Post by campbellsmommy on Nov 3, 2005 1:39:47 GMT -5
I guess i have been around long enough. With Thanksgiving comming up (my due date) I am really trying to "get into" the holidays a whole lot more this year in an attempt to keep me busy. So i though i would share my story.
This is a long and sorrid and truley unhappy story. If you can put up with all my spelling mistakes
To understand you would have to understand me, im not a simpering female, im not weak, im not prone to bad health. My oldest son Justice was born while i was in the Navy, he also was a major cord accident was born lifeless, and was finally revived over 10 min later, or so im told. Grayson is 8 and i was working 2 jobs and going to school full time with him. Brodie also had issues.. cord compression and what not. I worked offshore for an oil company when i was pregnant with him.. I tell you all of this because i just want you to understand that im not fragile
A year ago, my husband (who also works in the oilfield, and is a scottish national, im american) was transfered to the UK, i gave up my career, we packed up all our kids and we moved to England. Shortley after christmas we found our we were going to have another child, he was working 20 hour days and every weekened, i was having a very hard time adjusting to being a Stay at home mom, neither one of us was thrilled. We were fighting, we were broke and well we really couldn't deal with any more on our plate. We slowly started to warm up to the idea of another baby
obstetrics here is handled by the midwifes.
My first trimester of pregnancy was a nightmare. I called my local surgery to set up my appointment with the local midwife. They refused to see me until i had decided on a hospital for delivery, so i spent the next week on a bus touring the countryside looking for a NHS hospital. I decided on one, called them back. The midwife came to see me, emphasised home births and breastfeeding. I explained i was not into that sort of delivery, i wanted an epi, and i prefered to bottle feed my children (yes, i know.. bad bad) and that non of them tolorated millk based formulas good so i would need recomendations for soy (all the kids took a soy formula, then were able to move to whole milk by 1 year). Well i guess that started it, i started getting pamplets in my mail about home births and breastfeeding.
I went to my first appointment at 12 weeks, Apparently i was on the list because i didn't bring my own sample, i guess im not to comfortable transporting my own urine around. Anyway.. she then checked my blood pressure deemed me healthy a fit and sent me on my way. I then looked at her stupidly and tried to explain that i was having a hard time keeping food down, i think my sugars were very low, i was vomiting over 10 times a day and i had lost 15 pounds already. I told her it had gotten so bad that i passed out and fell down the stairs the week before. She told me to drink some flat coke. I asked her if she was going to listen to a heart beat and her response was "No,
its not like if i couldn't find it there would be anything i could do about it".. Well ok then.. so i left in tears.. went home told my husband about it.. and well he just kind of shrugged it off as everyone here is rude.
4 weeks later i was admitted to the hospital for a polminary embolisim? When i told them that i was roughly 16 weeks pregnant they refused treatment, they said that medications and confirmation exrays would hurt the baby. And basically if it was going to go away it would otherwise it would kill me. So i went home and started taking some asprin.
I had another appointment at 18 weeks. This one was much of the same of the other, just a blood pressure check, No weight, no fetal heart rate nothing.. just bloodpressure. She said she doesn't check fetal heartrate because it doesn't tell you anything. I was also told that i would not be recieving my Rogahm shot, i am O-, because they don't feel its necessary. I was then told my next appointment wouldn't be until i was 34 weeks seeing as how i have had so many children.
At 20 weeks i went to the hospital for my scan where everything was normal, although i couldn't hear the heartbeat (the sound was broke on the machine) i was able to see it. Campbell measured right on schedule. I went into the consultants office (doctor) (it was confirmed it was another boy, so now i had to start requesting the NHS for a circumcision, which was either going to land me in jail for child crultey and child abuse or i would probably get deported) I asked him about the Rogahm thing.. he confirmed that my midwives were a bit more "hippy" than the rest but if i felt that i needed it he would schedule for to have it, he then gave me another lecture on circumsision.
Thru all of this things with my husband were getting worse, i wasn't paying any attention to the kids, i was getting depressed, seriously depressed, although i didn't recognise it at the time.
