I can’t recall what type of day it was. I can’t recall what I wore, or the names of the new people I met. I can’t actually remember the name. But I do remember the apprehension I felt, I do remember the little hands and the tiny toes. Mostly, I remember the feeling of the little head between my nervous fingertips.
My first autopsy was of a 22-week-old foetus who didn’t make it.
I remember my curiosity stopping dead, to be replaced with a feeling I cannot quite put a word to. The touch of the skull bones floating freely beneath such delicate skin was strange. These bones had not been exposed to those final few months in the womb that provide their fusion, and so with even the most delicate touch they could provide not an ounce of resistance. We all realise babies are delicate creatures. Yet this small body, in this quiet moment, embodied fragility. The little bones, attempting to make a little skull, which might then house a little brain. A brain that would now never think thoughts, attached to these eyes that would never see sights.
Most days my wife and I discuss a future life with babies. We’ve each got nieces and nephews and like many want-to-be parents we spend the drive home from family events pondering an approach to parenting. We discuss how we might deliver discipline; we argue about names; we picture the cot, the bibs, the vomit and the nappies. These have always been conversations that ended with smiles and a one-day-soon-twinkle in our eyes.
I once read that we are who we are because of what we’ve seen and done. I’ve now seen those little toes, and touched that delicate skin. I now think of the world a little differently.
So much is taken for granted when daydreaming about a future life building a family. We often assume all will go well, we expect all to go well. But with this experience it was clear that at times it doesn’t all go well, and although I know that the majority of children do enter the world without hiccup, this experience was humbling. It brought home certain realities that couples often don’t consider. The reality that some foetuses simply don’t develop properly. Some do not get to breathe that first breath, to think those thoughts or see those sights.
In the case of my first autopsy, a congenital heart defect meant these would-be parents had to pause their plans. They had been dealt a swift blow to their dreams, and were likely devastated. The clinical picture was a challenging one: late-30s parents, no children, IVF pregnancy, previous attempts without success. All the while they would have been having their own discussions. They would have had their own ideas about discipline, their own arguments about names. They would have pictured the cot and the bibs. I can imagine the excitement in their eyes when they learned they had conceived, but I cannot imagine the anguish they felt when the ultrasound showed a heart not up to the challenge.
The next family chat my wife and I had was a little more difficult. It was laced with a little bit of fear. Perhaps I should say that it had some realism mixed in with the optimism. I was picturing the toes and remembering the delicate little bones and so we talked. We talked about the fact that things can go wrong, the fact that deciding to attempt to build a family is just that – an attempt. It isn’t simply a decision that equates success and a crib. It is only a decision to chase the dream, a decision to try to create that dream. We talked about the fact that it can be a risky decision, that it will likely be hard. But it is a decision we want to make, it is a risk we want to take. We believe that it is often the difficult things in life that are most worthwhile, so we want to try.
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