By Antonietta Bocci

Grief is often classified as consisting in a variable number of stages, some of which include guilt as a necessary step towards healing and as bound to an endless list of “what if’s;” guilt is a place of blame, where we wonder what our lives would be like today had some things been thought, said or done differently from the way they actually were. I am inclined to believe that each person’s emotional experience is unique and that such classifications run the risk of ignoring the nuances of human feelings. However, I do acknowledge that some emotions are quite common among bereaved parents and that no matter how I decide to put it, eight months after losing my baby, I am stuck right there, at guilt. As Christmas approaches, all those “what if’s” put pressure on me again, with excruciating questions regarding possible medical negligence and maternal shallowness, tormenting me day and night and making me incapable of finding any peace at all.

“Given my multiple risk factors, what if the midwife had advised me to register with a hospital better equipped for emergencies, instead of advertising silly birth options available at the local one?”

“When the doctor noticed a slower foetal growth, what if she had carried out further tests there and then, instead of asking me – to my disappointment – to go back in two weeks’ time?” “Considering that I was clearly in the middle of an emergency, what if the 999 people had sent me to the better-equipped hospital this time, instead of still directing me to the smaller one?” “Given the huge amount of blood I had already lost, what if the ambulance had tried to drive faster, instead of going so slowly that my partner – who had left after us – got at the hospital before us?”

“What if, instead of blindly following the guidelines provided by the national healthcare system, doctors had used their critical thinking to prevent what eventually happened”?

Questions like these are painful, because they cast doubt on some choices that might have been made differently by medical staff, i.e. people deemed competent to make them, but simply weren’t. They hurt, because they make me wonder whether my little one might be alive and healthy now, had medical staff made decisions based not just on statistics but on my specific situation.

There are other questions, however, that further tear my heart to pieces, because they bring into play my own possible responsibilities for the tragedy that killed my baby. “What if I had had the intuition to request to register with the bigger hospital?” “What if I had demanded further investigation into my baby’s slow growth, instead of blindly trusting the doctor?” “What if I had put my foot down to be driven to the larger hospital when I was clearly in a state of emergency?” “What if I had shouted at the ambulance driver to bloody go faster because I feared for my baby’s life?”

In other words,

Where was I when all this was happening?

_________________________

My name is Antonietta and I am a Still Mother. My baby girl Maia was born on 15th April 2018 at around 36 weeks. She saw the light through a caesarean cut performed to save her life from the consequences of a severe and sudden placental abruption. She strenuously fought her battle for life and eventually gained wings 36 hours after birth.

The months I shared with her during my pregnancy, the hours I spent talking to her after birth and the minutes I had with her in my arms just before she flew away, are my sweetest and most precious memories.

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