Where to start?
In the voice of sanity - there are also babies who will not survive the puerperium, the majority will survive but there are some who will not. Their pictures don't decorate the walls outside the pagoda, but this story is one voice for them and for the mothers whose stories are usually not heard.
Our strawberry didn't survive, she came on a short journey of 19 days that would shake our world and take us through a tough and confusing journey, some of whose gifts I can already see and some I can't.
She chose this way and no other and we fought for her and did our best at every stage and so did the medical team.
I am not writing to make you sad, but this is the truth, this is part of the truth, some premature babies will not survive.
At the time of writing these lines, 5 days after her death, I am 29 years old, healthy, young. In the fifth month of pregnancy, for an unknown reason, bleeding started that lasted about a month with varying intensity. There was the hematoma above the cervix which led to the definition of the pregnancy as a high-risk pregnancy and two hospitalizations, one for a day and a half and one for 8 days, Celstone, magnesium, blood and iron transfusions, Persolt to stop labor and then a sweet vaginal birth (which I insisted on) at week 25+4 following labor that could not be stopped, Opening and lowering of water.
Tutti was born breathing and red, but after 3-4 days in the world, Tutti had a really hard time breathing, she had BPD, she was ventilated and they couldn't wean her off the ventilator. She died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage.
The preterm period for us was an almost impossible period mentally (as it surely is for everyone) we held the ultimate hope and yet reality that our pink dream might not come true. Tutti went down to 700 grams and then went back up to 830 grams and never "progressed" from the position closest to the nurses' station in the intensive care room.
How we loved her! We sang and talked to her, we played for her, we celebrated her, we held hands and gave her a finger which she held tightly in her tiny palm. She moved and squirmed, pulled strings, sucked on the probe when she got food and glanced at us with open eyes from time to time (she especially liked to make eyes at dad). While she was still alive, we didn't get to hold her because she wasn't stable enough and the staff feared that it would do more harm than good, but whenever we were able to, we tried to be partners in her care, change her diaper and take her temperature and try to improve her at least a little whenever we succeeded in every way we could think of. We talked to the doctors and nurses and asked thousands of questions. I pumped her full of milk from the first moment. We were premature for hours even when we were the only parents.
My intuition was right, something felt strange and I really didn't want to take the celeston (steroids for ripening the baby's lungs) and the magnesium (mainly to prevent bleeding in the baby's brain and also to stop contractions to a certain extent) I probably knew in my heart. In the end, she died from exactly the factors that giving these substances was supposed to prevent. Why she had to go through such a journey of suffering, medication, breathing breaks, stabbings, distance from us and more is not clear but I think, after asking a friend who has passed away that somewhere they don't remember, their soul or consciousness is not here yet at this stage.
Note anterior placenta + continuous bleeding + previous miscarriages - a bright red light for a pregnancy at risk and premature birth.
Listen to your intuition!
If this happens to you, I'm really sorry to hear, wow, how difficult!
In practice, we felt that at least we did the final act and the burial in the most correct and "good" way after quite a lot of insistence and for us it was a very significant closing of the circle.
You can choose whether to bury in an individual grave / fraternal grave, whether to be present or not at the burial - I can try to help you understand - you have the right to take a moment to understand what you want to do - if you click As they did to us, they said this to the hospital assertively - "We are allowed to take a day/two/three to understand - don't pressure us!" .
For support, you are invited to call me Chen 0547624704 and if I don't answer my partner 0509550466
Congratulating the readers of this page with children and easy and good pregnancies and births.
Grace.