After a completely normal pregnancy, Morgane did not expect to lose her child just after giving birth to him. “If she had come out earlier, she would have lived”… The young mother tells us her painful story.
After a miscarriage in November 2018, Morgane became pregnant again three months later. The pregnancy is going wonderfully… It will be a little girl! On the due date, her baby is in no hurry to come out, but nothing unusual for the professionals who examine her. She returns home, until the first contractions wake her up in the night around 3 a.m. The young woman goes to the clinic around 8 a.m. where she spends the day waiting to be placed in the labor room around 6 p.m. She says:
“My partner and I are getting tired. Before being woken up by the monitoring siren: the machine no longer detects my baby’s heartbeat. It’s 1:40 in the morning. Code red, I’m taken to the operating room for a cesarean section. When Emma comes out of my womb, I am told: your daughter has congested bronchi, she has difficulty getting back on her own, we’re going to clean it up for him. I’m worried, but I’m confident, I tell myself that it’s normal.” Morgane is cleaned, stitched up, taken to the recovery room, but no longer really has a sense of time.
“It was 4 a.m. when my partner entered the room and collapsed, telling me that we had lost our baby. I don’t understand what he’s talking about. I am stuck on the doctors’ reassuring version: “they are cleaning his bronchial tubes”. Five doctors enter the room, looking crestfallen, and say to him: “We’ve been trying to resuscitate your daughter for 40 minutes, what do you want us to do?“After asking to continue, the doctor informed me that they had decided to stop, that it was better for us, that she would have been a “vegetable”. At no point does the team utter the words: “your daughter is dead.”
“They ask me if I want to see my baby”
The pediatrician takes him to a bassinet. I take her in my arms, she looks asleep. Immediately, we ask: “Can we take a photo of it?“I am faced with my child, whom I would have taken a photo of without asking anyone in other circumstances, and now, I no longer know what I have the right to do or not. My daughter already has skin marbled, I see that she is no longer alive.
No one gives me time to digest. Very quickly, the administration takes precedence over the announcement. People ask me if I agree to carry out an autopsy, to find out what she died of, to be more careful with the next baby. I have just lost my infant, and I am being told about an upcoming baby, the pill, declaration to the town hall for the birth AND death. I am stunned. I sign a series of papers whose contents I have no idea, I am so stunned.
At that time, they didn’t tell me anything. Will I see my baby again? Every time I say these words for the next two days, a medical staff will pick up my daughter from the morgue and bring her to me. She was dressed by them, she is in a bassinet like the other babies, dressed in her sleeping bag, she looks calm. Apart from the cold of her skin, she could be alive, she’s soft, she’s a beautiful baby. Every time I see her, I force myself to say to myself: no, she’s not sleeping. For two days, they bring her to me, I talk to her, my family talks to her, and she goes back to the morgue. At the end of these two days, she leaves for the forensic institute to be autopsied.
For another 5 days, I have the right to two hours of daily visitsin a sort of funeral home. I come home from giving birth without my child, but every day I tell myself that I will see her the next day. So she’s still here. It’s not quite real yet. I am out of time. Every time I see her in this funeral home, in her bassinet, I slap myself, it becomes real again. I wish I could shake her, wake her up.
For me, the dreaded moment, and the most difficult, was the day of the funeral. I had to say goodbye to him, it was the last time. The nurse who came to provide my home care had lost a baby, and helped me a lot. She told me to take photos of her as many times as I wanted, I don’t know if I would have allowed myself to do so without her. She gave me ideas: things to say to her, play music for her, and place her in the coffin myself, so that my arms would be the last she ever knew. Which I did. Then I came home, to my empty stomach, my baby’s room empty, and my house empty. The people who supported you need to go back to work. Including your spouse, who only has his legal days of paternity leave. At that moment you realize.
“A month later, for my follow-up, I’m waiting in a room full of pregnant women and babies. It’s unbearable.”
When you’re pregnant, you’re already a family. But the day we give birth, and our child dies, we are suddenly nothing, we no longer have status. Society denies our parenthood. We are prepared to give birth, but at no time are we told about all these risks which continue to exist, beyond the third month when miscarriage is frightening. Being a parent in France today means peeing on a pregnancy test and giving birth to a healthy, pink baby. We are not talking about gray areas.
A month later, I returned to the place where I had (and lost) my baby, for my birth follow-up. And I’m waiting in a room full of pregnant women and newborns. It’s unbearable. And I feel guilty for finding it unbearable, for not being happy for them. Little by little, I filled my daily life with meetings, to understand, to calm down, to find life again. The one I was supposed to give this November 5, 2019 and which was stolen from me at the same time.
After the autopsy, we learned that our daughter had died of asphyxia during childbirth, which created hemorrhages in his bronchi. If she had gotten out sooner, she would have lived. We need to get rid of the guilt we feel when faced with such information.regain confidence. I joined other discussion groups “paranges” as they call us. I met people in my situation, who answered me when I needed it. I faced painful sentences. I had the pleasure of showing images of my daughter to those who did not deny her existence and who wanted to see her. And I slowly decided to have another child. Not a child to replace my daughter. A little brother, or a little sister. The thought of having another child kept me alive. I found the right gynecologist to support me towards this second pregnancy. He immediately reassured me: This time, I will give birth before the term, by cesarean section, planned in advance.