Alison shares with us the heartbreaking experience of losing her beloved baby Jack…a true example of a mother’s unmeasurable love.
From a young age I wanted to be a mother.
In 1998 my venture to try and have a baby started…
By 2004 I was exhausted! I had tried everything. You name it, I had done it.
It started with fertility pills then shifted to fertility injections, hormone treatment, DNCs, fallopian tube cleaning, more DNCs, artificial insemination then on to the harder stuff like IVF. My first experience of IVF was in New York.
IVF failed and I was shattered. I just couldn’t bear the sight of yet another failed pregnancy, another negative pregnancy test, another depression and, another way to find the money to go for another cycle of IVF!
Five rounds later, in February 2004 I got pregnant with one of my 3 embryos which were transferred back and yes that would be my very own Golden Egg.
Then came August, and I was still throwing up every single day of my pregnancy but hey beggars can’t be choosers and still I was happy for all that vomit in the world. Off I went to my gynae, on one of my normal monthly visits, where I lay on the couch, whilst we cracked jokes about everything. Life was good, or so I thought!
All of a sudden, his jaw dropped, he was looking at the screen like he had seen a ghost but that ghost meant that something was not right with my unborn baby.
I looked at him, terrified, and plucked up the courage to ask him what was wrong. He stammered and told me that it would be best if I went to hospital the following morning so he could have a better look with a 4D ultrasound machine. I knew he didn’t want to worry me too much and asked me whether I had driven there alone. He tried to mask his feelings under a forced smile and told me not to worry as it might only be a simple hernia that the baby had. He told me to go home and get some rest.
That night was the longest night of my entire life, that night was the beginning of the new Me. The following morning, bright and early I was lying on another couch at St Luke’s hospital, ready to look at my baby one more time and understand exactly whether in actual fact there was a hernia in the first place.
This time round, my gynae’s jaw didn’t just drop, but his whole body trembled and I passed out!
With tears in his eyes, in front of my partner and his assistants, he explained that Jack, my baby had a very rare complication. The technical terms he used was too difficult to understand but basically in simple English, my baby had a hernia in his diaphragm.
There was an operation that he could undergo, but unfortunately no one performed such an operation in Malta and that meant that I had to fly immediately to London. I cannot explain what went through my head at that moment but all I know was that I was on the next flight to King’s college hospital in England.
The gynae had arranged for me to meet one of the best surgeons in the world who operated on unborn children. He did not beat around any bushes and immediately gave me 3 options and asked to think carefully and pick one. He also assured me that there was no wrong or right choice but it was entirely up to me how I wanted to proceed with my baby. The choices were the following.
- Do nothing and wait till my baby was born at full term but go back home and prepare his funeral.
- Have an abortion.
- Gear up for an operation which he would perform on the baby through me.
I cried my eyes out, I couldn’t believe the options I had just been given but I knew my answer straight away, there were no 2 ways about it.
I was adamant about going through with the operation so he explained that he needed to perform this operation with a partner who was in Belgium and who couldn’t fly to London. So, there I was on the next train to Belgium desperately trying my best to save my baby boy. I will spare you the details of all the emotional pain I went through during those days but nothing was going to stop me fight for what I had longed for all of my life.
What operation was this? What would happen exactly? How would he even survive this? I never cared about my well-being, I was adamant on saving my baby’s life. That night the nurses sedated me so that I could have a good night sleep before the big day and the next morning, I was on the operating theatre surrounded by professors, doctors, assistants and students from around the globe, all eager to watch and learn about this very rare case of Hydrops being performed by the super intelligent top surgeon doctor Kypros Nikolaidis.
The anaesthetist put the baby to sleep while I remained awake but sedated. They numbed my tummy and very carefully went through the baby’s sac, through his mouth and inserted a tiny balloon. Finally, they blew it up in his trachea.
