My sweet little Birdie, I am so sorry that you are dead. It's so hard for Mama to not blame herself for what happened to you. I feel betrayed by my body...I feel like I betrayed you and I couldn't save you.
Today we had a meeting with the doctor/surgeon who performed the emergency c-section to try to save your life, as well as with the midwife who comforted mama before the surgery stared. It really seems from all the questions and discussion we had that I was in labor with you for too long honey. My labor with you was just too much, and I am so sorry Birdie. I feel so selfish for making the decision to even try a home birth for you, we thought that it was the best most healthy and safe place for you to be born. I feel so bad that we didn't continue to see our other/backup midwives as well.
I just feel so selfish and so horrible. Birdie I AM SO SORRY. Mama never meant for anything bad to happen to you, you are my precious little girl and I love you so much. I just cannot shake the feeling that I was absolutely selfish for ever considering home birth for you. There were never any signs that this was a bad decision because I was so healthy, and so were you. It was so hard to not think that everything would be fine, babies are born everyday and they are fine...babies are born at home everyday and they are fine! I am just so sorry Birdie, you were such a healthy big baby and I feel at fault for your death, you should be here with us safe and warm in our arms.
I love you so much Birdie. I love you SO MUCH! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!
Things should not be the way they are now, Mama & Papa should not be missing you this way, and we should not be in so much pain. I don't cry for me or feel sad for me, Birdie I feel cry for you and that this could have been prevented with the care of our backup midwives. Its so hard to think that maybe with stress tests maybe you would have lived. I just cannot help but think this right now. People can tell me that it's not my fault, but it really does look like it is. So now all Mama can do is think of you, look at your pictures, your ashed in your urn and my scar where you passed through my body and into my heart forever. I want to look at your beautiful baby body squirming around in your co-sleeper, on my chest and in Papa's arms!
I promise Birdie that some day we will make a baby sister or brother for you, and I promise to raise that sister or brother to love you and know all about you. Mama and Papa are going to take some time before we make another baby, Mama needs to heal her bodily scars and her emotional one's a bit. Birdie, we will honor you with a baby sister or brother, we not ever forget you....you are so very special and so very loved by many.
ALL MY LOVE TO YOU BIRDIE,
LOVE MAMA
15 comments:
Oh Erin, please don't blame yourself. You are right, you were very healthy, your baby was healthy, and there was nothing to indicate that you shouldn't have given a homebirth a try.
I don't know how your backup midwives' practice is, nor have I ever had a post-date baby, but I never once had a stress test (different midwives with each baby), not even with Henry, and they knew about all the blood loss with Charlie.
I wanted to share with you what an elderly woman in my church said to me on Sunday. I know that you don't believe in God, but she has been praying for you. She lost her first baby during labor almost 60 years ago, due to placental abruption, and although I'm sure the pain has lessened, she still had tears in her eyes talking about it. However, she wanted you to know that God can indeed bless you even though you are suffering terribly right now. She went on to have nine children after her first baby died - 8 were from her own body (one set of twins) and one she adopted. She said she will continue to pray for you during this sad time.
You are still in our prayers. Please let us know if you need anything.
Love,
your cousin Wendy
Oh, Erin. I'm so sorry. It wasn't your fault. You were not selfish. You were not. You are right that babies are born at home everyday, and you are right that it shouldn't have happened the way it did. You wanted to give your Birdie the best birth experience possible. It was a horrible, horrible accident.
I understand though. Even though our situations were very very different. Every day I think of new things I could have done differently.
All of this knowledge you're getting in retrospect, I'm so sorry you couldn't have known it before.
Take care.
I can't stand it.
The doctors point to the long labor as the cause of this because they have no other explanation.
Your attempt for a home birth did not cause this. You said yourself that the midwives checked Birdie's heart rate all along. Your labor was long, but not alarmingly so. It may have been too long for Birdie but there was no way of knowing this beforehand.
Could they have done a NST at the hospital? Yes. Would they have? Probably not. Could a problem been detected earlier with continuous fetal monitoring? Perhaps. Would they have monitored you? Probably not.
Healthy women with no known risks for complications aren't routinely monitored. They are encouraged to be out of bed and moving as much as possible. In short, the same things you did at home.
It's just not fair. It's not fair that Birdie is not in your arms and it's not fair that the doctors imply that your labor/birth choices may have been the cause.
Why didn't they do the c-section immediately when you arrived at the hospital? Because they had no idea this was happening. There is nothing to say that it would be different had you been at the hospital all along.
It's normal to want to know why this happened. It's normal to want someone to blame, even if it's yourself. Hopefully in time you will see that you did everything possible to make sure that Birdie was safe from before you were pregnant until the moment she left this earth.
It's not fair, but it's not your fault.
I agree with above. Doctors love to blame anything but the unknown. It has to be "something".
