How We Turned Our Baby Loss Tragedy Into A Positive
Hi, my name is Jude and I live with my husband and children in Cardiff. This may be quite a long post but it is the story of how I have turned a tragic event into a positive one so please bear with it.
It was the autumn of 2019 and my husband and I had just found out we were expecting our first child together. We have both been married before and have children from those relationships but we really wanted a baby together. The joy that we felt when the test showed that we were 2-3 weeks pregnant is indescribable. But that joy was short lived…
Three weeks later, I started bleeding. A trip to our doctor and then the local Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit a week later dispelled our worries when they found a nice, healthy heartbeat.
We started talking about the future, wondering who the baby would look like, where we would take them, would they have my eyes, what we would teach them. We discussed names over and over again.
Then sadly just days before Christmas, at 12 weeks I started to miscarry. The full story can be found over on my website: www.morgans-wings.co.uk but I just want to clarify it was not “like a heavy period”, I experienced intense contractions and the amount of blood I lost ended up with me being rushed into Resus. I had to have my baby manually removed from my cervix as the poor thing had got stuck and then an emergency operation as the bleeding wasn’t stopping. The despair and heartache was nothing I had experienced before. I felt like someone had reached into my chest and pulled a bit of my heart out.
Following the loss of our baby we identified a gap in support following miscarriage. When I was kept in hospital unexpectedly I hadn’t taken anything to my appointment and as a result had nothing to clean myself up with, no toothbrush and no energy to even have a shower. We were also shocked that even though I had been through something really traumatic, we weren’t offered any emotional support, not even a leaflet. We did have the number of the bereavement nurse but I had to ask for the number of someone who could offer me some support. When I did ring for support I was told that there was a waiting list of 4 months.
My husband and I decided that we needed to do something to address this. As cheesy as it sounds I felt compelled, as if it were a calling. I didn’t want anyone else to feel as alone as I had felt and so we decided to start our own not-for-profit organisation. I felt our baby was a boy but having no confirmation of that we chose a unisex name, we had decided to call our baby Morgan. We talked about different names for our group and wanted to include Morgan in it. We had two contenders, Morgan’s Angels and Morgan’s Wings, but Morgan’s Wings won. Next we worked with a close friend who had a background in graphic design to design our logo. I can’t tell you how many sets of wings we looked at! Through lots of meetings we tried different fonts, text sizes and wing types. After a lot of discussion we settled on our logo as it is today.
We decided that the aim of our organisation was to provide parents in local hospitals who were going through miscarriage with an emergency hygiene care package. We also wanted to provide memory boxes to remember our babies who gained their angel wings and planned to offer continuous support in the form of a befriending service, support groups and sessions to help with the bereavement process, self- esteem and more.
Looking back now I have no idea how I was able to start Morgan’s Wings in the midst of my grief, but I did. On January 27th 2020 Morgan’s Wings was launched.
We started a Facebook group and shared it with our friends while asking them to share it with theirs. We set up a bank account, a website, and we started to think of fundraising events and support groups we could arrange. This included a launch party where we would auction off prizes, run some stalls and raffles as well as just celebrate what we were trying to achieve…but then….Covid-19 appeared and changed everything. Suddenly we were cancelling events and bookings for fundraising events and support groups and scratching our heads with what to do next.
But we weren’t to be stopped, we had to quickly evolve to meet the needs of those who wanted that support. We changed our support groups to an online support group which meant anyone could join no matter where they live. We started a talk support service where people could text us if they needed any support and we also created our ‘Certificates of Life’ to acknowledge the life of a baby no matter how short. We started online raffles to raise money and sponsored events and in the summer of 2020 we were able to deliver our first lot of care packages to two hospitals in South Wales. We have created a number of leaflets that are available on our website and include things like ‘Guilt about Miscarriage’, ‘Dads, Mental Health and Miscarriage’ and ‘Talking to Children about Miscarriage’.
During the summer of 2020 I found out that I was pregnant again. This time although we were thrilled we were also terrified, checking for blood every time I went to the toilet. I started bleeding again at 5 weeks and again a scan showed a nice healthy heartbeat. We had another scan at 9 weeks and again the baby was growing well. So many times I saw the phrase ‘Different pregnancy. Different baby. Different story. Different outcome’ I clung to that phrase.
But although a different pregnancy, different baby and different story, it was unfortunately the same outcome. At my 12 week scan we heard those dreaded words “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat”.
Again my world crashed down around me. This time, I was more prepared though and opted for the surgical management. But… a couple of days later and I had been feeling pretty rough all day and had started to bleed, I was having stomach cramps although not as intense as with Morgan. That night, whilst in hospital waiting for surgery I felt a pop inside my lower abdomen and a warm feeling spread across the bed. I felt my pyjama bottoms and they were wet. My waters had broken. Something that had never happened in any of my previous pregnancies. I went to clean myself up and that’s when I passed my baby in a bedpan. A tiny baby, with a head, body, 2 arms and 2 legs. On October 15th which some of you may know is the end of Baby Loss Awareness Week and the day of the Wave of Light I gave birth to my baby, on my own, in a hospital bathroom, the tiniest baby that I had ever seen.
Then the bleeding started. Just like last time I lost a lot of blood, I kept fainting as my blood pressure was so low. I was hooked up to an I.V drip with fluid being pushed into me as quickly as possible. I was kept in overnight and allowed to go home the next day but just like last time no support was offered. I was lucky this time though as I had an amazing amount of support from the people within the little community that I had built up. We named our baby Bee, I have no idea if Bee was a girl or a boy, we thought girl this time but at our 6 week scan we nicknamed her Bee as that is what she looked like.
This year has been a good year so far for Morgan’s Wings. Although in its infancy we have been contacted to feature on blogs (hi!) and podcasts and we have an article being published in our national newspaper. We are having another sponsored event in March – ‘March for Morgan’ where we will complete a marathon over the month of March. If you would like to sponsor us or to find out more please visit our Just Giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/morgans-wings2021?utm_term=4znjrBWQN
On a personal level I have of course been left devastated by losing our two babies but I have gained the grit and determination that I was lacking before. I have even enrolled on a counselling course and am due to finish level 2 in May.
If you would like to find out more about Morgan’s Wings and what we offer please follow us on Facebook and/or Instagram, or visit our website. Thank you so much for reading this far!