Let me explain to you what was wrong with my baby. All he had was a simple hernia, BUT, as the hernia was in his diaphragm, his liver continued growing and growing as there was no wall for them to stop. So, they took over his whole inside, pushing his heart to the side but even worse, they left no place for his lungs to grow. And that was a very big problem indeed. The reason that a balloon was inserted was for the trachea to be blocked so the lungs could start growing. I was sent back to Malta as now we had to wait for the balloon to do its job while I supposedly got on with my life as normal as can be. This was known as the blind period.
The plan was for me to go back up just before I give birth in London, once the balloon needed to be taken out before a C section was performed and no one in Malta did that. When the time came, I went back to London to do exactly what was planned. I still remember playing packman in the waiting area before I was called in to look at that screen once again and decide on what happens next.
But, what happened next was a nightmare.
When the professor took his first glance at the screen, he looked at me in complete sadness and informed me that sadly my baby had spat the balloon out and his lungs had deflated again.
We were back to- square one. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me, how my life had shot down in just one second, how my baby could die as soon as he was born. Dr Kypros was a genius, but he didn’t know how to be sympathetic at all, so he presented the exact same options he had done the first time. Again, I was adamant.
There was no chance in hell that I would let my baby die. Not in my life- time, over my dead body was I ever going to not put on a fight even if it meant I had to die myself and he got to live.
That was final, I opted for another chance to try again to put back another balloon and get his lungs to grow just enough to make it out of me, into an incubator till he was strong enough to fix his diaphramatic hernia. This time the operation took place in London.
But while I was still recovering in hospital, my waters broke. The medical team was doing what they possibly could to keep this baby from being born as not enough time had passed for his lungs to be as strong as they needed to be. It was still way to early for the baby to be born now. The problem was that Jack was very happy inside my womb. He didn’t use his lungs as he depended on me, so basically I was the one keeping him alive. Being away from me would mean he couldn’t depend on me anymore and he had to fight for his life alone.
I tried so hard to keep him safe inside me but when all the medication wasn’t helping, Jack had to be born and it was a 50/50 chance of survival at this point.
I longed for my mother to hold my hand, but she too was battling Parkinsons disease back home in Malta. She was only 59. She was diagnosed at 44.
At 2pm on the 23rd September 2004, Jack Kelly was born, weighing 2.3 kilos and looking just like an angel. He was absolutely perfect. I managed to get a quick glimpse of him while my tummy was being stitched up and he was rushed in an incubator with a red light and a loud alarm as he was rushed to the ITU for babies. He couldn’t even cry, his lungs were too tiny. But I could cry and I cried till I had no more tears left. I was given morphine and put in a room under observation.
At 2 am, just 12 hours after the birth I was awaken by 2 nurses who asked whether I wanted to see my baby. The pain was excruciating but at least I made it into a wheel-chair crying in pain but happy that I was finally going to meet my Jack.
There he was, he had more pipes than I have all around my apartment, all stuck with cartoon stickers to make the sight more bearable. Eyes closed with tape, wearing a blue beany, he lay asleep fighting for his life.
I wanted to give him my lungs but the doctors said they were too big and that it was impossible, I was thinking of all the crazy things I wanted to do for him so he could live even if I had to die, I didn’t care at all.
With unmeasurable love at 10 o’clock I baptised him and officially gave him his name, Jack. For his baptism, I wore the night gown that I had worn for child- birth and a blue woolen throw which the nurses had put over my shoulders to keep me warm. I still have his baptism photo. It is a photo to treasure all my life.
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon Jack took his very last breath and was disconnected from all the pipes invading his little body. He was bathed and dressed and placed in my arms, lifeless.
I looked at him for hours and cried and filled him with all my tears. It was the saddest day of my life, the day that changed me forever. Nothing or no one will ever come close to that not even in 2 life-times. Outliving your child, looking at his dead body, touching his beautiful face, he was perfect indeed but he was an angel and I had to say goodbye to the person I had lived for all my life. I was so close but yet so far to being a mother. From then on nothing else mattered.
