You know, I wanted to, the least I could give her was to die in her mummy’s arms and not, you know, in my stomach with no touch, no feel, no nothing, you know. So that to me was what comforted me really. It was having that special time with her. It did make an awful lot of difference, and I’ve got the box, I’ve got pictures of us holding her and you know, all the little… I took two teddies because I put one in and then I had another one that I cuddled up to her. So I know that that teddy has touched her so when I touch that. Little things like that that just mean a lot to me, you know, they may not to other people but to me it’s made an awful difference. And when I feel a little bit low or it’s, you know, like I often do or a little bit upset, something touches me, whatever, I’ll go and go into my little box and I feel close to her again.

And I, and I feel that I did the best that I could at the time for everybody involved, including firstly [the baby] and my eldest daughter.

The only time I’ve thought that perhaps people might not want to know about [baby] and is when we had the photographs back.

We took lots of photographs because we didn’t want to forget. Although her little face and hands is imprinted on our minds forever. When we came home from hospital and when wed got the photographs back, they were, were on the side in the kitchen, and we had lots of family coming and going for a few days, and we always said to them, ‘Weve got some photographs, you don’t have to look at them.

I didn’t want people thinking that, you know, weve got the photographs you must look at them which was why we gave them the option to say, ‘Oh no. But nobody did decline looking at them. Everybody looked at them and everybody sort of said, ‘Oh she looks very peaceful,’ and had tears in their eyes.

And sometimes I think well would I like to look at pictures of somebody elses dead child? But shes a part of us and part of our family. And if they want to look that’s fine. And I have a few friends, close friends that every now and again will sort of mention something about [baby] or they will ask – not as frequently as they did in the early days – but every now and again. Some of them are aware that our youngest’s birthday is [baby’s] memorial and they appreciate that obviously when the youngest turned one it was quite a difficult day for us. But everybody’s been very supportive.

I can’t explain this very well, I think, I have nothing to show for the fact that my son died, you know. I have a few scan photos and I keep them in a box, but in a way it’s like a memorial I suppose. And that’s very strange and I can’t quite explain it very well, but it’s quite comforting because I know that, that he existed I suppose.

And I think that’s quite important to me definitely. And I think when you don’t have a headstone to go to, when you don’t have a place to go to, you need a memory in your own way. And so when I get sad, I know it doesn’t happen very often at all, I don’t spend the whole time like this, [laughs] it’s actually quite comforting because I think, ‘Well, he did exist, and it does matter. I don’t mind if it doesn’t matter to anyone else but it matters to me. And I think that’s very important, it is, it is for me.

It was expressed as an option, but it was expressed several times, and I wish they’d just asked once and then dropped it. But at several points it kept being raised, you know, ‘Would you like us to do this? Would you like us to do that?’ I mean I understand there are different stages in the procedure, and they did say, ‘Would you like us to take a photograph and put it in the notes?’ which I agreed because I never have to look at the notes. But I mean it was so tiny, it was only about that big anyway [demonstrates size of baby on camera] And there wasn’t much to take a photograph of, because you know, it was all a bit of a mess anyway. And they, luckily when it, when it was born they just took it away.

But they were, I’d say in the early days, like I say, when we left the hospital, we went straight into the local, nearest town where wed been told to get them developed, and we had them developed straight way, I think it was an hour or 2 hour wait, because theres only one place that will develop them because of the nature of them so, obviously, I suppose, if they go through normal channels, the person who was developing them might feel distressed. So we had them done straight away and that was it – I was straight back home, got me photos, that was it. Right, I’ll cut myself back off from the world now. And they were, they were, they were a real lifeline, they really were. And I know that a lot of Mums that have said that they took pictures but they’ve never had them developed, or they’ve left them at the hospital for when they’re ready, and I just couldn’t have done that, that was just my way. I needed them and I needed them there and then, and straight away. And they did come out really well, they came out really well. My sister holds the negatives and I hold the originals, just in case anything should happen to either or the other set, I’ve always got that back-up.

At one time they would have taken the baby away and whatever, and they used to do that with stillbirths, you didn’t see them and no contact. Some of the people I’ve met through ARC (Antenatal Results and Choices) have had their babies photos framed, and the children all know about them and they’re in the group of children’s photos. I don’t feel, I mean I don’t feel my baby’s photo is particularly nice to look at, shes very red and shes a not particularly well formed the head’s quite deformed still so it’s not something I would want to look at daily or to display. But it’s nice to have it. To me shes still beautiful but to other people it might give them a bit of a shock.

No, I just think it’s just the way they cope with it. I just find it strange. I mean to me it would be like, I mean these babies at the end of the day, you know they are dead, when they’re taking these photographs, so I wouldn’t take a photograph of say my father as he died and put it on the wall – its too private, too personal. But, I can also see it’s the only thing they’ve got. Because you haven’t got anything that that baby’s worn, or played with, or any, any history of them, that’s all you’ve got. So I can see why they might want to do that.

