From the age we first start school we are conditioned into the fact that September means new beginnings so much so that as adults, even when we have no school age children and are no longer in education ourselves, September can often still seem exciting as we prepare for autumn with new clothes, new stationary and a renewed focus for the future. This has always been the case for me. I loved school even more so a new notebook, accessories and clothes that came with it!
Enjoying a beer with friends & catching the last of the September sun
A New Beginning no one wants
September equalled new beginnings. I could always look at this month in a positive way until 3 years ago when that new beginning first came to equal a negative “new beginning” no one wants to ever face. That new beginning was the loss of my daughter and the new beginning that year was trying to carry on with some semblance of life without her in it. No one ever wants that kind of new beginning and this has become my biggest on going challenge to date. It’s tough really tough and never ending. Yes it was nearly 3 years ago but it feels like yesterday one minute and like a scene from a movie about someone else’s life in the next.
Violet September 2016 the day she died
Another horrendous September
Then the following September after our annus horribilis we faced another “new beginning” to add to the stress of the one the previous year. This was the loss of a much-wanted son that came out of the blue with shocking news for me accompanying it and so we had to arrange a second child’s funeral in our second stressful September “new beginning”.
Arthur’s Giraffe that now belongs to Aurora his little sister
Bringing control back
So last September I organised the Violet Ball to take back control of my Septembers and that year’s “new beginning” was a black tie charity event for 200 people to raise funds for Alder Hey children’s hospital. Which as an experienced PR is the kind of event I have organised before but this time with a 6-week-old new born baby in tow event organisation wise that was a first for me!
The Violet Ball September 2018
An exciting New Beginning
This September we decided not to do a charity ball as we agreed we needed a summer to relax and decompress rather than run around finalising an event. I was dreading finding out what this year’s “new beginning” for September would be. But you know what this year’s is actually a positive (hopefully) and challenging one as I got asked to become a part time Associate Lecturer at MMU Business school teaching marketing. New starts and exciting new beginnings that are positive is exactly what I needed and I might treat myself to a new notebook.
Hope your September’s have been successful and less stressful ones too.
Keep positive
Love Sarah
Always Violet Skies xxx
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So our little rainbow baby had her one-year inoculations the other day so we had a few days of high temperatures, a distressed clingy baby, waking every half an hour over night and whimpering in her sleep. It can be tough as a parent with a sick or teething child anytime but if you’re a parent who has experienced child loss then this can feel like a sick version of Groundhog Day.
Violet
Our first born Violet died suddenly at 15 months old and looking back her health slowly deteriorated over her final months so slowly we didn’t really notice it until it was almost too late and then it was too late.
The last photo ever taken of our gorgeous Violet the morning of the day she died in Manchester Children’s Hospital playing with a balloon.
Rainbow baby
Our rainbow baby, Aurora Violet’s baby sister is now approaching 13 months old so we are ultra sensitive to any slight change in her behaviour, routinely checking her temperature and we whisk her to see the GP as soon as she coughs more than a few times. Over protective parents have nothing on us!
A sleeping Aurora – our rainbow baby
Violet in her final months started sleeping a lot worse than she did before and we assumed she was waking because of hunger but discovered on admission into hospital that it was because her oxygen levels were plummeting. Aurora is displaying similar sleeping patterns so we’re awaiting sleep study equipment to monitor and check her oxygen levels while she sleeps.
Our rainbow baby has an appointment with a top lung specialist too, even though as yet she currently doesn’t have anything wrong with her chest (that we can tell). It makes us feel better that she will be double-checked. You may think “what a waste of that consultants time if there’s nothing wrong with her” and someone expressed that to me.
The Why
Well her sister saw countless GPs, several paediatricians at two different hospitals, several accident and emergency consultants, a variety of different registrars at Manchester Children’s Hospital, with varying levels of qualification and experience. Yet not one of them managed to accurately diagnose Violet while she was alive. It wasn’t until after a full coroners inquest nearly 2 years after her death that we even found out what the issue had been. This top lung specialist was supposed to see Violet when she was in hospital but she died before he got around to seeing her and perhaps he may have diagnosed her or not we will never know.
Violet in Manchester Children’s Hospital aged 15 months old.
So I’m not sorry in the slightest if by now playing the “my dead baby” card means that my rainbow gets the best specialist healthcare because you know what she and we bloody well deserve it. I have paid my taxes (as have my family all our lives) and we fully support funding the NHS which yes needs more funding today so babies like Violet don’t die in hospital while waiting to see a specialist.
