birth choices might draw some of them out of the woodwork. Mainly, however, it's because I'm frightened of being revealed as a fraud. I think all of us grieving parents recognise guilt as part of the grief process. We also understand that mostly the guilt is not based on reality. But, how do you process it when choices you made are implicated in your child's death?

In real life, I have worked hard on this. Mostly, I have made peace. My obstetrician assured me just hours after Emma's death that I would never know if she might have lived through an elective section. He was sure that arriving at the hospital sooner would not have changed the outcome. They were some of the kindest words I could have heard in the immediate aftermath of her death.

But, as I approach Jurgen's increasingly imminent arrival in this world and I feel the familiar dread of a surgical birth enfold me, I realise that this might be one part of my grief that I will never fully accept or "heal" from. I'm hoping writing here will release some of the panic I feel as I prepare for our fourth child. I will have the planned section because I am a mother and I want what is best for my child. It seems that operative deliveries are best for my children so, of course, I set aside my own preferences to hopefully obtain the best and safest outcome for my baby but I miss feeling joy and anticipation at the prospect of labouring and birthing my baby myself.

Emma will be my only vaginally birthed child. Her two older siblings were born by emergency section after long and difficult labours. I experienced some post-natal post traumatic stress disorder after the birth of her elder sister. It isn't nice - it isn't, of course, one billionth as painful as living for the rest of your life with babylost grief - but it isn't a pleasant or easy way to start mothering a child. I know that some babylost parents feel very frustrated by mothers who profess birth trauma after the birth of a living child - and I understand that entirely. I mention it here because it is part of the path that led to me making the decision to pursue a vaginal birth at home with Emma. NHS protocols here meant that I would have been offered a planned section at 39 weeks for her birth. Would I be here if I hadn't declined that path? What if ... what if... two horrible words to live with.

We don't know because we don't exactly know why Emma died. I went into labour spontaneously, my labour for the most part was straightforward. Emma, by every indication used to determine distress, was a perfectly happy baby for the duration of my labour. The last time we heard her heartbeat at 2.17am, just after we had transferred to the hospital so I could have a little bit of help with my second stage, it was well within the healthy range for a baby so close to birth (and we're pretty sure it was her heartbeat not mine, something I've been asked about when I share this part of the story). At 2.25am, I birthed a baby with no breath and no heartbeat. We didn't have an autopsy because it seemed so obvious to us that it was a "birth accident". Sometimes I wonder if a postmortem would have showed something more but I think that's because I want to believe that healthy babies being born to healthy mothers during healthy labours can't die. I'm proof to myself that they can. She was a good healthy size, her placenta and cord were healthy and revealed no clues. The best guess we can make is that her cord became pinched between me and her in those final minutes.

In the absence of any definite answers to her death, I have had to simply surrender to the course of action that will bring Jurgen into the world. I don't feel like I can make any choices for this little boy or little girl. I tried last time to make the choices that were "best" and safest for myself and my child. With the benefit of hindsight, it turned out they were neither.