Llife death and in-between 2. Death.

Its been a difficult week for our family.  Our two baby bumps have become one. Our daughter had a miscarriage this week. She was 16 weeks pregnant, although the baby may have died a couple of weeks ago.

The worst part was the unexpectedness of it. She had a bit of spotting on and off, but she had gone to visit the midwife for a normal check up, and as the midwife did a normal checkup on my daughter, and as she listened for the heartbeat her face changed. She went and got the doctor who also listened for a heart beat. My daughter says his face told the whole story.

'I can't hear a heart beat,' he said.  We need to do a scan now. They did a scan, no heart beat. They did a second one, more indepth, but nothing.  The baby had died. My poor daughter had no idea.

She phoned us at once, and her husband was on the way to the hospital, so we picked up her daughters from school and kept them with us for the rest of the day and night. She was induced later that day, and had the baby about 2am. It was a perfectly formed tiny tiny baby. There was no indication of what went wrong, but they will do tests.

So apart from the sudden loss of the baby there was the shock to deal with too. She came up to where we are house sitting (she lives closeby) a couple of days later, and collapsed, so I had to call an ambulance and she was carted off to hospital again. She has very low iron and her blood count is low, so she is going to need a few weeks rest.

The problem is, what do you do with a tiny tiny baby that has not lived outside the mother, is so tiny, has been a part of you , but has now passed away? The hospital would dispose of it but she couldn't bear to think of it being thrown out like a bit of rubbish.

My daughter lives in a fairly rural area and all around there is lots of  spare land. I guess it is council land. They chose a nice place amongst some trees, and buried the baby in a special little box and planted a little tree over it. We had a little family ceremony, and gave the baby a little family goodbye.

A sad week.