And we were given some photographs and footprints and handprints. Well no, they told us that they’d taken photographs and footprints and handprints, and it was up to us whether we wanted to take them away or not, but that they would be retained on our file should we want to. And we decided that we would take them away with us but that we didn’t, but we wouldn’t look, we didn’t look at them, we wouldn’t look at them.

So I then instructed my husband to put them somewhere but not somewhere that I knew because then I thought that I’d start peeking at them without him there. I think he might have suggested, even, I think he suggested that I agreed that it was a good idea that he would put them somewhere, but not somewhere that I knew, so that if I wanted to look at them, I’d have to do it in a controlled way. So I’d have to ask him hed have to come with me and tell me.

So they were hidden away somewhere in the house and then I became fixated of where they were, and spent ages looking for, you know, spent, regularly each day I would think I wonder if he put them there, I wonder if hes put them there. I don’t think my husband knew I was doing this even.

And anyway several months down the line, probably 2 months down the line, the day came when I decided that I was going to look at them next Monday and would he look at them with me and he said he would. And so we kind of pinned this day in the future, so it was about 3 days away, when we would look at the pictures and I can remember talking to my best friend about it at length and her saying, ‘Do you want me to look at them with you?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s a private thing, well do it together but well look at the picture.

And then all sorts of things, and the day came and all sorts of things spilled out then, that I’d named the baby which my husband would never get, again into the whole thing but I’d given her a name. And then he was quite cross that I’d named her and it wasn’t his name and wed never discussed it and, but anyway, she became [name], which was the name that I’d given her and he then was quite okay with that. And I asked him to look at them first and he looked at them and said, ‘No, you won’t want to see them. They don’t look nice.

And as it turned out, they weren’t very good pictures, the quality of the pictures was extremely poor and very distant and quite macabre. They weren’t at all pleasant which, again, made me think I should have seen the baby because these pictures just didn’t capture her in any shape or form. And I remember… and he stood a long way away at first, and held it up and I got closer and closer, I don’t know why we just didn’t… but the whole thing that we went through and I finally got really close up to it and then I just didn’t think anything, I just thought it was awful. But they weren’t, they didn’t really look like a baby, almost so I wasn’t really upset with them I was more upset that they didn’t look like a baby.

I mean another thing that neither of us particularly liked were some of the photos that were taken, dressing her up in a little pink dress… its… because, for a start theres no way we would’ve put her in a dress like that anyway, and [sighs] she wasn’t born alive, she wasn’t, it didn’t matter, yeah, fine, have a photo of her wrapped up in a little blanket which is, which is how we held her. But don’t, don’t pretend that shes something shes not.

So yeah, I mean we look at the photos every now and then, and I don’t like looking at the one of her dressed up, you know, I didn’t think that was right, it’s not what I would do.

Did anybody ask you if you wanted her to be dressed?

No, no-one asked us if we wanted her to be dressed. Thinking, thinking about it one of the midwives said, ‘Were going to take a photo, well put a nice little hat on her and. And but it just didn’t register at the time, didn’t register that that’s actually what was going to happen.

Yeah I think I, while I had been relating to this baby because I was, I was carrying the baby I think that it had been a very big, it had been a big problem in our lives and so my husband had just thought of it in many ways as the, as a problem. And he was, he was just knocked sideways by the fact that there was this beautiful dead baby. I think we were both knocked sideways really.

The midwife had a camera, and she asked if we would like her to take a picture, and we said we would and she took a couple of Polaroid pictures. She then had another camera and she took what seemed like a whole film, and I found that quite upsetting, I didn’t want a whole film of this baby, I wanted a record. I thought that it was maybe important for my other children that I had a record that, so they could see what, you know what had actually happened, but I really didn’t like that feeling of the camera flashing on this little dead person.

That didn’t really seem right at all. I remember thinking it was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. It was, it was almost like there is a depth of sadness and we were kind of on that bottom floor, there was a point you know if it had been a hundred babies it would have been equally sad.

Yeah that was okay, I didn’t mind that at all. But what I had is – because then my Mum called all my family to come in and have a look at the baby, if they wanted to see him. And I did really mind because I didn’t want anybody else to see him – like I didn’t mind my sister and my mum and dad, like that, but when like my aunties and uncles came, you know, they’re just all sitting there in the room and just, you know, comforting me and that and looking at the baby. And then my auntie starts crying and that got me more upset.

And like some of my aunties, they started taking photos of the baby with their camera, that… on their phone, and that was upsetting, because I felt like, it’s not that it shows anything, because they wanted to send it to their Mum so she can have a look, but I didn’t like that at all, its just like theres nothing… you know. I don’t know what the word is’