Benedict

We always wanted a brother or sister for our our little boy Dominic. We felt it would be very good for him to have someone to look out for, to have as a best friend and worst enemy, and to help him grow as a fully fleshed out, responsible man. For the sibling, the experience and information (like you can get pregnant by sitting on a toilet seat, even if you're a boy) that would be disseminated by an older brother would be priceless, they could lean on each other and grow with each other, fight and support each other, and really be their own little gang. Most of all, we just wanted another baby. Dominic was born quite late in our lives, I was 39 and Siobhan had just turned 41 a few days earlier. We knew that if it was going to happen, it had to happen soon. The chances of pregnancy decrease drastically over 35, and even more so after 40, so time was not on our side. We tried actively for a couple of years with no joy (on the baby front), and we had made peace with the concept that Dominic was going to be an only child. Just as well, we said, we are getting too old for the realities of raising a child, and the fact is that genetic defects become far more prevalent with the advanced age of the parents, ie. Down's syndrome occurs more frequently, the overall quality of the sperm and egg decreases leading to all manner of defects, a million reasons to make it happen, if it's going to happen, as soon as possible. One day, quite for no reason whatsoever, Siobhan notices that she has a spare pregnancy test and decides, as you will, to pee on it. She's a week or so late, but puts it down to age finally doing its thing. Not this time. She's Pregnant! So happy, so much joy! We didn't think it would ever happen again, but here it is! All the emotions you'd expect come too, the fear (how can we cope with two? how can I love another as much as I love my son? will I overcompensate with the love and neglect my boy? can we afford another?), the planning, the waiting. We tell everyone who will listen, and if they don't, we tell them louder. Oh my god, another child! How wonderful! Incredible! The reality is that sometimes we even forget the baby is in there, we had come to believe there would never be another, so sometimes the brainwashing peeks through and we forget. Of course, as soon as we notice that we are not as vigilant about making sure that the baby is the topic of every conversation, we reproach ourselves for not making the same big deal that we did last time. When my son Dominic was on his way, I was the most over-the-top expectant daddy. I spoke to Siobhan's belly all the time. I rubbed it, making circles with my hand, sometimes not even realising I was doing it. and of course, I just wouldn't shut up about it. When he first started moving, it became so real, he wasn't just a fuzzy picture on a scan, he wasn't just a reason for the changes Siobhan was going through, and he wasn't just an idea. He was my son, my first born, he was real and he was coming soon! I spent every minute of every day either talking or thinking or reading about him and what to expect. This time, we were just as excited, but a little surprised and frankly incredulous, so as a result not as attentive as I would like to have been. We are holding our breath for scan day, the day when we get to see this little concept become a reality. The questions we have are things like is it a boy or girl? Is it healthy? Does it have all it's parts? If it's a boy, what will we call him? This begins the name debate again, and the disagreements again. But what if it's a girl? Siobhan thinks it would be nice for Dominic to have a little brother, but thinks it would be nice for me to have a little girl. Her name should be Elisabeth. She knows I would positively adore a daughter and she would wrap me around around her very little finger, with love, of course. We talk about the day she brings home the young man foolish enough to want to date her, and the string of death threats he would receive when he gets The Talk (a thought I outwardly relish and inwardly polish to menacing and terrifying perfection), watching her grow from a sweet, adorable little girl who worships her daddy and just won't shut up, to a remarkable, beautiful woman who will hold the world in the palm of her hand. If it's a boy, will he look like Dominic ,who looks quite bit like me, or will he look more like Siobhan? I think Siobhan is a gorgeous woman, and a boy could do very well to take on her features. As Dominic gets older, he has begun to take on more of his mama's looks, so you can see us both in him, perhaps the next boy will do the same or look more like what we envisioned Dominic would look like with my dark hair and olive complexion. When Dominic was born we thought he would have more of my features, but the moment he arrived we were very surprised, as he was blonde and fair with blue eyes. All babies are born blue eyed, but he stayed the picture of stereotypical Aryan perfection. To tell the truth, when he was born he was a purple, rubbery ball of rage and fury. He was 3 weeks late and would have been very happy to stay there longer. Would the new one be late too? Dominic was a big boy at 9lb 12oz, would the new one be as big or even bigger? Siobhan has had 7 children, each larger than the last, and this new one threatens to be the biggest yet, and we know s/he will be the most lovely of all. Siobhan has been sicker than she recalls being for any of her other pregnancies, and says it's a good sign, but she also says that she has stopped feeling sick, so that's a relief. The big day comes. We get all bundled up as it's a cold wet day, and we explain to Dominic that today he will see his new brother or sister! We sit in the waiting room, nervously counting the seconds until we are called in, and trying to get Dominic to