Unlucky for some

Caveat: I am not a doctor! This is my interpretation of what I have been told about what happened to me. Everyone's medical circumstances and personal health is different, and individual.

I’m a bit worried that I’m scaring the shit out of some people with our story so wanted to write something about why this happened to us.

I’ll say more soon about how the medical stuff felt emotionally but for now, here’s the upshot of why; why Marty, why me, why our family.

For me, the medical process and appointments since coming home have felt like a hangover that I wanted to shift. It’s a box that for my own mental wellbeing I’ve needed to close up, and now I think I can. I’ve wanted to know 3 things – why did I go into early labour? Could I have done anything differently? If we were to have another baby, do we run the risk of this happening again?

By the end of October, four months after Marty died, I have all of the answers that I feel I need. I decided it was important to me that I was given the information I needed, I didn’t want to be overloaded with medical explanations. I personally didn’t feel like I needed to fully understand exact minutia details. I needed just enough information for me to understand what happened, in my body, and to my son.

So, I was told the day after having Marty that I had an infection and that was why I went into early labour, I hadn’t necessarily had it a long time and it wouldn’t have been anything I had done wrong. I was put on antibiotics and physically, I felt fine. After more specific tests of my blood and various samples, I was told that the infection was called Haemophilus Influenzae. What the heck is that and how did I get it? Well, whatever it was it was found in my blood and my placenta. It was everywhere. At that moment in time, out there in France, that was all I needed to know. I felt fine and the antibiotics should be doing their job. All our focus was on Marty.

When we came home I had to call my midwife to tell her what had happened. There had been no communication between France and Wales, there didn’t really need to be. The midwife hadn’t heard of Haemophilus Influenzae, and neither had the GP I spoke to. Good start. It baffled me that this thing could have been in my body, with no symptoms but then showing up by ejecting my baby from my body. And nobody's heard of it. And we won’t do another blood test but its probably gone now. Really? I knew it was something I could probably obsess over a bit and give myself some sort of health anxiety over but I didn’t, and don’t, want that to happen.

After talking to my midwife I was put in touch with a Bereavement Midwife from my local hospital (I didn’t know there was such a thing) and referred to a clinic called the Rainbow Clinic. I think its main purpose is actually a specialist service for parents who conceive after having previously lost a baby – their Rainbow Baby as I have now learnt they are called. It is also where parents go if they have lost a baby, for a debrief type conversation - hence our invitation. A bit of a novel case for them considering I didn’t actually give birth in their health board, or country.

In summary, I had appointments at the Rainbow Clinic in August and October. I received a summary of my medical case from France as well as detailed blood test and other sample results, these were all translated through the bereavement midwife for us to discuss with an Obstetrician.

My understanding now is - Haemophilus Influenzae normally manifests itself as a cold, but for me it went into my blood, I had no symptoms of a cold. Once in my blood it quickly reached my placenta, and then Marty. This caused my body to go into early labour. It is likely I didn’t have it very long because of how aggressive it was. It was very very unlucky and regarded by a microbiologist (all things blood) as a very unfortunate set of events. The consultant I spoke to said that in her 20 years experience she had never heard of this infection causing early labour before. Great.

You have been very unlucky. Just bad luck. That’s hard to hear when talking about the death of your son.

Is there anything I could have done differently? No. Even if I did have symptoms and reported them, it probably wouldn’t have been picked up in any blood test because they wouldn’t have known, or thought to test for that specific infection.

Haemophilus Influenzae can make babies quite poorly so has been part of babies 6 in 1 vaccination since 1992. I’m too old to have been included in that vaccination programme. I obviously wondered if it would have made a difference if I had had the vaccine? Not an easy answer but probably not – they don’t know how long that immunity would last for, and it’s an infection with lots of different strains, so I could have had a different strain to that of the vaccination.

All roads lead to bad luck.

Its shit to just be unlucky but I’m so glad there is nothing I could have done differently. I say ‘I’, Mark has said ‘we’ all the way through. He wouldn’t let me shoulder this on my own.

Is it likely this will happen again? Basic summary – lightening doesn’t strike twice.

I’m so sorry it struck you Marty.

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