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Grieving mothers were given no tools to deal with their loss. Extract from new memoir in Sunday Life (Sun-Herald & the Sunday Age)
Stunning extract from new memoir 'A Particular Woman' in this past weekends Sunday Life
July 12, 2020: The article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age.
Ashley Dawson-Damer in 1967, aged 21.
One afternoon in September 1974, the phone rang and a woman enquired as to whether I was ready to pick up my baby son in the morning. Piers was six weeks old.
The next morning, my husband, Phil, and I stopped at one of my suppliers in northern Sydney’s Artarmon, Ladybird, where I quickly selected an armful of baby clothes. We then picked up my sister-in-law, Helen, and drove to the hospital. A nursing sister brought in my little boy and placed him in my lap.
Extraordinarily, my Canadian cousin, Paul, and his wife, Audrey, had four adopted children, two girls and two boys. Such are the cadences sometimes found in families. As I looked at this tiny baby with enormous eyes and black hair, which had been firmly parted with a comb, endless happy and fearful thoughts tumbled through my head. Did I want him? Would I keep him? Could I love him? Phil was equally quiet. It was my sister-in-law who took charge and reassured us that “he was a real boy with a beautifully shaped head”. I changed the baby into his new clothes and we drove to collect my four-year-old nephew, Julian, from nursery school. As he climbed into the car to sit beside the baby basket, I turned to him and said, “This is your new cousin.”
I fell in love, gave Piers my maternal grandfather’s name, and he quickly became, as my 90-year-old grandmother proudly said, “one of us”.
My son was two-and-a-half years old when I went into premature labour with a baby of 28 weeks. She was my third daughter. In the 14th week of this pregnancy, the obstetrician had inserted a stitch into my incompetent cervix, basically to hold the baby in. Believing that this time my pregnancy would reach a happy conclusion, I had enjoyed lovely, slow summer days with Piers at Bondi Beach, floating over the swell of the waves – he with his flotation bubble, me with my growing belly.
Unfortunately, I was to confound the specialists and again cause obstetric havoc. The baby girl lived in my womb but died in the birth canal as she was being born. She had become exhausted during the labour. The medical team concentrated on the mother, now hemorrhaging from a torn uterus, and the baby was removed. Thinking she had been taken as a premature baby to intensive care, I did not ask to see her. Weakened by loss of blood and in need of a transfusion, knowledge of her death came slowly. I did not ask to see my baby, nor was it offered.
Three weeks later, while alone at home and with my son at preschool, the telephone rang. An unknown woman asked to speak to Phil. I was informed that $167 was owed for the cremation of a baby. In his distress, Phil had overlooked the account that was rendered for immediate payment at the hospital.
My mind clouded as her complaining voice talked of the tiny babies they collected for disposal, and for whom they failed to receive payment. Murmuring some vague reassurance, I replaced the phone on the wall and began screaming. Instinctively grabbing my tennis racquet, I drove to a favourite park where I could hit tennis balls against a wall. As the sun beat down and summer flies buzzed, I smashed at the wall and thought of death.
Caring for my sweet son helped to heal me and keep the ghosts at bay. With each pregnancy my ability to hold a baby within my womb was diminished. During my subsequent and last pregnancy, I was to spend three months in a hospital bed in an effort to carry the baby to full term. Piers was sent to Perth to live with my mother, where he attended the kindergarten of her old school, St Hilda’s.
Being in hospital, my terrible history of complications and mishaps was guarded against with daily monitoring by an impressive team of medical experts. This time we would succeed, or so everyone hoped. I was to surprise everyone yet again, and in the process almost lose my life. The whole dreadful business began at 24 weeks’ gestation in the delivery room, where I was attached to drips while premature labour pains racked my body. Medication followed and the placement of a second cervical ligature, which stopped the contractions, enabling my pregnancy to settle down.
Back in the ward, I occupied myself on the telephone, organising a surprise party for Phil’s 40th birthday to be celebrated in the first week of June. On the night of June 6, however, his friends came to an empty house. Oblivious of the arrangements, Phil was stationed at the hospital, where I was in the emergency theatre delivering our baby. My body had developed an infection and my temperature soared; it was subsequently discovered I had a small tear in my uterus from the previous delivery that allowed infection to occur. Both the baby and I were in danger of going into septic shock.
Knowledge of that Friday evening was later augmented by stories told by the nurses: of the young obstetrician who ran hospital corridors gathering specialists to save my life and the life of my baby. How I thanked the medical team in the theatre, before they anaesthetised me for a caesarean section. And the ward sister, searching for a camera to photograph the baby, her face resting beside a pink camellia to show how tiny she was. I had been living in the hospital for so long it had become my home and they all knew my story.
Afterwards, I was transferred to intensive care, while my baby battled for an hour in the neonatal intensive care ward. Attached to drips, I constantly exhorted the sister to ring for news of the baby’s progress as I willed her to fight for each tiny breath. Phil stayed near her. It was not long before I saw the lean figure of my obstetrician framed in the doorway, and I knew he had come to tell me my baby girl had lost her struggle and died. Begging him to return through the door and bring me news that she lived. Frightened I would descend into a pit of madness, I made the decision not to hold my dead baby.
Grieving mothers, left to deal privately with their unspoken and unvalued loss, were given no tools then with which to deal with their grief. It was only a short mental step for us to come to the conclusion that we had no value. I continued to believe I was responsible for the deaths of my little ones by failing to give them life. I desperately sought relief, salvation, and some sanctuary in the belief that I had value as the nurturing mother of my son.
It was only a short mental step for us to come to the conclusion that we had no value. I continued to believe I was responsible for the deaths of my little ones by failing to give them life.
Feeding Adelicia.
During the following week, while my body fought infection with the help of intravenous antibiotics, my mind fought to deal with the truth. I overcame the infection, but slid into a mental breakdown.
While I lay in a hospital bed and before my breakdown, I organised the burial place for my baby’s ashes. I may not have held her or kissed her, but I was determined she would have a grave and be named. Her ashes lie in the memorial wall in a rose garden of my local church, and I named her Henrietta, after a courageous ancestor. I was given a photo of my blonde cherub and it sits in a small, heart-shaped silver frame surrounded by antique porcelain figurines of three Beatrix Potter animals. I call them her guardian playmates.
Throughout my last pregnancy, I updated the adoption department on my condition. I had now reached the top of the list for my second baby, a girl, and the next suitable baby would be made available, if I was unsuccessful in producing my own.
Phil and I were invited to an initiation evening run by the adoption department of NSW Youth and Community Services, where we watched a large doll being bathed, after which we mixed with other potential adoptive parents. I found the evening interminable and hated the expectant excitement in the room and cosy bonding among the couples, and I hated the plastic doll. It was on that night I first met the imposing woman who was head of the department.
Anxious that her piercingly intelligent gaze would uncover my secret grieving, I played a role that appeared to fool everyone, including Phil. He whispered during the bathing display that I was clearly in my element.
Three-and-a-half months after the loss of Henrietta, Phil and I collected our six-week-old baby daughter, Adelicia. Although I had been granted a great gift, I could not overcome my depression and I struggled to love this baby, who was to be my last.
Caring for two small children, and rediscovering the first flickers of joyfulness, is a story of despair and healing.
Preoccupied by the effort to grow strong once more, I was unaware that the marriage had ended. Five months after the arrival of our daughter, my husband and I separated. My 12-year marriage was over.
Edited extract from A Particular Woman (Simon & Schuster) by Ashley Dawson-Damer, on sale now.
This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale July 12.