Oliver’s Story is a series of posts sharing the experiences of a friend as she comes to terms with the loss of her baby boy, born in October 2005.
11 weeks after the loss of Oliver I was invited back for a discussion with my Obstetrician. Of all places for this to take place it was in the same department where you have your scans and normally, hopefully, a happy place. Not one of mine.
As I got to the desk the receptionist looked at my notes and saw what the nature of my visit was for and instead of inviting me to sit in the open planned room with the posters of new babies and nursing mothers, it was suggested I take a seat to the left of the desk. This section had posters of Gynaecological cancers and fertility problems and pregnancy loss.
This was a pre-planned design of the clinic and on a good day I would have seen this as a positive step to shield our tear stained eyes from that of the glowing pregnant bumps around to me, today it meant seclusion from that ‘special club’ that I had joined briefly only to have my membership expire far too soon.
Today I felt bitter and angry tears roll down my checks as I remembered sitting in the same chair 10 weeks before being told that our sweet little son was very unlikely to survive much longer.
I remembered the minutes before when we had seen his little heart beating the curve of his spine, his little hands and feet. The way he was curled up in a little ball, unlike my daughter at her twenty-week scan. She had kicked and uncurled herself and stuck her foot into my ribs. No, he was not like that on this day, he was still, comforted by the beat of my heart against his. I was asked to walk to get him to uncurl himself; I knew then in my heart that something gravely wrong. He was so tiny not nearly as big as he should have been for 23 weeks, he was barely moving. He would not be moved out of his resting place.
That was the day when this journey began and here I was 11 weeks later sitting in the very same chair waiting my turn. My husband held my hand as we wondered in like two wounded solders, but left like two solders facing a battle ahead with a good chance of winning this time.
The Overall view.
It was explained to us that Triploidy is a rare sporadic and lethal chromosome abnormality and in view of the rarity of Triploidy the precise recurrence risk is yet to be determined according to current literature.
Meaning.
The chances of a recurrence in our future pregnancy are probably not significantly greater than the background age related risk. This is good news for us and we had decided if there is to be a next time (please God) we are going to go with blind faith, lots of prayers and hope.
So as we left the clinic that night we felt the gears shift a little and we made a little step further along the difficult terrain.
