Anyone who’s been following this account or our journey, for any amount of time or read my blog will know how much I’ve struggled with some of the decisions we made after Ollie passed away. The key one being our decision not to see him when he was born, I cannot begin to tell you the hours I’ve spent torturing myself about that decision every single day. It didn’t help that whilst being honest about my decision a very small minority made it very clear that they didn’t agree with our decision & how ‘awful’ I was for leaving him (direct quote) just over 2 years has passed since he died & I feel like I’ve done everything that I was too afraid to face since that day. We’ve revisited the bereavement suite at Calderdale where he died, including the corridor where I was stood when I realised what was about to happen & that he was dead (I couldn’t walk back into MAU, that bay where we were told & the scan room proved too much & we had to leave) but we did it. We’ve returned to Ogden many times where we walked miles after he died because we didn’t know what else to do, I’ve got his ashes, we’ve driven past our old house where he took his last breath, we’ve got a photograph of his feet, displayed in our living room, I’ve faced the consultants & midwives after our complaint & held them accountable, I battled the trust to ensure changes were made, I’ve attended support groups, written a book (almost) read his post mortem report (harrowing) re read our investigation report, seen his death certificate, planted trees in his memory, told his story to magazines in his memory, ran a half marathon, accessed my medical notes from labour (another step too far) spoken on podcasts, on Midwifery training days. But there was always one thing hanging over me which was that I didn’t know what my son looked like & I was ashamed of that. How can I campaign & talk about him & share his story when I don’t know what he even looks like? I know he had the same colour hair as Ella & his daddy, I know that he had huge feet & hands, I knew what he weighed, when he was born but I couldn’t tell anyone about the features on his little face or what his nose was like. It haunted me but I was too scared to look. But eventually after 2 years & 1 month not knowing became worse for me than knowing, I also knew it would go either way & send me backwards into a relapse or forward. But I knew I was ready to take that risk. So yesterday on my own in my bedroom (Reece isn’t able to yet) I took out the 2 photographs that remained in the envelope & saw him for the first time. In a weird twist of fate I found an SD card at the bottom of the envelope...I ordered an SD card holder yesterday, and I found 32 images of Ollie on the SD card. All in colour, all of him in different ways from different angles. For 2 years I thought all we had was 5 photographs - we don't. And they're absolutely beautiful. For the first time as well I have something to be thankful to Calderdale for....
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little shocked at his condition, but also I knew that wasn’t my son. Ollie’s soul had gone, that was his shell that remained, he was no longer here & that was my first thought ‘that is not my little boy’. It also destroyed the image that I had in my head about this perfect sleeping baby who looked just like a live child, which isn’t reality given the amount of time that had passed since he had left us & the photographs were taken. I also know that he is still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen & along with his sister our proudest achievement. Despite his condition, that’s my little boy & I love him just as much as I love his sister. To us he is perfect & the people who I’ve shared him with have been so kind with their words. He was too beautiful for me to not share with some people close to me.
What still baffles me is that some people have been unkind, those very small amount of people aren’t privileged enough to see my son & won’t be given that chance again. He isn’t to be feared or turned away from, he’s just Ollie. He’s just my little boy. ‘No-one wants to see pictures of a dead baby’ I read somewhere, but it’s perfectly acceptable for you to all see pictures of his hands & feet just not his face because that’s the part that’s depressing or horrifying or whatever you’d like to call it? Is that what society deems acceptable about our children? That they should be hidden away because it might ‘upset’ people? God forbid the bereaved upset someone, sorry. Unfortunately bereaved parents are a package deal - they remain our children, they will always be our child whether on earth or in heaven. Don’t follow a baby loss account if that isn’t acceptable to you, if you don’t want to see my little boy then be careful how you word that choice & how you follow through with that because that is our child. Would you appreciate it if you tried to show me a picture of your living child & I turned away & said no thanks? A very small privileged few have seen Ollie, because I see it as a privilege to share him with who I have. Because he is so incredibly special & I like to think that he’s changed a lot of peoples lives & made a difference. However I do understand that some people may have their own reasons for not wishing to see him - they may be pregnant themselves perhaps or have lost a baby & be facing the same choices as we did, or be struggling with their own fertility - but just because you don’t want to feel uncomfortable or you think it’s weird? You are lucky to feel uncomfortable, you are lucky that you can't spare a few seconds of discomfort to comfort a bereaved parent. I don’t accept that because you know me you know my son just like you know my daughter. You know my story, you know I’m open about our loss because someone has to be, you know about my grief, you know that this is difficult for us, you know everything about our story - he is the final piece.
I can tell you that I feel a peace that I haven’t felt since before he died because now I know that if anything happens to me I can say I’ve seen my son, that I’ve shared him & his beauty with people who are special to us, that I know I will recognise that face waiting for me when our day comes to be together again, that I’m no longer haunted by what ifs. That our consultant lied when he said ‘he just looked like a sleeping baby’ because he doesn’t - but wouldn’t that be nice for society if he did look like that? Maybe people wouldn’t turn away from him then if that’s what’s acceptable (I don’t blame Mohammed for saying that to us, he was trying to be kind to us in a truly horrendous moment) if his mouth was closed & his skin was one colour would that be okay for you all then? If he looked like he was alive would you be able to tell me how beautiful he is then? But overall
I know that it was the right decision for me to make & I don’t regret in the slightest - now. That has haunted me from the day this happened. Some photographs he's holding a teddy bear, some he's laid on his side, some are of his face, some are of his hands and feet. I cannot begin to explain how grateful I am that I have these...I've been so critical of our treatment at that hospital but someone that day knew what they were doing.
I also now know that the decision we made not to see him following birth was the right one for us, because I know that I wouldn’t have survived. That I’m certain of. Some days I still don't know if I will survive this.
I’m aware that I’m writing this one day after this moment & the emotions & feelings are all very fresh but I also know my feelings on this won’t change. You are privileged to be shown a photograph of someone’s child - alive or not. That person is showing you a piece of themselves, we need to keep talking about this & being open about this, for them, for our future & for the future of maternity services. Eventually I wil share him with everyone because he's too beautiful not too, but for now I want to keep him to ourselves and his loved ones, who love and remember him the way he should be. This is because I need to process this new stage I find myself out and work out what's next - because the final chapter seems to be closed. I'm not sure what to work up to now or where to go from here, I feel lost but also found? Like life is now complete somehow but will always be incomplete because it will always be incomplete. I would give up the rest of my life to hold him, to see him to be with him one last time, if there was a way to trade my life for his it would never have even been a question.
To anyone reading this who hasn't experienced loss, put yourself in our shoes for just one second - you can’t can you? Because unless you have lived one second on this earth without your child you cannot. Please listen & support us by remembering our baby with us. Ollie is a sign of hope in this community that life can and will go on, a somewhat beautiful life can still be formed in the sight of such gut renching tragedy, the fact that you can shun anyway from something so beautiful astonishes me...
In loving memory of Ollie James Watson, who should be here today….🤍
‘A butterfly lights beside us like a sunbeam,
And for a brief moment its glory and beauty belong to the world…
But then it flies again
And although we wish it could have stayed,
We feel lucky to have seen it….’ 🦋
