Olivia-Graces story...

Where it all started. The founder of LoveandlossOG, the author to "A Loss Mum's Journal", and Olivia-Graces mummy. This is my story... 

I went into spontaneous labour at 36 weeks exactly, though I had been having labour symptoms and extreme pain for a few days prior. At 35 +6, I spent all night up and down, trying to ease the constant discomfort I felt. The pain didn't come in waves exactly, and as my first baby, it wasn't what I imagined contractions to be like. I will never forgive myself for not knowing better, or going into the hospital sooner. Looking back, this type of pain may have been my first warning sign.

By 6am, I couldn't talk through the pain. I couldn't breath. I went to the hospital and it was confirmed I was in labour. The contractions started to get more intense, and they felt like they were suffocating me. They came all the way to my throat. Was this normal? Should it hurt this much, or feel like this? I was terrified. I felt faint. I was losing all control. I had one particular spot on my bump that felt like a knife had gone through me. It was constant, relentless, agonising.

At 10cm, my waters still hadn't broken. They had been struggling to get a good CTG reading of my little misses heart rate, but was reassured that it differed to mine and that she was OK. Looking back, a false sense of security that would later be their biggest error in judgement. They broke my waters and a huge bloodied gush was released, and it was time to push. I couldn't stop my body. It was like it knew what to do and that she had to get out. It all happened so fast. From 3cm to active pushing in under an hour...  an unusual occurrence for a first baby I was told, but some women "just labour like this".

I kept saying, "It's too fast". I think deep down I knew something was wrong. A while later, she was born. My beautiful baby girl. She was laid on my stomach but I couldn't look. She didn't cry. She never cried. They quickly moved her off me and handed her to the neonatal team. I will always be so grateful to them, because they gave me and her the gift of time. The gift of a chance. They acted so quickly, when they knew she had been starved of oxygen and required immediate resuscitation.

I was lost in a haze of confusion. Pain. Shock. All I could hear, was "...brain damage...brain damage..." Before I knew what was happening, she was taken away, blue lighted to the nearest NICU. The place we would call home for the next 5 weeks and 2 days....

My little miss suffered severe HIE. Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy. In basic terms, she suffered a lack of oxygen during labour which caused brain damage. Unfortunately for us, and for her, it was so catastrophic that it affected her most primal reflexes, such as protecting her own airway, swallowing, coughing. Our brain control EVERYTHING. She suffered seizures, neuro irritability, blindness, inability to control blood pressure, and as a secondary consequence, she had bleeds elsewhere on her pituitary and adrenal glands, causing diabetes insipidus.

I would later find out that this had happened because I had a concealed placental abruption during my labour, and I didn't get her out in time. They didn't see what was going on, and they didn't get her out. If she had been born 10 minutes earlier, our story would look so different. My body failed to deliver her before the placenta, her very own lifeline, and I think I will blame myself for a lifetime.  I am lucky I didn't haemorrhage myself. There is no cure, or a way to reverse brain damage, and currently the only treatment is a cooling therapy, to reduce the risk of secondary hypoxic damage. Babies brains are incredible little things, and they can rewire the neurons and create new pathways around the damaged parts of the brain,  this is called neuro plasticity, but unfortunately for us her damage was just too great. We spent a day at the hospice, where we took out her tracheal tube, the very thing keeping her alive, and let her pass away in our arms. 

I never imagined in my worst nightmare that I'd get all the way to labour, only for a life changing emergency like this to happen, and I never thought I'd never bring her home. I just thought, she'll fight and find a way to live, and we'll learn to take care of her no matter what. I truly believed she would be a miracle, instead of an Angel. Yet here I am, 6 years on, raising awareness and working on a business in her memory. 6 years of missing her, aching and lonely, with a hole in my heart that can never be repaired. Trying to find the words to explain what it's really like to life live knowing your baby died. Living with the trauma of her birth, the NICU, and holding your lifeless baby in your arms  I'll never forget the time we spent in the NICU, the wonderful and kind nurses, who fell in love with her as much as we did. How they cried when we left. 

And since then life has been so confusing, painful, hopeful, lonely, inspired.... life is.... not what I expected, but here I am, trying every day. 

I love you Olivia-Grace, always and forever,

Your mummy.