Thursday 26th October 2017. Our sons birthday. All morning it felt like a bad dream that I couldn’t wake from. Still carrying our son inside me. He couldn’t hear our voices or my morning music anymore. His precious little body still. No movements when I had my breakfast or shower. My parents, my brother and his girlfriend had dropped all plans they had to be with us by Saturday. If we were to choose to have a funeral, they wanted to be there to support us through it all. The thought of having to organise our sons farewell without having met him, had not crossed my mind until this point.
I had updated my midwife that we were on our way to the hospital, who told me that she would be there to support us through this traumatic experience. Lots of well wishes and beautiful messages were received on the trip to the hospital. One made me smile, It read “Courtney, we think you are the bees knees and bees have the best knees.”
My husband had been so strong up until this point, he was finding it hard to tell me his thoughts. I’ve never seen him so upset the whole time i’ve known him. His eyes filled with tears and his lips were shaking, he said “I really don’t want to bury Lenny, I want to have him cremated and keep him with us forever”. That made one of our hardest decisions so much easier. We’d agreed to have Lenny cremated. We promised that losing our son would not break us or seperate us ever. We promised to keep communicating how we feel and to stay an open book.
Music has been a big part of who I am, my father is a guitarist playing regularly, my brother is a drummer and I learnt piano. Probably feeling left out, mum shows her talent and plays the spoons for a laugh at our get togethers. Growing up we always had music playing at home and i’ve loved carrying on tradition at our home, playing music every day. One song I remember singing on the way to the hospital was ‘Closer’ by JP Cooper. It has been one of my favourite songs ever since and choose to have it part of a playlist at Lenny’s funeral.
We arrived at the hospital and felt very comfortable in the hands of the lovely staff. We had our own ensuite and a spare bed waiting for my husband. The only negative was being in ear shot of other mothers delivering healthy babies. The hospital chaplain was doing her rounds, she was playing a ukulele. A few minutes passed and she entered my room, she had such a positive vibe about her. She introduced herself as Andrea, I opened my mouth to introduce myself but burst into tears. She didn’t know why I was there but she gave me a hug and said she was coming back tomorrow and that she was there as my listening ear and support.
Doctors, nurses and other staff continually came and went, bloods and swabs taken but up until this day I still have no idea what these were for. I was given a consent form to sign in agreement that i’d be taking medication to induce labour. At 1.30pm I was finally given the first of many two white pills.
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