Five years without you.

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I can remember so clearly when and where we were when we found out we were expecting you. Earlier in the day I had been writhing around on my bed in agony. My first and genuine thought was that I had another tumour. Having had three ovarian tumours the pain was extremely similar. I didn’t want to believe it was another tumour, as I knew that meant I would have to go to hospital. Normally this isn’t a problem but this particular day Cornwall and most of the UK had severe weather warnings. Many places were under water from burst rivers and torrential rain. Our main road to the hospital had trees down and I knew we would have to go the long way round to even get to A&E. But alas I knew we had to go. Having lost my right ovary from tumour strangulation, and part of my left ovary for the same reason. I knew that if I didn’t catch it in time I would lose the only remaining slither of my left ovary. So your daddy packed me an over night bag and I text my boss to say I was poorly. We bundled into the car, I was in a serious amount of pain, feeling every bump in the road. What normally takes 20 minutes took over an hour but we made it.

Once inside I remember going through all the normal questions and answers. I was being investigated at the time due to an undiagnosed heart condition, so was used to being poked and prodded. After a little while the general consensus was that they would send me for a scan…but…the doctor came back to say…I don’t have a diagnosis for your pain, but you are pregnant. I was curled up in the foetal position on the bed and your daddy’s jaw dropped to the floor. After 8 years and no success we had given up believing that we could have a family and there we were, in the middle of the worst storm Cornwall has seen for years, we were being told that you existed. Wow. Just wow. From that moment it was all about you. You were the one who mattered.

As my stomach burgeoned and I traced my fingers over my belly I could feel your touch from the inside. I have never felt as good about myself than when I was pregnant with you. My body was your home. Everything I did would affect you. I had the most important job in the world. To be the best incubator for you. I was on the top of the world as I watched my body change to make room for you. Whilst I was pregnant with you I had 61 hospital appointments but you were worth every single one. You were worth all the fear and anxiety. You were loved so very dearly from the moment we knew you were there. I don’t think I really believed you were really real until you were placed in my arms.

It really upsets me to know that you will never get to meet your little brother Arthur. You will never get to hold hands, play together, squabble and grow into fine young men together. What I do know is that you share something so special. I know that both of you grew in my body, you have both heard my heart beating from the inside. I missed being pregnant when you were born, I missed having you all to myself, but I loved having you in my arms even more. From the moment I touched you, it was you who mattered. Always you.

I can remember when I woke up in the mornings and I could hear your little voice babbling away. Talking to your little reindeer. I miss that. I really miss that. I miss knowing that you are in the next room. I miss not being able to sneak in and just watch you sleep. I miss waiting until you were in a deep sleep and stroking your silky soft hair. I miss waiting in bed until you woke up, keeping our bed warm, so I could come and collect you. You would come into our bed every morning to start our day with cuddles. I miss talking to you and watching your face light up to the sound of my voice. I miss squidging your little cheeks and your bum. I miss not being able to soothe you and make things right. I just miss you.

But, I also miss what could have been, all the things we had planned but were never able to. As I’ve always said, what are milestones for other families are losses for us. I miss not being able to read you a bedtime story, and I miss your little face, excited for one more book. I miss not being able to teach you the alphabet and to count to ten. I miss not building sand castles with you and playing games. I miss not being able to take the first picture of you in your school uniform. I miss not being able to stick a plaster on your knee when you fell over for the first time. I miss hearing you say ‘mummy, I love you’. I miss you so much. I miss your life.

Today it has been five years since you have been gone. Five whole years, almost five times the amount of time you spent here with us. You would be six now, you would be excited about Christmas, you would be such a wonderful little boy. People think that it gets easier to live with losing you over time, this isn’t the case, you know that as I’m sure wherever you may be you see the pain that we endure. It has been five years since I last held you, since I last cuddled you when you were poorly. It has been five years since I lost myself in your beautiful big brown eyes, and it’s been five years since I was blessed with your captivating smile.

