Mother's Day - A trip around the counties delivering cards and gifts. By 7 p.m. the contractions had started again, now diagnosed as an irritable uterus. By 9 Martin once again had me in hospital for listening & monitoring. Everything still fine, baby with a good strong heartbeat and me with contractions that are still not labour. After 4 hours of monitoring the midwife decided the place to be was on the ward. I was given pain killers and sent to bed. Martin came home. 10a.m. on 19th Martin arrives to collect me, all contractions stopped and no reason to stay. Home we came and crashed out, neither of us had slept well so we 'vegged' in front of the TV and dozed. Midday and the contractions were back. By the evening enough was enough. again we rang and again they said to go in. 36 weeks and 6 days - almost there! Martin had it in his head to suggest an induction as this was becoming a habit. The doctor pretty much intercepted the thought and said there would be no induction as a failure could be dangerous and baby was better off where it was until it was ready. How we now wish someone had had insight and intervened. More painrelief and back onto the ward. This time painkillers and pethedine with the assurance that it looked like labour was to be sooner rather than later and things were moving in the right direction. 6.30 am on 20th March I am woken by a midwife with a doppler to listen to baby's heartbeat. All is fine. 8 a.m. A doctor arrives to say I can leave. I told her Martin would be in at 10 and I would go then. 9.45 a.m. Another midwife arrives to take one more heart trace for my records before we leave. Somehow baby seemed to have moved, the trace was intermittent and kept disappearing. At this point I was asked to go for a wander and see if baby would move back just to get a better listen. Off we went, coffee and cake in the cafe and then back to the ward. Still baby is elusive, another midwife arrives and yet no-one can still get a suitable trace. The 8a.m. doctor arrives with a scanner and there in front of us is our baby, heart flickering. A contraction started and then the fateful words 'That dipped'- midwife, 'Yes that dipped, down to delivery now' - the doctor. We left at breakneck speed and arrived on the delivery suite and into a room to be met with 9 midwives, 2 doctors and an anaethetist. Now the panic is setting in. The anaethetist at this point is attaching a canula to my wrist and telling me that I am being prepared for an emergency c section. Jackie (a midwife) sat on the bed with the heart monitor trying to trace our baby. Suddenly she announced 'I have it, there it is'. I breathed, stillerrified but perhaps a moment of relief. In hindsight what Jackie had found was more likely to have been my own heart echo. The anaesthetist then informed me 'See not always as dramatic as it all appears', but oh how wrong. Within a moment the Consultant arrived, she had a portable scanner and sat to try and find our baby, she wasn't happy and said there was interference so she would like us to go to ultrasound immediately. I was whisked over in a wheelchair, Jackie pushing and Martin holding my hand. The panic was beyond comprehension 'What was happening?' Straight into a scanning room with the consultant, Jackie, a doctor and Martin. Up onto the bed and then scanned. There was the dreadful truth. I said 'There's nothing there' Dr Smith (Consultant) said 'I am sorry, there is nothing there' Our darling baby had no heartbeat. Our darling baby had died. Sometime in those last minutes our baby had gone. Martin and I just looked at each other, the pain unbearable, everyone left the room and we just sat, held each other and wept. This can't be happening to us and why - the overriding thoughts. How had this happened? Our baby was alive just minutes before. We were shown into a tiny offcie with a phone and began making the worse calls of our lives. Our parents, and our children first. I began some calls but the power of speech left me everytime, consumed by agonising pain and tears. Martin took over relentlessly, his pain just as great. Everyone just could not beleive, without exception the first response was disbelief. Why would this have happened? How could this have happened? Eventually darling Jackie wheeled us back to the delivery suite and showed us to a room. A different room, a room with all your needs provided for, a room at the end of the delivery suite corridor, a room with extra beds. Martin needed a cigarette, well thats the story he told. Perhaps he needed a moment to steal himself for the agony we were facing. Jackie stayed with me and breifly explained our options. For me there seemed no options, just induce the labour and let our baby be born. The rest of that day is very much a blur. A blur of information, of visitors, of tears, of disbelief. The thought that perhaps there was a mistake and that our baby would be born just fine. A blur of breaking the news over and over, to families, to friends, of not believeing it anytime we said it or heard it. During that day we met the bereavement midwife, Viv, who told us she would be around for the future. We agreed to a postmortem and also agreed with each other that we would try for a brother or sister for this beloved baby that we would not take home in our arms. Friends arrived to hold us, many could not understand my lack of anger, lack of tears. The numbness had set in. Anger would fix nothing and for some moments I needed to be strong for other people. Our future would be ok. We share the greatest love. People needed some reassurance sometimes. In quiet moments I just wept, I shook and I sobbed, and Martin held me, with silent tears. I now know when he left 'for a cigarette' he actually left to kick walls, and to ask someone to give us strength to make it through. The numbers of visitors that day and the following day are testimony to how our baby had affected so many lives. The induction was started. Visitors continued to arrive, to cry, to be cross, and to leave, some came back, some had to leave as they were bereft of what to say. After all there is nothing to say. babies dying don't happen to me and mine, why would it? A text book pregnancy, following all the rules, other healthy children - this time it had, it had happened to us, in fact it had somehow happened to us all. Visitors stayed until late in the night, holding me and holding Martin. Jo, my darling Jo, was last to leave. Staff changes had happened by now we had had, Jackie (our Angel), Linda , Sally the nightshift. Martin curled up behind me on the bed avoiding the tubes attached to my wrist. The morphine attached. We dozed and we held each other. The contractions came with a vengence, a defiance against what was to be perhaps. Martin knelt on the floor at my head and reassured me constantly that we would survive. The entinox and the morphine makes much now a blur. Martin informs me my nan (who passed when I was 11) was most definately present and that my conversations with her were coherent. The pain subsided and we both drifted to somewhere less painful - sleep. Martin hunched in a chair. Dear Sally woke him and pushed another bed up to mine - the night before our blessed son was born we slept fitfully, holding hands. Tommorrow we knew would hold the greatest heartbreak of our lives.