Until you have been in our shoes and watched your child deteriorate, suffer and then die in front of you whilst no one has an explanation as to why. Then come object to me but until then I will stand and scream if I have to until I know my child is safe, healthy and happy.
If your child is ill too let me know as I’m happy to advise or scream for them too.
The Maybes
Maybe we didn’t shout loud enough with Violet? Maybe we didn’t kick up enough of a stink? Maybe I should have bundled her into my car when I decided Manchester Children’s Hospital weren’t doing a good enough job and driven her to Alder Hey hospital?
Well you know what this time if I need to then I bloody well will and god help any healthcare admin person who dares stand in my way!
The NHS
Have you ever had to question healthcare professionals? During Violet’s short lifetime we experienced the very best of the NHS and the very worst too. What are your experiences?
Big love,
Sarah
Always Violet Skies x
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Today is the official birthday of our baby boy Arthur George who was born sleeping at 22 weeks of pregnancy. Legally he doesn’t exist as he has no birth certificate or death certificate as he didn’t draw breath. If he had he would technically have been alive.
TFMR
He was a termination for medical reasons known as TMR and it was the hardest decision myself and my husband have ever had to make (read more about it in this earlier post). We knew it was the right one to make as he wouldn’t have survived to full term passing anyway around 30 weeks so we felt it was the kindest decision. We still wondered and worried as to whether we were right.
Already grieving
We were still grieving the loss of Violet and then felt as though we were burying our last little bit of hope when we said goodbye to her brother. We entered a period of darkness even darker than we could imagine. The little flicker of hope we had extinguish completely when we were informed there was a 50/50 chance of future seriously ill babies like Arthur. A few months later we got the surprise news of another pregnancy. A pregnancy fraught with worry, stress and anguish as we wondered if once again the light we thought we could see at the end of the dark tunnel was in fact yet another high speed train set to derail us once again.
Aurora
Now exactly a year to the day we held and said goodbye to our little son I’m holding another 5 week old little daughter, Aurora.
Aurora at 3 weeks old.
We named her Aurora as it means “Goddess of the Dawn” and “Light”. We thought this was beautiful and had special resonance for us as we now can start to see daylight again through the fog.
Arthur
Happy birthday to our little rainbow Arthur George who taught us to dream and hope again after the loss of our first precious daughter Violet.
He also made us more determined to change more babies lives by raising more money for Violet’s cardiac surgery fund at Alder Hey Hospital. We set a date for the Violet Ball at the end of this month, 29th September at Radisson Edwardian hotel in Manchester you can get more information here. There are tickets still available and we are looking for raffle prizes too so if you can help please get in touch.
Emotional is probably the only constant state at the moment, as with the majority of new mums, never mind those who have gone through child loss. I’m facing a wave of different emotions everyday but unlike most new mums mine include sadness, feeling angry, confused (how can you feel immense pain & pleasure at same time) & devastated that my older children aren’t here too. I am a mother of three not one.
Midwives
The midwife service would ordinarily have signed me and baby off by now and passed our care onto the health visitors but given the extreme circumstances (loss of two children) they are keeping a close eye on me alongside the health visitors, which is nice in a way, as it is a total contradiction to the care we had 3 years ago where we were forgotten about for the first few weeks after we left hospital. We complained at the time to Manchester’s NHS trust and it resulted in a full restructure of procedures for new mum care in Greater Manchester, hopefully meaning high risk babies that have undergone surgery shortly after birth won’t now fall down the cracks as we did.
In a way this is probably also now the reason why both departments are now OTT with our care.
Me (tired & make up free but happy) with Aurora
Are you sure you’re ok?
Midwives and health visitors ask me how I’m doing then look at me carefully to observe my facial expressions & body language to see when I say that “I’m ok” if I’m being honest. They all looked surprised when I explained after Aurora was born healthy that for the first time in 9 months a lot of my anxiety and worry had lifted. I actually felt a huge sense of relief and was also in slight shock that at last the ordeal of waiting and wondering was over. She was finally here and was healthy. Sometimes it still feels surreal so I have to pinch myself to check I’m not just dreaming and other times I still find myself because of sleep deprivation accidentally calling Aurora Violet as though my brain has regressed in time. Although I’m led to believe this also happens often when you have multiple children who are alive too.