This time five years ago I found your lifeless body. This time five years ago I tried in vain so desperately to pump air back into your body, I tried so damn hard. I heard the most devastating and world shattering words anyone can hear, “I’m sorry my love, but he’s gone”. I laid on the floor next to your broken body, my cheek on yours and I begged you to wake up, knowing you never would. From the moment I called the ambulance to the moment you were pronounced dead it was 7 minutes. 7 short minutes but 7 of the longest minutes one can bear. When we eventually saw the ambulance sheet, it said “life extinct”, EXTINCT. Somehow there is more finality to that word than ‘dead’. Extinct – no longer in existence. You were gone. Forever.

In one single moment, my whole world changed. The earth shattering guttural sound that came out of my body is one that I don’t think I could replicate. I felt as though my chest was being crushed by a train, the heaviest and most suffocating weight. Death is tangible. Your death is tangible. It overshadowed any other emotion I have ever felt. It reached deep into my soul and gripped it so tightly. When I lost you, I lost myself. Ever since that moment, I have had to re-build my life, not by choice, but against my will. We did not choose this. We chose you. We gave you life. We gave you everything. And you were taken away. I had to re-learn how to be myself. I had to re-discover who I was. Your daddy and I had to embark on this indescribable journey of survival as two, not three.

What is life after loss? Life after loss is the existence that is left behind when the most significant part of your soul and your self is irreparably changed in one single second. The shell of your former self, that has been forced upon you, not chosen. Until you have children you journey through life quite happily, making choices that will best suit your desires, objectives and needs, but when two become three that changes. Your needs suddenly become the lesser of the two as your life is enveloped by this little person. Overnight you assume responsibility for a person, a little person that is wholly dependent on you; and there is no better feeling.

Simply put, I write this now because of you, the little boy who died. But I am the person I am today because of you, the little boy who lived. Your life eclipses your death, and it does so, because I will always be the person I am today because I was blessed with your life and I will share your life forevermore. You will ALWAYS matter.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

Why I’m not angry and why I will always be positive

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Is seems so cruel that this week you would have started prep school. I have found it particularly difficult to see all the happy, smiling children starting their big adventure. Without thinking last Wednesday, I returned home from dropping your little brother at nursery and I drove through the town, past the infant’s school. A herd of small children and their parents. You can tell the youngest ones, all neat, pristine and excited. That heady mix of excitement and fear of the unknown changes to normality as you advance through the years in school.

It really is that first step of freedom, independence if you like. Somewhere where you will be able to forge your own life, make friends, carve your future in to the universe. Where, I, as your mum desperately wanted to wave you off. I wanted to experience that mixture of pride and nerves, not because I don’t think you would cope, but nerves about letting you go just that little bit more.

Me and you dad had it all planned out. We had reserved your place at prep school and paid the fee when you were just a few months old. We’d poured over the prospectus, pointed at the amazing activities on offer and imagined how cute and grown up you would look in the blazer. It will always remain an imagination for us. We won’t ever get to dress you in your uniform and adorn a blazer on your shoulders, no doubt, swamping your tiny almost 5-year-old body, with an equally over-sized rucksack on your back. But it would have been perfect. I cannot imagine anything more perfect.

This past week got even harder. I had to complete a form which required me to input the number of dependants I have. Staring at the tiny white box, I could barely force myself to scrawl 1 in to the box. It just felt like those 4 solid black lines were stopping you from also being in that box, because of course I have 2 children, but I no longer have 2 children that are dependent on me. I only have 1 child that I need to buy nappies for, I only have 1 little mouth to feed, I only have 1 child to tuck in to bed each evening. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful. I am desperately grateful, I consider myself lucky, lucky that I have a happy, healthy toddler. I consider myself lucky that you are my son, that you picked me, I consider myself blessed that I was able to carry you inside my body for 9 months, that I got to give birth to you and feel every second of it and that I got to hold you in my arms for 382 days. I would rather have had 382 days than none at all.

