About Me!
[under construction - lots more to come]
Who am I?
My name is Rosie. I live in London, UK, although I grew up in Cornwall, a very rural area. I am currently 33, and will be when I attempt the marathon as well. My husband Steve is 29, my toyboy! We met in 2002 after I moved here. He lived in Cumbria, in the far north west of the country, and we met through mutual friends as he had friends in London. Within a few weeks of us starting to see each other in 2003 he moved down to London and the rest was history! We married in 2005, and so began the long saga of Pregnancy Drama.
All of my Pregnancy Drama is detailed here in great detail, often backed up by the journal entries I made at the time. To read it, and it will take time, use the links to the right. The upshot of it all is that we have a nearly three year old daughter B, and against all the odds, an 8 month old daughter C. And two first trimester losses.
We currently live in SE London although we are longing to move.. however we are trapped due to negative equity. I used to be a software engineer/technical author until I became a stay at home mother, and my husband Steve works doing computer network administration.
One of my main hobbies is photography, especially of the children. Steve’s main hobby is cookery!
Here is a photo of Steve with the children:
And here is one of me:
If you want to contact me privately, please contact me at rosie @ **braveorfoolish.org.uk** (get rid of the *s).
hi rosie,
me and my wife also lost a baby, at 23 weeks. i will be doing the marathon in his memory. you are right it is a taboo area and although it meant a massive amount to us, some people couldn’t understand the whole concept around us wanting a funeral etc. we contacted the miscarriage association and they were brill. some great advice and information. after the hell we went through at the hospital it was such a relief. we now have mirricle twins, my wife suffers with premature labour. they are 3 and a half. we were, for the first part of the pregnancy travelling from stafford to st mary’s in london, where we had the best care we could ever hope for. our doctor in stafford then took over and he was excellent too. my wife was also on bed rest for 10 weeks and she a stitch in her cervix and a cocktail of drugs, all to keep the twins in, she still went into labour at 29 weeks. after 6 weeks in neo-natal the twins, harry and isabelle, came home. they were born on the 11th of march 2006. thanks for posting your story, i think as we have never had any form of counciling, there is still raw emotion even after 7 years.
I am so sorry for your loss, I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels. I am not surprised it is still raw because no amount of time will ever fix something like that. I’ve had first trimester miscarriages but they’re nothing compared to later losses. Medically those second trimester losses are a “miscarriage” but in reality it’s far more than that in a really horrible way, and that’s something that many people don’t realise. I hope you managed to get a funeral, and I am sorry not all your friends were supportive. Many of my online friends have had later losses and I’ve seen, despite not ever meeting them, how much it has affected them and it’s because of them I wanted to do this for the Miscarriage Association for all the other parents who have to go through that.
Sounds like an absolutely terrifying subsequent pregnancy but I am so pleased you got your twins to show for it! I don’t know if you read my story, but I had a stitch from 18 weeks and it sounds like your twins are every bit the miracle my second daughter is. They did great coming home after only 6 weeks if they were 29 weekers, and twins as well! I have heard very good things about St. Mary’s hospital so I am pleased to hear of yet another good story.
I think your first son would be highly honoured by your taking part in the marathon for him and for such a great charity as FSID – definitely something that will keep you training hard!
hi, unfortunately our story gets even worse. on the day my wife went into early labour we were taken to the guyni(that is a crap spelling of it) ward. we were then left on our own for 2 days while my wife went through hell and back.we even had to go down to the scan room and que up with the happy girls holding their bumps!! finally she delivered george, naturally, and the nurse was too late to catch him so my mother in law helped him down to the bed, i saw his arm move as i guess he tried to take at least one breath, he wasn’t dead in the womb, he only died on delivery. then came the truly terrifying bit. once it was time for the placenta to come it hadn’t actually detatched, so the doctor tried to pull it out, i have no idea what he was doing but my wife was bleeding onto the bed and then it was dribbling onto the floor. she was rushed into theatre for and emergancy op to remove the placenta. probably the worst moment of my life as at 23 yrs of age i had not come into contact with what i saw and i knew nothing about the situation, i felt like a scared boy, not a young man. jenni was not well for at least two years after that. she had a blood transfusion and its this that st. mary’s suspect gave her the anti-phospholipid syndrome she now has. we went back to the hospital 2 weeks later to get the post mortum results, we had to wait on the maternity ward listening to babies crying and watching reletives bring in flowers and ballons, i have never felt so low, angry, annoyed, jealous, as i did at that time. once we were called into the docs office she couldnt find the results so she phoned someone and wrote a few notes on some paper. we, and indeed george did not matter to her that day. so if you know of anyone who is having a baby in newport south wales, give them all the luck you can. that hospital is super crap!!
Oh my goodness, that’s dreadful! Sadly, I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. It’s things like that which stop me from going near my local hospital in London too. Their EPU (Early Pregnancy Unit) is fairly reasonable when it comes to dealing with first trimester losses (although I was treated like a piece of meat the day of my D&C there – different department I guess), but I’ve heard such horror stories from the maternity wards with babies lost later on, not dissimilar to yours at all. It’s horrific that they just left you to it when she arrived at the hospital.. I am so sorry!
The insensitivity of the staff you had to deal with makes me feel ill. I get that they’re busy, but there is still room for compassion when you’re busy. One of the things The Miscarriage Association does is train medical staff on how to treat parents with losses and it’s horrific cases like yours at that hospital that I am doing this for, to help even a few parents not have to go through crap like that on top of their losses.
It doesn’t compare even slightly with what you went through, but after I had an infection following my second loss the hospital in Southampton had me sitting for well over an hour and a half (they forgot about me) waiting for a scan to check for retained bit and pieces in a room full of happy pregnant women, and some of the thoughts going through my head I was not proud of!
hi, i completely agree with you, espeacially the thoughts we are not proud of. also you shouldn’t compare your loss with others’ as every one’s loss is personal to that person, what i mean is that i don’t think for one moment our loss is worse than the next person’s, at least we got to hold our little boy, earlier losses dont even get a chance to see thier baby and as mums and dads are getting to grips with the pregnancy it is cruely ended before they even experience things like a bump. i feel like the luckiest parent alive as we were given 2 children in one. we are not going to try for another as it could end with a lost baby which, knowing what we do, wouldn’t be fair on us, the twins and more importantly the baby. Also holidays are cheaper with just 4 of us….
I guess so.. it is hard to know which would be worse. Getting to spend time with the baby even in the womb, or not at all. Everyone also deals with their losses very differently. I am extremely grateful to have mostly come to terms with mine, although I am sure that is partly because there was never any hope for my losses – they were almost certainly genetic problems.
You are indeed blessed to have two children from one pregnancy.. that must have been so nerve-wracking! We might go on to have more children but it’s definitely on the back burner for now – as you say, knowing it’s high risk, is it necessarily fair on everyone involved? We’re also very blessed indeed to have two healthy children!
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