YOU did NOT cause this. Your dear little Birdie isn't here... for reasons I can't even fathom. I just don't get it.
My friend had a c/s much like yours almost three years ago. She too came home with empty arms...
She was at the hospital from the get go... and still they didn't "fix it". Would he have blamed her OB for allowing her to labor at all? Nope. This is a blasted money game to some of them... Who is right, and at what cost?!
That doc shouldn't be allowed to speak with patients. What an ass.
I wish I had some power, magic, special words to make you believe me... but it is true. The man is an ass... and what came out of his mouth is about the same consistency.
*note that sadly thousands of families go through what you are right now... and many of them are told "we don't know. we are so sorry"
the
man
is
an
ass
!
Erin, I too am terribly sorry for your loss and have read your pregnancy journey from start to finish. This is such a tragic turn of events to what all would expect to be a happy ending. I will tell you that I am a high risk L&D nurse and before seeing the many, many things that can go wrong during labor and delivery I too wanted to be a midwife, wanted to birth my own children at home with minimal interventions. Bringing a life into this world is often portrayed as a beautiful thing, but at the drop of a dime things can turn very bad, which it seems in your case it did. Medical intervention, though it seems unneccesary at times, has made such a change in the morbidity rate of both mothers and babies in just the past century alone - not to mention throughout history.
To the other anonymous posts, you can not blame the doctor who I bet may have never met Erin before that night. There are many things that must be done prior to rushing back to an operating room for an emergency such as this... primarily she would have to have an IV (which may have been difficult to place depending on how dehydrated and exhausted Erin would have been after 24 hours of labor) and anesthesia would have to be available, not to mention the heart tones of baby would have to be assessed for a moment at least. There is no coming straight through the door and ending up on the OR table. Also, once a fetal heart rate drops, depending how long it is down, there is very little time - many times not even enough to get to the hospital with a healthy baby, you only have minutes if it doesn't return to a normal rate. If the heart rate falls below 80 bpm there is no oxygen getting to the baby's brain and who knows how long this happened in Birdie's case without continuous monitoring. I just wanted to share that with everyone who feels necessary to point fingers. Life is fragile, this accident was tragic, and blame isn't worth a penny at this point.
Erin, do not blame anyone for this. You did what you believed to be right for your baby and yourself. Some tragic things happen for no apparent reason, but the time will come you will find understanding and peace. I believe that none of us are meant to be here in this world and your little Birdie has moved on to a better place. You and your family are in my prayers and your story has touched my heart. I hope that with time healing will come to yours.
Erin,
I don't have any words for you except that I would hope you could step out of the situation for a minute and pretend that this all happened to a friend of yours....would you think what happened was her fault? NO! Would you let her think that it was? NO! It is not your fault at all.
My friend was in labor for 36 hours with a midwife at home, it was a long labor and the baby was fine. You can't believe it was your fault. It just can't be explained.
Please know that my friends and I are praying for you.
Dear, dear Birdie's Mommy,
Many years ago I went in to do my evening shift in the hospital. An elderly lady, (in her 90's) had been assigned to me as one of my patients. As I wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her wrinkley little arm she smiled up at me and said, "Do you have any children, dear?" I gulped. Should I lie? She was so sweet and reassuring. "I have three little ones in heaven," I told her honestly with a proud little smile. I moved on to the next room. The next time I passed her door I was startled to see her sitting there dabbing her soaky cheeks with a shredded piece of kleenex. I went in, ready to tell her I was OK and to apologize for upsetting her. Hmph! Her tears weren't on MY account at all! She looked at me and squeezed the hand I had placed on her arm: "I lost a little one too, dear," she told me honestly with a proud little smile!
Over the years the memory of that tiny, gentle little lady has comforted me greatly. She gave me three tremendous gifts that day: the permission to weep for my babies till I am beyond 95, the permission to quietly seek for others with whom I might be able to share and the permission to smile with tears on my face.
If you were to step into our kitchen tonight you'd find it cluttered with the trimmings of a Grade Seven drama project. All evening long, giggles and laughter have been spluttering out from behind closed doors as the scenes are rehearsed with a friend!
Yes, dear one, take time to heal and then do it again!
with love and prayers,
Carol-Ann
I didn't plan a homebirth, I had a full check-up with ultrasound and heart-rate monitoring three days before my baby stopped moving at the end of a perfect, trouble-free pregnancy. He stopped moving less than 24h before my scheduled induction. In the barrage of tests, they didn't find anything wrong. Therefore the only person I have to blame is myself. No-one else blames me, just me.
I am not trying to say that you should blame yourself - not at all. Just that I understand why you do. It's what mothers do. As mothers we are supposed to protect our children and we could not.