Around my 24th week i was in the kitchen and i started to have some really bad cramping. i thought they were BH, i called the hospital, they told me drink some water, lay down, this isn't my first rodeo, i know the drill. by 6 that night they hadn't gone away, she told me to come in. When i got there the midwife was expecting me. She told me to come in and pee in a cup, the contrax had stopped. She came back about a half an hour later, very excited that there was some protein in my urine and that it was a Urinary Track Infection. So i got dressed and i was walking out the door. She then called me back and told me that we should check for Campbells heart rate because it would put my mind at ease to hear it. and well she couldn't find it. she tried for 30 min.. She then called in Doc twenty something Sarah (my little joke because this woman didn't look a day older then 21) Doc TS Sarah got out a scan machine and she couldn't find it. She didn't turn the screen away from me and i was able to see that Campbell wasn't moving at all, not for the whole hour she was trying. She then explaine that she wasn't a certified scan person and that i would have to come back the next day when someone more qualified would be able to check, the midwife was crying i had eyes, so i already knew.
The next morning we went back There were 4 consultants (doctors) 3 midwives, and 4 scan people in there. but basically everyone knew, and they were just there to date him. By there scan date, he was 23 weeks 5 days. So they look at you and tell you they are sorry and they hand you the pamplet for under 24 weeks. That is the one where they refer to him as a piece of tissue and explain how there has to be a cut off and that you can take your "tissue" home and bury him in your garden. They then explain that this next process will take a long time and as he was so far along i would have to deliver him. They told me to take some pills and come back in 3 days if labor hadn't started. I explained that 3 days time would be my birthday and asked if we could come in the day before, so 2 days later, she thought it over for a bit and after some hedging agreed but told us to call first to make sure they had room.
We got there thurs morning, they marched us to the back of the L&D ward, you pass all the bassinets, all the warmers, and you get to the very last room in the ward, and it is minus all that, it just has a stainless steal table with a big bucket at the bottom, and a kitchenette. I went back to smoking after i found out the news so everytime i would take that walk down the corridor well it was hard. A doc finally got there around 10 and explained that they were going to give me more pills to start my labor and i agreed, they said this could take up to 3 days. The Chaplain came in and explained how due to the fact that he was 23 weeks 5 days i wouldn't be able to have him baptized because you know.. there has to be a cut off... labor started at around 1030 and i had him by 130.
Campbell was perfect.. 1lb 5 oz.. beautiful. He was born Aug 4, 2005, the day before my birthday. it was very apparent that it was a cord accident the cord was wrapped around his body and his neck and also tied in a knot around his feet. They took him and bathed him, and dressed him and brought him back to me. The midwife took some pictures of him and then handed me a box. It had a bear in it, the exact one that he was holding, a frame in it, and a letter from another family saying how sorry they were and that they had made this box.
It was very obvious though what was happining, it was me who was going to have to leave first. They wern't going to take him, they want me to leave my son there. If i hand't been on so much morphine i don't think i would have been able to.
I went ahead and refused the autopsy after they told me that there was a 6 week wait in the pathology department. I left the hospital 1 hour and 30 min after i had him. I went directly to the funeral home to arrange for him to get picked up. He was cremated and buried in Scotland with his great grandmother. I also had some of his ashes put into a locket and sealed so i could always keep him with me.
Nobody has every called to see if i was all right, not stopped by. They were supposed to send me a letter for my 6 week check up, i never got that. The NHS.. you gotta love them.
So that is it... my husband thinks iam "moving on" and i just try and get thru the days. I started his scrap book , but i had to put it away, my tears were messing up the pages. I have to say though as sad as i am, the depression from before has moved on, this has really made me take a long look at my life, and really wake me up.
So that is the long sorrid story, i cant wait to get out of this h*ll hole of a country and move to greener pastures. Start our lives again. I havn't gone to any support groups here, are they sympathetic in England? i get the impression that im not supposed to talk about this at all here. Im just supposed to move on. I had one lady that told me that this happens to 1 in 5000 babies. and that i should find some comfort to know that because my son died 5000 babies will live. I just wanted to punch her in the mouth. Im starting to get some information together and i think im going to petition the NHS and Tony Blair on the importance of checking fetal heart rate and how these midwifes need to be supervised. I know this is not the cause of my sons death but firstoff i think due to the midwifes i didn't have sufficent prenatal care, which really pissed me off, and because i didn't want to go "aunatural" i was kind of dumped. I know a cord accident only takes a short time to happen and it would take 24 hour monitoring to stop it. but i don't think any mother should have to go 24 weeks with never hearing her baby live. Its just wrong. It should have never been an afterthought.