stop running all over the place. The moment comes when we are called in, and we can't get in fast enough. We chatter nervously to the tech, "this my second, but her eighth","we have tossed a few names around", "I think he'll love being a big brother". Then she gels up her tummy and away we go. We see a baby shaped blob on the screen. I turn to Dominic while the tech continues to look around at the little baby, and I say,"Dominic! Now you'll have a little brother or sister you can blame everything on!" No sooner had I finished the last sound, when the tech asks Siobhan if she's had any bleeding and Siobhan asks why? The answer completely shatters my life. She says "There is a baby, and it's in the right place,but I'm so sorry, there's no heartbeat." My brain refuses to hear the words. There's no way those words could have been spoken, so I ask her to say it again. "I'm so sorry, there's no heartbeat". My ears fill with blood, the muscles in my face completely give way, as does my whole world. Every wonderful emotion I had has been replaced by a crushing desire to die. I feel sick. I feel such sadness like I have never felt before, I hoped it was never possible to know this kind of grief. I know it's only week 13, but I know my child has died, and I know there will never be another. Dominic, bless him doesn't understand what has happened, but he sees Siobhan, who has been destroyed, crying and me crying and he feels sad too because we are. Siobhan can't speak for the sobbing and the tech gives us another confirming once over of her tummy, and explains that she has no idea why his heart is not beating, just that it hasn't for about a week. How could we not have known? Doesn't the body tell you about something like this? We remember that is has told us. She stopped feeling sick. She thought it was just a natural sessation of the hormone that makes you sick and she was settling into being happily pregnant. The nurse tells us about the options for the end of the pregnancy, and we decide on the natural way, to just let the baby come out on it's own. We refuse to call it the foetus. It was a baby, our baby. I don't know if we are making things worse for ourselves by refusing to depersonalise this. I refuse to do it any other way, and so does Siobhan. We spend the next 3 weeks waiting for the baby to come and crying and trying to figure out what happened and why. The nurse had been very straight with us, with very little emotionality, which I greatly appreciated. I wanted the facts and I didn't want them through the veil of sadness, which I know that despite she's a human being and she can empathise, she's also a medical professional, she sees this often enough and she has learned to separate herself from such sentimentality because she simply has to, otherwise she'd spend her very short career being a blubbering mess, so her emotions would not be honest. The truth is the honesty I need. The truth is that sometimes the baby's heart just doesn't get what it needs, for whatever reason, and stops beating, and that's it. There's no reason that I can accept. Even if it was just a genetic flaw, and something was preventing the baby from clearing the next developmental hurdle, and there was absolutely nothing we could have done to prevent it, we still feel that there was something we could have done to prevent this. The truth is that the only thing that could have stopped this from happeneing was to not get pregnant at all. So my child is dead, and now we must prepare for the day when it is delivered, because that's the way we have chosen. Our baby will be born. Dominic was 3 weeks late so why should my second son be any different? At about 1 am on the 14th of November Siobhan's waters break. Not long now. She goes to the bathroom and within a few minutes she is crying and calling for me. The baby has come out. But why is she sounding so upset? I knew she would be, of course, but she sounds shocked as well. The baby has been born whole, and I had no idea. He was fully developed. He has 5 fingers and 5 toes and a little winkie and his little tongue is sticking out of his little mouth and he's perfect. He's just a tiny little version of a complete human being. I had no idea that he would be so complete. There he is. My son, and there's not a single fucking thing wrong with him. He's just dead. Oh god I want to die again, the lump in my throat makes breathing painful, coupled with the weight on my chest. I've never known this sadness, it's worse than when we got the news because it's really real. It's here in front of me. Why does he have to look so perfect? Why can't he have some obvious defect which would explain why he's here 28 weeks early? We cry and cry and cry, then we put our preparations in motion. We take pictures so that we will have a record of what he looked like, the only baby pictures we will ever have. We wrap him in a little bit of cloth and put him in a little bed that Siobhan has knit for him. We give him the name Benedict. Soon after Dominic was born I began to sing the Beatles song "Good Night" to him, so I hold little Benedict in my hand, and sing it to him, knowing I will never sing it to him again. I barely make it through, and I break several times during the song. We bury him in a large plant pot and cover him with bulbs so he will be in bloom for us year round. I just want to say that I fully support a woman's right to choose. I believe that the only person who should make decisions regarding childbirth, unless the woman is completely incapacitated or her life is threatened, is the woman herself. It is for this reason I would hope that in the future, women are done the enormous favour of being offered a little more information about just how developed an 11 week old foetus is before she decides to terminate. It's heart beats. It has everything