Anyway got to dash baby waking for a feed…thanks for reading.
Everyone talks about “rainbow” pregnancies and what a blessing they are.
Joy of a rainbow
It is very true that when we were expecting Arthur we were overjoyed and all of a sudden we had a new lease of life. We had hope for our future, as a family and truly believed the sun was shining on us again.
Optimism for future
Yes we were still immensely sad about Violet and our grief for her was still strong but we had a renewed sense of optimism towards the future especially after we had Arthur’s 16 week scan and they confirmed that unlike Violet’s his heart looked ok. We were ecstatic and so relieved that we genuinely looked forward to his 20 week scan as they would double check his heart again in more detail but if there were any slight abnormalities then they would be minor.
Finally announced our pregnancy
We were so pleased and reassured by his 16 week scan results that we even felt confident enough to let friends and others know we were now expecting. That in January 2018 Violet was going to be a big sister.
Bad news at 20 weeks
Then we had the 20-week scan. Arthur’s heart did still look ok but what didn’t look right was his brain. The sonographer wouldn’t/couldn’t tell us too much other than his brain didn’t look how it was supposed to look and she would have to refer us to a top specialist. Our world crumbled. We then had to wait over a week before we could see a specialist to get more details.
Heart broken again
We were heartbroken. The fact that something might have been wrong with his brain hadn’t even dawned on us, as we almost expected a heart defect and as we knew from our experience with Violet that wouldn’t necessarily have been a deal breaker as a heart can be fixed but a brain? The interim week waiting to see the specialist was one of the longest in our lives and in the meantime I could feel little Arthur kicking and wriggling around much more hyperactive than Violet had been.
You can’t repair a brain
When we finally saw the specialist he explained that Arthur’s brain had declined and become even more severe, just in the week since our previous scan. The issue was the amount of fluid in his brain, which was already so vast it had crushed most remaining parts of the brain including the area responsible for reflex and animal impulses like breathing and swallowing. The increased movement from Arthur was put down to the nerves being over stimulated by the fluid sloshing around his brain.
His symptoms weren’t even anywhere near the borderline and in fact he was so beyond this that the prognosis was that he might at best reach 30 weeks of pregnancy and then would die. His head would be so large and full of fluid that he wouldn’t be able to be birthed and would have to be removed through caesarean section, which could have complications for me too and given my age we were told if we still wanted other children then losing him earlier would be the kindest option for everyone.
TFMR
We explored every alternative but I couldn’t bear the thought of my little boy suffering (incidentally his deformity had affected him so badly that they couldn’t even identify his gender through the scan) and it wasn’t until I birthed him at 22 weeks that we realised he was a little boy. Having to end his life was the hardest decision we have ever had to make but the thought of him suffering and declining further was too much to bear.
Having to give birth to him was traumatic and extremely upsetting. We did get to meet our little boy while he still looked like a healthy but tiny baby and he was beautiful like a miniature version of his daddy with dark brown hair. We spent several days saying goodbye to him in hospital and gave him a funeral service before burying his ashes with his sister almost a year to the day that we lost her too.
Guilt mixed with grief
We will never forget our little boy and we miss him more than imaginable but it is a very different type of grief to that that we have over Violet. We knew her, shared experiences together, heard her laugh, babble away incessantly and have a million photos of her that we can look at too. In a way this makes it easier as we have constant beautiful reminders of our memories of Violet. I find I’m much angrier at the world over Violet because she had battled and overcome so much in her short life that it feels much more cruel for her to have been taken away as she was.
The world can be cruel
Grieving Arthur is much more difficult as his loss so early was our decision however his brain abnormalities weren’t and he would never have survived to full term anyway. Never been able to breathe or swallow unaided if he had survived to full term. It is the cruelty of us having to endure this on top of losing Violet that I find very hard to bear. I remember screaming “how much pain do they want us to go through”, “what have we done to deserve this” and “how cruel is the world”.
After the rainbow
People talk about rainbow babies and how they are “God’s gift” well Arthur did fill us with hope for the future before it was cruelly ripped from us again. I’m often asked why I don’t believe in God and this is the reason why.
Now we are struggling to discover what there is “somewhere over the rainbow” or as I like to say we are somewhere after the rainbow; what happens when you’ve had a rainbow and it is faded and disappeared?
We look for the next one I guess and try to keep positive.