Jess
>
This is a long and sorrid and truley unhappy story. If you can put up with all my spelling mistakes
To understand you would have to understand me, im not a simpering female, im not weak, im not prone to bad health. My oldest son Justice was born while i was in the Navy, he also was a major cord accident was born lifeless, and was finally revived over 10 min later, or so im told. Grayson is 8 and i was working 2 jobs and going to school full time with him. Brodie also had issues.. cord compression and what not. I worked offshore for an oil company when i was pregnant with him.. I tell you all of this because i just want you to understand that im not fragile
A year ago, my husband (who also works in the oilfield, and is a scottish national, im american) was transfered to the UK, i gave up my career, we packed up all our kids and we moved to England. Shortley after christmas we found our we were going to have another child, he was working 20 hour days and every weekened, i was having a very hard time adjusting to being a Stay at home mom, neither one of us was thrilled. We were fighting, we were broke and well we really couldn't deal with any more on our plate. We slowly started to warm up to the idea of another baby
obstetrics here is handled by the midwifes.
My first trimester of pregnancy was a nightmare. I called my local surgery to set up my appointment with the local midwife. They refused to see me until i had decided on a hospital for delivery, so i spent the next week on a bus touring the countryside looking for a NHS hospital. I decided on one, called them back. The midwife came to see me, emphasised home births and breastfeeding. I explained i was not into that sort of delivery, i wanted an epi, and i prefered to bottle feed my children (yes, i know.. bad bad) and that non of them tolorated millk based formulas good so i would need recomendations for soy (all the kids took a soy formula, then were able to move to whole milk by 1 year). Well i guess that started it, i started getting pamplets in my mail about home births and breastfeeding.
I went to my first appointment at 12 weeks, Apparently i was on the list because i didn't bring my own sample, i guess im not to comfortable transporting my own urine around. Anyway.. she then checked my blood pressure deemed me healthy a fit and sent me on my way. I then looked at her stupidly and tried to explain that i was having a hard time keeping food down, i think my sugars were very low, i was vomiting over 10 times a day and i had lost 15 pounds already. I told her it had gotten so bad that i passed out and fell down the stairs the week before. She told me to drink some flat coke. I asked her if she was going to listen to a heart beat and her response was "No,
its not like if i couldn't find it there would be anything i could do about it".. Well ok then.. so i left in tears.. went home told my husband about it.. and well he just kind of shrugged it off as everyone here is rude.
4 weeks later i was admitted to the hospital for a polminary embolisim? When i told them that i was roughly 16 weeks pregnant they refused treatment, they said that medications and confirmation exrays would hurt the baby. And basically if it was going to go away it would otherwise it would kill me. So i went home and started taking some asprin.
I had another appointment at 18 weeks. This one was much of the same of the other, just a blood pressure check, No weight, no fetal heart rate nothing.. just bloodpressure. She said she doesn't check fetal heartrate because it doesn't tell you anything. I was also told that i would not be recieving my Rogahm shot, i am O-, because they don't feel its necessary. I was then told my next appointment wouldn't be until i was 34 weeks seeing as how i have had so many children.
At 20 weeks i went to the hospital for my scan where everything was normal, although i couldn't hear the heartbeat (the sound was broke on the machine) i was able to see it. Campbell measured right on schedule. I went into the consultants office (doctor) (it was confirmed it was another boy, so now i had to start requesting the NHS for a circumcision, which was either going to land me in jail for child crultey and child abuse or i would probably get deported) I asked him about the Rogahm thing.. he confirmed that my midwives were a bit more "hippy" than the rest but if i felt that i needed it he would schedule for to have it, he then gave me another lecture on circumsision.
Thru all of this things with my husband were getting worse, i wasn't paying any attention to the kids, i was getting depressed, seriously depressed, although i didn't recognise it at the time.