I quite often get asked how I cope, how I manage to be so resolute in my mission to raise awareness of sepsis. Sometimes I ask myself how I remain so positive. I have the answer to that question. It’s really very simple. The one thing more than anything in the world that you want is your life. I have mine. I will not waste it; to do so would be like undermining the fact you lost yours so needlessly. Sometimes, like this past month, it has been a struggle. But I know that by being miserable, the only person it is affecting is myself, and those around me. What sense is there in that? I could be sad and angry that you died, or I can be happy and entirely grateful that you lived. You gave me the ability to be able to view life in its entirety, simply because your entire life was limited to only 382 days. None of us know how long we get to wake up every morning. So, I am going to use my life to be just like you were, selfless, loving, and living my life with a glass half full, not empty.

In your short life you didn’t know anger, sadness, regret, or desperation. I was your mummy then, and I still am now. So, I am going to share your positivity and love with the world.

I won’t ever get to see you in your school uniform, I won’t get to collect you and listen to your ramblings about your first day, or any day, I won’t get to help you with your homework, or console you if you weren’t picked to be in the team, I won’t get to watch you grow, I won’t get to hear you say I love you. But I know you loved me, and you know how much I love you. They were the last words you ever heard me whisper. So, I may be without a lot but one thing I am is your mummy.

We will never know what you would have grown up and become but one thing you will always be is my son, my baby, my forever William.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

My way of being Williams mum

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“Parenting a child that isn’t here is infinitely harder,
 than parenting a child that is”

When William died I can remember coming home for the first time since I had carried him out of our house when he had passed away. What I came home to was silence, but that silence was so deafening, the silence pierced every thought and I wasn’t able to escape from it.

William was still wholly dependent on me when he died. He was only one. We had gone from a flurry of nappies and being late for everything to silence and having nowhere to go.

The first year after William died was pure survival, just to exist was difficult, to exist in a world that William no longer lived in. Every single second, minute, hour and day was painful. Physically painful. I had to survive to find out what had happened to William, I had to endure an inquest, I had to hear those words ‘with better care William could have and should have survived’. If it wasn’t painful enough already, that twisted the knife that was permanently lodged in my heart.

When William first passed away I lost count of the times that people used the phrase ‘time heals’. Well-meaning people, not quite knowing what to say, trying their best to help, to say something, anything. At the time my response, perhaps not out loud but definitely in my head was that nothing can ever heal the death of your child; and I still stand by that. Time doesn’t heal but it does allow you to learn how to live again and I guess in a way that is healing.

As the time passes though you feel isolated as if you are in a different life from everybody else. When William first died my whole world stopped, and so did everyone else’s around us, but although tinged with sadness, people’s lives inevitably return to normal. They had to work, had their own families to look after, whilst we were just stuck. For the first-year people will look at you with that tilted head and enquiring face, taking extra care with how they ask how you are but as time passes greetings return to normal, well the way they were before William died. They stop asking how you are, genuinely wondering about how things are to fleeting acknowledgments.

After a while I had a stock answer, “yeah I’m ok, yano” and do a little tilt of my head, the conversation quickly changes to something trivial, something that is happening in the now. I’m okay with this now. Every time that I bump in to someone I don’t want to have to say well actually, when I woke up this morning William was still dead and I’ve still got to endure another day without his cuddle, his smile, his touch, his everything.

Dead.

That word, the word that everyone is afraid to use. A cold, hard, definitive word that no one likes to use. It’s strange because when William first died, I would tell people that he was dead, but after a month or so it changed to much softer phrases such as passed away, died, fell asleep, you name it, anything to avoid that word.

People are afraid of death, people are afraid of talking about dying, death and the dead. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe its fear, maybe its ignorance of not knowing what to say in response, but whatever it is I find myself softening how I talk about William’s death so as not to make the other person feel awkward. When I talk about William’s death on a pre-planned platform, such as the recent HSJ Patient Safety Congress it gives me the arena in which to express the cold, stark nature that his loss represents. I do wonder perhaps without the sepsis campaigning where my mental health would be. For me I find that campaigning is my way of somehow being William’s mum in the present, here and now.

