This story is part of The Wall of Wombs, our 2024 exhibition sharing honest, deeply personal journeys of motherhood.
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We unfortunately lost our first baby. She was a girl, and we lost her at 22 weeks.
So we were lucky enough to fall pregnant almost instantly on our honeymoon. We were super excited, and we went for our first dating scan at about—I think I was about seven weeks pregnant. During the scan, they told me that I was measuring a week behind. I was a little bit concerned at the time, but they were just trying to assure me, “It’s fine. Don’t be concerned, it’s all normal.”
By the time we got to 12 weeks, everyone always told me, “You get to 12 weeks, you’re in the safe zone.” We announced it straight away. Then we got a phone call from my GP. She said, “We need you to come in just to discuss the results.” So we went in, and before we even had the chance to sit down, she just said, “It’s not good news.” She said, “Your baby is at high risk for trisomy 18.” All she said was, “I don’t know much about it. I haven’t had any patients that have had it. Abortion is your best option.”
And I just went, “I’m sorry, what? This is my first baby.” I was just in shock. I didn’t really know how to take it. I’m like, “What’s trisomy 18?” So we started researching and found out it was Edwards syndrome. We were looking at the chances of survival and everything that’s linked to it. Our worlds just came crashing down, basically. She wrote us a referral to get the NIPT blood test. So we went and got that done, waited a week for the results, and they came back inconclusive. They said, “We need you to get more blood taken.”
The next few weeks were just agony, with testing and not having any answers. I called them numerous times asking for an ultrasound. They kept saying, “An ultrasound’s not going to tell you anything.” Basically, I wasn’t getting answers from anyone, and I was just losing my mind at that point. I was just constantly calling the hospital, like weeks were going by. I think I was about 15 weeks by this point.
The next day, I went in for the ultrasound. The sonographer started scanning everything, and she was really quiet. Then she finished and said, “I’m just gonna get the doctor to come in and speak to you.”
The doctor came in, sat us down, and said, “Look, we’re really sorry, but something’s not okay with the baby. There’s something wrong. We don’t know what it is, but the only way we can know for sure is if we do an amniocentesis procedure where they put the needle through the belly and test the amniotic fluid.” Then she told me that with the amnio, there’s a big chance of miscarriage. I did the amnio, and it was excruciatingly painful. I was crying throughout the whole procedure.
After the amnio, she said, “Look, there’s a few things that we think it could be, but I think the main one we think it might be is triploidy.”
We went home, waiting for the results, and we started researching everything we could about triploidy. So it’s a condition where the baby inherits an extra set of every chromosome, so it’s got Down syndrome, like every syndrome you can think of. And there’s zero chance of survival. They call it “incompatible with life.”
I was 16 weeks pregnant at the time. They didn’t push me to have an abortion. They just explained everything to me, what the risks were with proceeding with a triploidy pregnancy. I just looked at her and said, “I’m proceeding with this pregnancy, regardless.” I said, “There’s a chance you could be wrong. I’ve heard of stories where people get diagnoses and they’re wrong. I want to give my baby a chance.” And I did read stories that some babies were born alive for a few minutes, but who am I to take those few minutes away?
So, we just spent the next few weeks trying to come to terms with the news. We had people approaching us, congratulating us for becoming pregnant because we had already announced it. And we found that extremely difficult, trying to repeat the same story over and over. Like, “Oh, thank you, but no, actually, our baby’s not going to make it.”
And then I was 22 weeks pregnant, and while I was in the shower, something in my head was like, “You need to try and find the heartbeat.” I can’t explain what that was. I just got out of the shower, pulled the Doppler out, and started searching. Couldn’t find it. I called the hospital, explained the situation to them. They said, “Please come in.” So we got in the car, drove all the way there. I think we waited for about an hour in this bed, which was just excruciating. The doctor finally comes in, starts the ultrasound. And I can just see the baby on the screen, just completely still. And then he just took a few minutes and said, “I’m so sorry, we can’t find a heartbeat.”
It was like someone had just stabbed me in the heart and ran over me with a truck. Like, that’s when it hit me. I was like, “Oh my gosh, she’s gone,” and we just cried for ages. They left the room and just left us there to be together, and we just cried. I’m like, “Okay, so what now?” And they said, “Look, we’re gonna have to induce you now to get the baby out because you’re past 20 weeks. So you have to go through labour.” They gave me a tablet to take over the weekend, which started the whole process.
And then we went into the hospital on Tuesday. We were in good spirits; I think by that point, we had come to terms with what had happened. It had been a whole six weeks that we knew this was a possibility. And then, I started getting contractions. While I was sitting there talking, I just felt a snap.
I leaned forward and I felt like a little trickle of water. I went, “Okay, my water just broke,” which was so surreal because I had no belly. She said, “Okay, off to the delivery room, the baby’s coming, you need to go now.” The contractions were coming on, and I was like, “Okay, this is quite painful,” because I’d never experienced anything like that before. A little bit of blood was trickling down my leg, and I remember wiping it away. Then I felt something. I can only describe it as like a chicken bone. I called the midwife. She said, “We need to move you to the bed.” So I moved over to the bed, and she was breached. Because I wasn’t really given time to dilate, her head got stuck in my cervix.
I was pushing for about three hours. I just remember them saying to me, “Get on the bed onto all fours.” And it was like, when you’re butt naked, on a bed, on all fours, pushing, you just lose all kinds of dignity at that point. I just remember looking down and seeing two little legs dangling, like they were the tiniest little legs I’ve ever seen in my life.
I said to the doctors, “I feel like I need to go to the toilet.” And they said, “Okay, let’s get you on the toilet.” I just sat there, and I can see my husband’s there looking at me, the midwife’s there looking at me. And I said, “Can you please not watch me?” Because you know, you just can’t, it’s just so uncomfortable at that point. They turned around, and the second they turned around, I just relaxed and she literally fell out. In the toilet bowl. And I just said, “She’s out, she’s out, she’s out.” And they’re like, “Okay, stand up really, really, really slowly.” And I stood up, and then the placenta fell out as well.
And it was like, probably the size of a golf ball. It was tiny. She was 18 centimetres long, she was 65 grams. She had every physical abnormality under the sun that I could see. She had a cleft palate, her face was caved in because it got crushed in my cervix, she had webbed fingers and toes, she had clubbed feet. Her skin was bright red, like she was… it was really confronting. But I’m so glad that I didn’t go through an abortion because I got to see her. I got to hold her. We got to spend the night with her. They kept her in a cooling cot next to my bed, so she didn’t start decomposing.
We named her Gabriela. And then we buried her a couple days later.
That’s the story of my baby girl. I just feel like going through that has made me appreciate everything so much more, and it’s made me learn that not everything is guaranteed in life.
I’m very grateful to have beautiful, healthy children and another one on the way. But it really changed my perspective on everything in life.