a year...

That it has been a year feels completely surreal. This year of grief feels like a blur now. It feels like Saersha was just born but then it feels impossible that any of this even happened.


I woke up at about 9 AM on November 4, 2011 thinking that my water had broken. I quickly realized that it was actually blood and thought, maybe this is bloody show. As is often my habit I went to the computer to research and found that the amount I was bleeding was way more than that. Trying to stay calm, I called my midwife and had to leave a message and then several minutes later she called me back and said she would come over.
I hadn't woken my husband up yet but with the midwife on her way over I told him what was happening. 

The midwife listened to the baby's heart rate and was very concerned as it seemed extremely low and she told my husband to call 911. Things were panicked and confused as we threw a few more things in the bag we had packed.

The ambulance came and they were under the impression that this was a home birth transfer and that labour was well underway. I got on to the stretcher and into the ambulance and things felt very chaotic, I didn't know where my husband or midwife were and despite my insistence that I was not in active labour the paramedic said he had to check my cervix and feel for the baby's head. The head was still very much inside of my uterus and I think this check was embarrassing for the paramedic but I was too freaked out to really feel anything about it other than that it was unnecessary. 

I assumed that since we were in an ambulance that they would try and go faster and put the siren on but they told me that it can actually slow things down as people drive more erratically when they did. It felt like the most excruciating drive but it was probably less than a 1/2 hour. When we arrived the driver took us to the wrong part of the hospital and that lost us another several minutes and added to the stress. We would have gotten there faster if we had driven ourselves.

I was wheeled into labour and delivery and set up to a monitor which showed that Saersha had a heart rate of 140. Soon after arriving, and in front of a nurse and the OBGyn resident who were working with us, I had a huge gush of blood when I sat up. It was so massive I remember hearing the spat as blood fell to the floor. 

I don't know why but the Dr didn't recognize that this was a placental abruption. Her supervisor didn't come to see me himself and he thought perhaps it was cervical bleeding. They gave me the option of being induced with a monitor in the baby's scalp or of having a c-section. At BC Women's there is a pretty big campaign to have fewer c-sections and I think this is part of the reason that they didn't just get on with it but gave me this choice. I was so out of it from losing blood and from the stress and I had been so biased against c-sections in my birth class that it was a hard decision for us to make. Ultimately I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to relax enough to push this baby out and I signed the paperwork for the surgery.

We had to wait for a bit as the Dr who would perform the surgery wasn't available right away. It was about 12:30 when we went into the OR. My husband was getting into scrubs and waiting outside while they set me up with the anaesthetic. All this while Saersha was still holding on with a steady, although not dynamic heart rate. I still thought this would work out. We were in the right place, we were almost done, she was almost here.

It was as soon as they put in the spinal that they lost her heart rate. The surgeon was not yet in the room. I found out later that he was out side washing his hands with my husband and saying to him that he would have his daughter in his arms in about 10 mins.

The speed of everything changed then, they got the Dr in the room and the surgery began before they were even certain that the anaesthetic had kicked in. The anaesthesiologist said "Let me know if you feel anything and we'll put you under". Thankfully I did not feel anything.

It was probably only about 10 mins before she was out. I am not sure if it was because it was an emergency or whether c-sections are always like this but the force they had to use to get her out was surprising and uncomfortable. I was overwhelmed and weak and I tried to close my eyes and deal with what was going on. My poor husband thought I was losing consciousness and he was very worried. He had his head down next to mine and extreme fear ran through both of us. 

They told me that she was out but there was no cry to give us any reassurance. Her Apgars were 0. The paediatric team worked to resuscitate Saersha for 20 mins and we could hear someone say something about "calling it" when finally she was revived. She was a strong one.

After a few moments when they probably wiped some of the blood off of her, they wheeled her over to me and I saw her limp body. She was bigger than I pictured her and she had so much hair. My first impression was that she looked both like my mother and like my husband. Saersha was a pretty big baby at 8 lbs 7 oz and while she wasn't measured she was probably about 22 inches. They only took a few seconds with us before bringing her to the NICU and my husband went with her. 

The recovery room was like hell. I was shuddering from the anesthetic and very weak from all of the blood I had lost and the other women in the room had their babies with them, making little squawking newborn sounds while I was not sure if my baby was even alive. It was the first time I cried for you Saersha.

Over the next day they ran tests to see how severe the inevitable brain damage was. She was having seizures constantly despite being on several medications. She had almost no reflexes at all. She was breathing with support but really that was it. For a period of time that was enough for me. I was so desperate for her to live I didn't care about the details. Saersha was somehow alive against the odds. My husband has worked with severely disabled children though and he, along with a caring but matter of fact Dr, painted the picture for me of what her life and our lives would be like. 

It was excruciating but given her prognosis we decided to take her off the machines and spend her final hours together just the three of us. We had about 6 hours together where we lay with her and tried to make her as comfortable as possible as she slowly stopped breathing. I so wanted her to feel the love I have for her in the brief time we had.


Today I was looking at the mementos we have, casts of her hands and feet, a lock of her beautiful hair. I am grateful to have them but they are not enough. It still hurts so much to see these plaster feet which look like miniatures of my own and to feel the huge chasm between what is and what should have been. How can these things, a few photos and a tiny bag of ashes be all that is left of her? In a sense I guess I have accepted this loss and in a sense I can not even wrap my head around it even a year later.