I hoped she’d die that night

I’ve never written this before and I’m not sure I’ll hit share when I’m finished writing it because it seems shocking.

The day we discovered that our twenty week old unborn daughter had multiple heart and brain problems was shocking beyond anything one can imagine it would be. Whatever you think it’s like, it’s worse, much worse. I have never, before or since, felt the avalanche of emotions and terror of that day and the few days that followed.

It was in the middle of deep dark November and my world had just collapsed in a matter of minutes. Honestly, I cannot emphasise enough how devastatingly terrifying it is to be in that situation. NOBODY can ever be prepared for it, NOBODY ever thinks it’ll be them.

Here’s the shocking bit. What you think you know of me is not the full picture.

That evening, in the middle of a tear-drenched rosary I turned to my husband John and said:

“I hope she dies tonight”. Read that again. Louise who I love beyond language that exists, I hoped she’d die that night.

Now it was not for one trillionth of a nano second an option that I would kill or authorise anyone else to kill this beloved beloved child, but I was in the worst situation of my entire life and I wanted out of it as quickly as possible. I have a long history of miscarriage, it has been part of our marriage from the start – baby … miscarriage … baby … miscarriage – until I had grieved seven of my children.

Immediately previous to this pregnancy we had lost the twins I had always dearly hoped for; there are twins in both sides of our family. The grief for those twins was crippling and I wasn’t managing too well with it. I was worn out with grief after grief and to be honest I didn’t think I would survive the grief of watching a newborn child die in my arms.

So I hoped she’d die that night.

Because I was terrified, and grief stricken, and terrified. You cannot imagine it. The doctor had offered a quick way out: “go to England”. I was never going to go to England. I could no more kill my little child than I could kill my thirteen year old.

But I wanted out of this situation.

I was terrified. And terrified. I had grieved for seven of my beloved children. Now this child was much bigger, much older, much more see-able than her older siblings who hadn’t made it, but it would still have been a miscarriage and I thought I could survive it. I didn’t think I could survive a born child dying. I thought her last breath would be my last breath.

If she died tonight I could get on with my grief and maybe next year sometime I could come out of the familiar cloud of crippling, caustic, smothering grief which I hated so much. Maybe next year I could forgive my body for killing my child and start to treat it properly instead of deliberately eating rubbish and not exercising because why would I care for the thing (me) which kept killing my children.

Now here’s the thing. Had I said to our doctor: “OK, give me the letter” (which I later heard from other mothers was also offered to them by the same doctor). We would have been on a rollercoaster of booking planes, organising babysitters, planning meals and school runs and who would bring the girls to ballet, and athletics, and piano … a rollercoaster doesn’t stop to let you think and cry.

But I had no control over whether this baby died tonight or tomorrow or the next day, because I wasn’t going to go to England. I was going to stay in Ireland, where another doctor would someday call her baby and use the word ‘hope’.

I spent the next day crying. My brother dropped all his activities and came to me. He sat at our kitchen table for several hours and said nothing while I cried and cried and cried. My best friend and neighbour, a nurse, told me I could do this; we’d love her and she would too. My sisters called over and cried with me because there weren’t that many words you can say to a terrified grieving mother whose world has crashed. My father came and we prayed the rosary together. The children prayed for the baby of someone they knew who was very sick, they prayed so lovingly for that unknown – yet oh so known – baby. And my husband, he was there. I believe in a crisis that one person is given the grace to carry everyone else. He was that person. It wasn’t me because I was terrified. How could we tell these children that they may never hold their beloved sister alive? How could you do that?

A day later I didn’t want that child to die that night. I wanted her to hang in there for a few more weeks. I wanted a birth certificate. I became fixated on a birth certificate. I wanted her to live for four more weeks so that Ireland would recognise that she was here and that she had passed through and that her name was Louise. It meant everything to me that she would be officially acknowledged as having existed.

Had we boarded the rollercoaster of planes and babysitters and abortion appointments, I wouldn’t have had time to shed the river, the tsunami of tears that gave me courage to accept a twenty-four week stillbirth over a twenty week miscarriage.

A few days later I didn’t want that child to die before she was born. I wanted her to live for every last second she could squeeze out of life. After a few days I was willing to hold a dying baby in my arms and to kiss her into eternity. I was willing to take whatever grief would allow me to kiss this child even if she only lived for one hour, one minute, one second. I wanted to be the one who loved her into the arms of Jesus.

I could not possibly have reached the point from wanting her to die tonight to being willing to take whatever it was going to take to mother this baby who was in trouble. It took me a few days of tears and undignified soul-wrenching sobbing and the prayers of a drowning mother to muster enough courage, however ragged, to face the future. I couldn’t have done that had I been given a next day appointment for an abortion. I couldn’t have done that had we been like a friend in Liverpool who was told they could take her upstairs now from ultrasound room to abortion room.

Time healed. Just enough to give me courage for the future and whatever it held.

As you know, she didn’t die that night. As you know, she loves her little puppy. As you know, she is beloved beyond language can describe.

The eighth amendment has saved numerous Louises. It has saved numerous babies, sick or well. Because sometimes we need a few days to adjust to terror and to decide I don’t want my child to die, I want her to LIVE, if only for a minute.