When he died I had no nappies to change, no bottles or food to make, the mounds of washing soon depleted. In fact I didn’t wash William’s clothes that hadn’t already been washed. There was nothing, the investigation into his death soon took up most of my time, but once this had, thankfully concluded there was a deep chasm in which I needed to ‘do’ something. This is where my campaign journey began, my desire to ensure that no other parent has to endure the indescribable pain of losing their child or a child that has to lose a parent when it could be avoided.

Campaigning has helped me, it has been my way of grieving. It has not just been a time investment for me, but every time I stand up and open up my soul, it is an emotional investment for me. The moment I say ‘thank you for listening’ the emotional hangover starts. I think to be honest the part of me that I can no longer give to William, I give to others. It helps me and I hope it helps them.

My most important job will always be mummy to two beautiful boys.

William and Arthur.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

Sepsis and Me

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I have a very strange relationship with sepsis. Ultimately it is what caused the most devastating loss in our family. It is what robbed my first-born child of his life. I didn’t even know what it was and hadn’t even heard of it before William’s death certificate was presented to me. Now I know so much about it that it seems impossible that there was ever a time when I didn’t know that it existed or that it was an integral part of my life.

You would think that because sepsis stole the life my of one-year old baby that I would never want to let the word roll off my tongue again but it is what consumes my life on an almost daily basis. It is something that I cannot let go of. It is something that I have to speak about and it is always on my mind.

I work for the UK Sepsis Trust but to me it doesn’t feel like a job. If I didn’t work for them I would campaign, I would blog, I would educate the public and health professionals about sepsis and the reality of what it can do. Sepsis is an integral part of my life that is unavoidable, perhaps not as unavoidable as William’s death. William couldn’t avoid it and neither can I.

When I talk to health professionals about William’s death, about those horrifying moments that I found my lifeless child in his cot, rigor mortis having taken over his fragile little body, the words catch in my throat. Reliving it, retelling it and recounting every single painful moment is almost like a punishment, dipping myself back in to that moment. I invest so much emotionally when I talk. But it is not something that I can escape from. I could of course choose not to talk about it. I could choose not to revisit, but these thoughts and those memories live in my mind, they are part of my make-up. As much as William’s life is made up of the most wonderful memories, William’s death happened too. It is part of my life and it is what has redefined me.

I am always asked when I arrive at a talk or conference whether I get nervous. I don’t, not really. I don’t have butterflies in my stomach, I don’t have sweaty palms and I don’t feel any sense of anxiety. After all, the subject I talk about is my life, I can’t get it wrong. It’s not a test and no one is judging me. Something that every parent wants to do is talk about their children. Their pride and joy. I cannot talk about William’s latest achievements or what he’s up to. I have finite memories that I can recall, there will be no more memories to make. So, in order to talk about William, I talk about his death, because that is also part of his life.

Sometimes I get messages from people, saying that because of a talk that I’ve delivered, or a blog I’ve written or a video I’ve shared that they heeded my advice and due to that their loved one was diagnosed and treated successfully for sepsis. This warms my heart and for every story, every child, every life it still gives me goose bumps and it still makes me cry. I cannot help but feel that I wish there had been a ‘me’ several years ago when William was poorly.

I know that whatever I do William lives on in the hearts of the lives that he’s saved. I cannot bring him back, if I could, I would. I have not accepted William’s death, how can you accept something that is unacceptable, but what I have done is made peace with myself that one day I will be with him again. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I know that it is but one heartbeat and one breath away.

I haven’t just seen the devastation that happens when sepsis enters one’s life, I live it, I breathe it. It is what tore my family apart, it crept in to my son’s life and it was what stopped that golden heart from beating. I will not forgive it, I will not give in to it. I have embraced it, I implore it, I share it, sepsis forms every part of my way of being William’s mum. If I can help just one family from enduring the pain that we live in, then I’ll keep sharing, I’ll keep talking, I’ll keep telling sepsis that you might have won the battle but you most certainly have not won the war.

Love prevails. Always.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead

I wasn’t there and now you’re not here

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I’ve sat here and just stared at the screen not being able to find the right words to write. The screen saver comes on, your face, I lose myself in those deep and loving brown eyes and I realise there are no right words. There are simply no words.