you'd expect of a fully formed human being. There are other options than termination. I know that many just can't bring a child to term. Rape cases and severly mentally disabled women, I understand completely why they can't do it. If you feel that it will disfigure your previously pristine vagina, I ask that you find a better reason than that. I don't know anyone who has done it for that reason, but I also understand that's a reason that has been used. You're not willing to give up your career, you're not financially prepared, you're too young and you haven't lived as much of your life for you, I get it completely, but really, in 9 months you can get right back to it, and at least in England you will get mat leave without the fear of job loss, and if you put the child up for adoption, your life will be all yours again. I just ask that you really understand what you'd be applying this procedure to, and what stage of development it's at, depending on how quickly you get the procedure done. I also think that any responsible doctor should do this, not as a way to convince you not to do it, but as a way to ensure that this is what you really want, and to ensure you have all the facts. I feel it's just due diligence, and if it's still what you want, then carry on. Siobhan begins to feel very lightheaded, and starts to bleed heavily, so an ambulance is called. She's hemmorrhaged, so she has to go to the hospital for observation. She says she feels a bit better and needs to go to the bathroom. She starts to bleed again so no argument this time. While the EMTs keep an eye on her and take blood pressure and such, I clean up the bathroom. There's so much blood. It's all over the floor and the toilet. So much. I start to clean and wrap up just as Siobhan is being taken by stretcher to the ambulance. I want to come with her so I call her son Julian to explain what has happened and to ask him to look after Dominic until I get back. He says I'll have to do better than that and hangs up. We have never spoken to him since, and not by our choice. He's decided to cut us out of his life for some reason which no one will explain, which means Dominic has no big brother, and little Evie, Julian's daughter has no grandmother. This just adds to the terrible feeling surrounding this whole thing. Imagine your child not particularily caring that you have just lost his new brother and that you're bleeding severely in the hospital. What has to have happened to engender this? I'm so angry and upset I don't have words. I want to drive over to his house, get him out of bed and give him the kicking he so richly deserves, but I can't leave Dominic, and I content myself with the thought that for once, the shit has extricated itself from my life. I do understand that Benedict was only 12 weeks old. I do understand that if he had lived and then died when he was a week or a month or a year then it would be so much worse. But I won't be told that his death was nothing to be so upset about. When he was born he was perfect and there was no reason that we knew of that he should not be alive, he should have been alive, he should be my beautiful second little boy, he should be 18 months old now, and walking and happy and playful and clever and funny. He should be here with us, and I won't be told he wasn't a real baby. I won't hear that he wasn't my son, because he was supposed to be, and I've seen him and I've held him and sung to him, and now I've buried him. A month from now is his second birthday. I think about him all the time and what should have been. On the exceptionally rare cases that I do mention him, I refer to him as my son, and that he passed very early. I'm not trying to engender any sympathy, or make anyone feel bad for me, it's just the way I think of him. Siobhan has begun perimenopause, so there will be no more babies. I have my son Dominic, and I love him so much and I am so grateful for him, but I will never have another. Siobhan, who is so good at having babies she should gone professional, is deeply depressed at the thought that what she thought was her purpose in life, to have babies, is no longer her purpose, and she thinks that maybe she no longer has one. I tell her that her purpose is to continue to be a mother to her other kids and to be mama to Dominic, but it's not quite enough. I think I understand. The saying is time heals all wounds. It doesn't, it just provides more things to dwell on in between the thoughts of Benedict. Every time I do think of him, I feel the same pain and loss and sorrow I felt then. This will never change. I don't want it to. I never want to forget how much I love him, even though he was taken from us and the only time I got to spend with him was after he had died. I go on about this a lot, and I suppose it's more than most who have experienced this. It's just that he was the end of my children, there won't be any more. Siobhan is the only woman I would want children with, she gave me my first and he'll be my last. The anniversay of his birth will always be a very dark day for us, and I suppose that I just needed to write about this because I have never spoken to anyone other than Siobhan about this, and I just wanted to get it out. I don't imagine this will make me feel better or lessen the pain, but Benedict deserves to know that even before we knew he was coming, he was wanted and desired and loved and cherished. I deserve to be allowed my pain, to never let it be lessened or dulled, and to remember him always. I'm so sorry, baby boy, I wish I had known you. I wish I could sing for you. I wish I could watch you grow. I wish I could play with you. I wish I could see what you look like. I wish I could hear your voice. I wish I could hold you and kiss you and hug you. I love you so much, and I always will. Happy birthday Benedict. Love, Daddy