The next few days were a total blare. Besides the exceptional pain after a C-Section, I had to deal with big breasts full of milk, which were yearning for a baby to feed on. That feeling was also extremely painful, not only physically but emotionally also.
My breast were oozing milk, they felt like they would explode at any minute, until a very experienced midwife walked into my room and told my partner to hurry up and go buy some cabbage leaves. We were told to stick them in the freezer and then insert them like cups into my maternity bra to extract all the toxins from my breasts and also to ease the pain away.
The very dedicated post-natal staff were so endearing, comforting and offered many shoulders for me to cry on and at that very challenging time, believe me, I needed all the shoulders I could get. To me, it was the end of the world. Nevertheless, I needed to start my grieving process and that was going to take time, patience and tons of more tears were about to be shed in the next couple of days. They offered to bring Jack up every day, until I was ready to say my final goodbyes.
I was so lucky to get to hold my precious child in my arms every morning, afternoon and evening if I wished to. He was kept frozen somewhere but whenever I cried for him, the nurses would bring him up and I could get to hug him again and again.
We took photos with him and I counted his fingers and toes every day. I showered him with kisses and touched his little nose and hands, his feet and stroked his hair gently while he was sleeping forever. As much as I understood the horrible nightmare of all this, I also knew that I had to pick up the pieces, stand up and move on no matter how long and painful this terrible journey was going to be.
I chose the most beautiful casket for Jack. I liked one with a little window where his face was uncovered and not totally boxed-in. Eventually, he flew to back to Malta, on my flight but on arrival he emerged from the Cargo side of the airport, where my devastated dad met him together with a hearse and my dearest cousin, an air-hostess, who devotedly changed her flight to be with us on board.
Baby Jack went straight to Capua Hospital where my family and friends could go visit him and say their goodbyes and blow him a kiss , plus they also got to see his perfect face. I visited him too when I finally plucked up enough courage. Honestly, I was living a horrible dream and found myself pinching myself to check whether all this was real or if it was just a bad dream. Mentally I was a disaster.
The funeral took place at the cemetery’s chapel, his coffin didn’t even show in the hearse. The mass was beautiful, the singing was amazing, Claudette Pace’s voice broke down as she was singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’, while all the people in the church poured their hearts out.
I was sedated and just stared at that little white coffin and imagined my little baby dead inside it. The sharpest knife wouldn’t have inflicted so much pain even if it pierced my heart a dozen times.
Two very special family members carried the casket to our family grave and then he was gone, gone forever. That afternoon, the 6th of October, I left my heart back at the cemetery, I left it there with him and I don’t think I ever got it back till this very day.
A very dark cloud came over me and I was a complete mess, I was in a very bad place, I was helpless, depressed, angry, empty. I had no reason to live. I kept his photo under my pillow and every night I held it tight pretending I was holding him instead. I couldn’t bear the thought that he was inside a black hole all alone especially when it rained and thundered, I would cry in pain, scream at the top of my lungs. This went totally against nature. I should be organising his baptism party not grieving and choosing flowers for his tomb. I spent days sitting on his grave, reading him a book or simply staring into space……
Today, 16 years later I manage to think about Jack and smile, I look up at the sky and imagine him with silver wings and big blue eyes, watching over me, together with my mummy who joined him 6 months after he passed away.
Today, 16 years later, I think that he had come to me for a reason. And the reason was not to stay on earth. I believe that Jack never needed me, I just gave him eternal life. His death taught me a lot. His death took me to Africa, where I adopted a little 4 year – old orphan living on the streets, a boy who truly needed my help, a boy who desperately needed a mother. I became a better person, I learnt what was important in life and what was not.
Eight years later, when I was 40, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy whom I called Ollie. Together with Jordan and my partner we have a beautiful family. Today Ollie is 7 and Jordan is nearly 18 and Jack is up there still watching over us and smiling down at us!
This is my story…..
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Alison Kelly is a hard working inspirational woman, the proud mother of Jack, Jordan and Ollie. She also recently battled and survived breast cancer.