I’m struggling so much right now, as the sun sets on another day without you I wonder how many more sun sets I will witness before I get to hold you again. If only I knew, if only I was able to mark the days off on the calendar with a big Red Cross. Maybe God knows, Sometimes life feels like a punishment. I feel so cruel and guilty saying that, in part due to your little brother, after all, how ungrateful is it to not want to be here when your little brother is here? But it doesn’t work like that. I’m torn, irreparably torn. Forever divided between two places. Here and there.

The happier my day becomes the more sad I feel. How is it possible for these two parallel worlds to exist concurrently; how is it possible to feel happy but so sad all in one. It’s terribly confusing. As we prepare for your little brothers baptism next Sunday I just can’t help but feel laden down with your missing presence. It’s not something I want to put to one side, it’s not an emotion I wish I wasn’t feeling. In a way I want to feel it, I want to suffer, I want to hurt, I hurt for you, I hurt for all that you are missing, I hurt that you don’t get to grow, that you no longer get to witness the sun rise and set.

You would be four years old now, approaching your first year of school. I talk often about the boy that I think you would have become. Quiet, intelligent, calm and loving. A little boy with so much depth, you already had that. I would lose myself in those big brown eyes, your way of loving, when I looked in to your eyes I felt an overwhelming sense of home. I could feel the love, it was tangible. Your curious and quiet nature meant that we were able to spend many tender moments together, I will forever be grateful for these. My body aches for these moments again. I am full of questions and wonder about the little boy you would have become.

When I first found out that I was pregnant I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn’t be a good enough mummy for you, that I wouldn’t know what to do, that I wouldn’t know what your needs were. I had no need to be scared or nervous, you made being a mummy easy. After you died I spent many hours with psychiatrists, trying to fix me, trying to convince me that life was worth living. It was during these sessions that one particular psychiatrist tried to understand just why I couldn’t bear to live without you, as opposed to trying to convince me that it was possible. He understood that all of my life, like most people as we grow up we learn from those around us, society, family and friends lay expectations in your lap, as we grow into adults we feel as though we are finally getting our freedom, but we’re not. The moment that we witnessed the world around us and all the harm that it could do is when we lost our freedom, our innocence.

Growing up I was fiercely independent. I have always felt that I am my own responsibility. I have always felt that I have only ever needed to rely on myself because at least that way the only person who could let you down was you. I have always kept something back, been wary, never giving my entire being to someone, that was until you came along. When I could feel you growing inside me, when I could hear your heart beating I just knew, I knew that this is what I was waiting for. I was waiting for you. I invested physically and emotionally in you. I knew that you would be all that I ever needed, I knew that you would never let me down, I knew that you would always be with me.

Call me a cynic but I have always lived with the thought that I was only round the corner from something going wrong. Inevitably, in my life, it has. But when I had you I knew that despite all that I have been, all that I have done, I got you right. I could be everything you would ever need. Only two weeks before you died I put you in your car seat and cried, why? Nothing in particular, nothing set me off, I just couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have you, I knew that despite everything, no matter what happened, that I would always have you. It would always be me and you. Then you were gone.

I can’t help but feel, despite the failings in your care, the many apologies, that I failed you. I had one job. People joke about managing to keep their kids alive today, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t protect you, I couldn’t save you. You closed your eyes, you slipped out of consciousness and you took your last breath, your beautiful heart stopped beating and I wasn’t there.

I wasn’t there and now you’re not here.

Today I have travelled nearly 400 miles to deliver a talk about your life, and also your death.        People often ask me how I manage to retell the moment that I found your lifeless body, how I tried in vain to pump life back in to you, how I laid, cheek to cheek and begged you to wake up, knowing full well that you never would. It is painful, it is hard, with every word that I speak I know that I am doing the right thing. The gaping hole that your life left cannot be filled, but somehow I have had no choice but to continue, and I suppose this is my way of being your mummy still, until we meet again my baby boy.

www.justgiving.com/williamoscarmead