Around my 24th week i was in the kitchen and i started to have some really bad cramping. i thought they were BH, i called the hospital, they told me drink some water, lay down, this isn't my first rodeo, i know the drill. by 6 that night they hadn't gone away, she told me to come in. When i got there the midwife was expecting me. She told me to come in and pee in a cup, the contrax had stopped. She came back about a half an hour later, very excited that there was some protein in my urine and that it was a Urinary Track Infection. So i got dressed and i was walking out the door. She then called me back and told me that we should check for Campbells heart rate because it would put my mind at ease to hear it. and well she couldn't find it. she tried for 30 min.. She then called in Doc twenty something Sarah (my little joke because this woman didn't look a day older then 21) Doc TS Sarah got out a scan machine and she couldn't find it. She didn't turn the screen away from me and i was able to see that Campbell wasn't moving at all, not for the whole hour she was trying. She then explaine that she wasn't a certified scan person and that i would have to come back the next day when someone more qualified would be able to check, the midwife was crying i had eyes, so i already knew.
The next morning we went back There were 4 consultants (doctors) 3 midwives, and 4 scan people in there. but basically everyone knew, and they were just there to date him. By there scan date, he was 23 weeks 5 days. So they look at you and tell you they are sorry and they hand you the pamplet for under 24 weeks. That is the one where they refer to him as a piece of tissue and explain how there has to be a cut off and that you can take your "tissue" home and bury him in your garden. They then explain that this next process will take a long time and as he was so far along i would have to deliver him. They told me to take some pills and come back in 3 days if labor hadn't started. I explained that 3 days time would be my birthday and asked if we could come in the day before, so 2 days later, she thought it over for a bit and after some hedging agreed but told us to call first to make sure they had room.
We got there thurs morning, they marched us to the back of the L&D ward, you pass all the bassinets, all the warmers, and you get to the very last room in the ward, and it is minus all that, it just has a stainless steal table with a big bucket at the bottom, and a kitchenette. I went back to smoking after i found out the news so everytime i would take that walk down the corridor well it was hard. A doc finally got there around 10 and explained that they were going to give me more pills to start my labor and i agreed, they said this could take up to 3 days. The Chaplain came in and explained how due to the fact that he was 23 weeks 5 days i wouldn't be able to have him baptized because you know.. there has to be a cut off... labor started at around 1030 and i had him by 130.
Campbell was perfect.. 1lb 5 oz.. beautiful. He was born Aug 4, 2005, the day before my birthday. it was very apparent that it was a cord accident the cord was wrapped around his body and his neck and also tied in a knot around his feet. They took him and bathed him, and dressed him and brought him back to me. The midwife took some pictures of him and then handed me a box. It had a bear in it, the exact one that he was holding, a frame in it, and a letter from another family saying how sorry they were and that they had made this box.
It was very obvious though what was happining, it was me who was going to have to leave first. They wern't going to take him, they want me to leave my son there. If i hand't been on so much morphine i don't think i would have been able to.
I went ahead and refused the autopsy after they told me that there was a 6 week wait in the pathology department. I left the hospital 1 hour and 30 min after i had him. I went directly to the funeral home to arrange for him to get picked up. He was cremated and buried in Scotland with his great grandmother. I also had some of his ashes put into a locket and sealed so i could always keep him with me.
Nobody has every called to see if i was all right, not stopped by. They were supposed to send me a letter for my 6 week check up, i never got that. The NHS.. you gotta love them.
So that is it... my husband thinks iam "moving on" and i just try and get thru the days. I started his scrap book , but i had to put it away, my tears were messing up the pages. I have to say though as sad as i am, the depression from before has moved on, this has really made me take a long look at my life, and really wake me up.
So that is the long sorrid story, i cant wait to get out of this h*ll hole of a country and move to greener pastures. Start our lives again. I havn't gone to any support groups here, are they sympathetic in England? i get the impression that im not supposed to talk about this at all here. Im just supposed to move on. I had one lady that told me that this happens to 1 in 5000 babies. and that i should find some comfort to know that because my son died 5000 babies will live. I just wanted to punch her in the mouth. Im starting to get some information together and i think im going to petition the NHS and Tony Blair on the importance of checking fetal heart rate and how these midwifes need to be supervised. I know this is not the cause of my sons death but firstoff i think due to the midwifes i didn't have sufficent prenatal care, which really pissed me off, and because i didn't want to go "aunatural" i was kind of dumped. I know a cord accident only takes a short time to happen and it would take 24 hour monitoring to stop it. but i don't think any mother should have to go 24 weeks with never hearing her baby live. Its just wrong. It should have never been an afterthought.
Jess
>