You cannot know, as I cannot know for my son either, whether Birdie would have lived had you been in hospital or not. I'm not saying she would have lived or she would not have lived. Just that you cannot know since you have no way of telling the conditional what-if future.
In the days of shock after my son's death, I read a story online about a mother who was in hospital under constant monitoring. She was moved from one bed to another ward during the night when the baby's heartbeat had become stable again. It took 20 minutes. 20 minutes during which the heart monitoring belt was not strapped on. During those 20 minutes her baby died. When I read this, it helped me understand that sometimes all the medical help in the world cannot save all babies.
I'm so sorry Erin. These days are very very dark.
You can't say that the outcome would have been any different if you had a hospital birth. Fetal monitoring actually leads to increased medical interventions, which in turn carry their own risk. For that reason I was adamant about not wearing the stupid fetal monitor belt when I was in labor with my babies and had to literally argue with the nursing staff about it. I opted out of nearly every test they could give me during my pregnancy as well. The fact is babies die in hospitals and babies die at home and there is no reason or explanation for what happened to you. I hope your doctors and midwives haven't led you to believe that "if you'd only done X differently..." because they don't know that, they can't know that. You made the best decisions you could based on the best information you had, you are a good and loving mother and none of this is your fault. So much love. I think of you and cry a little every single day.
sending waves & waves of love and support .. holding you all in my thoughts always.
Denise - in the UK
xx
Erin,
You are not, and were not, selfish for wanting to give birth to your child in a peaceful, loving environment. You had done your research; you took care of yourself wonderfully. I think there's something in our natures to want to place blame--and often it falls upon ourselves. We are our own worst critics.
Wishing you some peace amid all of the struggles you are facing...
It was NOT your fault. Sometimes babies die during home births. Sometimes babies die during hospital births. Sometimes babies die from complications of infections that they got at hospitals. Home birth IS more safe.
Sometimes babies that would survive a home birth die in the hospital, sometimes the opposite is true. It's impossible to know beforehand with a healthy pregnancy which is the safer option, it really is.
It is NOT your fault. It really truly is NOT your fault.
Continuous monitoring slows down labor and makes it very painful and introduces all sorts of drugs to the system, making it a worse environment for the majority of babies.
It's no more your fault, than had you been in a car accident.
Really. Truly. Believe that.
Women regularly labor for 42 or more hours, and give birth to healthy babies.. The "the labor was too long" is a bullshit excuse that doctors use when they have no real answer. It may have been too long for Birdie... But there was a reason WHY it was too long for Birdie, and that's the true reason for her passing.
You were not selfish for trying to give her a gentle entry into this world. You were the best mother to her that you (or anyone) could be. Your love for her radiates from your every word- both during your pregnancy and after her birth. You took care of both yourself and her so well.
I know it feels impossible to not feel guilt, but please do try. It was NOT your fault.
I just have to clarify one point that the Anon L&D nurse makes (and yes, I am a real dr.) Anon is correct that there is a limited amount of time once the fetal heart rate drops. However, Erin probably was NOT considered high risk and thus continuous fetal monitoring would not be indicated. It is unlikely the drop in fetal heart rate would have been detected any sooner. Depending on hospital policy, she may not even have had an IV. This is not about “medical interventions decreasing M&M,” nor is it about there being “not even enough [time] to get to the hospital with a healthy baby.” The point is, she could have been AT the hospital and the outcome STILL would have been the same.
I don’t believe anyone is blaming the physicians for what happened. They are criticizing any discussion that led Erin to blame herself. Traditionally, physicians in the US frown on home births. This is not the case in many other countries (take the Netherlands for example.) I would hope this did not bias their discussions with her.
Erin, this is NOT your fault. A home birth is not to blame. The actions your midwives took were appropriate. If it would help, perhaps you could talk with your midwife about her views on the matter? It may not provide the “why” answers you seek though it may help you understand what happened in a way that gives you peace with your decisions.
My heart goes out to you.
You are a mama. Mothers do that, they analyze every thing about their child's life. They hold themselves responsible for everything that their child goes through, that happens to their child. It is part of being a mother. It was in no way your fault, and somewhere inside that truth is there, but you are a mother. This is part of being just that, a mother.
May gentleness find you often during your pain.
my daughter dies at a planned homebirth also (in december). i have a post very close to yours on my blog. it is so veryy hard not to slip into full out depression when you KNOw that if you had done XYZ then your baby would be alive right now...but i just keep remind myself- #1 if there is a next time i have learned my leasson, painful as it is and will make much more informed choices. and #2 i belive God has all our days numbered, as it says in the bible. so, my baby was suppossed to only live till birth. i dont know why, but God does, and i need to rest in that- because continually recounting what i could of done, even if i do it until i am blue in the face, will not bring Aquila back. nothing will...i can only move forward.
peace to your broken heart mama!
liz
Post a Comment