The morning of March 20 started abruptly at 5am as both mine and Dave’s alarms synchronised – it was time to get up and make our way down to Melbourne.
Neither of us knew what to expect but we hoped it would be a better experience than what we had gone through months earlier with the pregnancy clinic.
The morning itself seemed to go smoothly and we were on the road by 6am after dropping Charlie off with Nan and Pa, who would drop him off to Kinder once 8.30am arrived.
We hit traffic past Kalkallo but we made it onto Flemington Road an hour prior to our appointment. This was best case scenario, although it gave my nerves the opportunity to pounce, especially while we were struggling to find a nearby car park!
While making our way into the hospital, I became snappy when Dave asked me the name of the clinic – I had it all written down, but it wasn’t stored in my brain so I snapped. I was feeling very overwhelmed and I urgently needed to use the toilet, so the next question Dave directed at me, my answer was a very stern ‘I NEED TO GO TO THE TOILET!’
The problem was I wasn’t prepared for the amount of pregnant belly’s I was sighting – they were everywhere and I felt I would burst into tears.
Once we found our check in point, we made our way out of the building and looked for a nearby café (a quiet one), to fill in time and try enjoy a coffee.
Before we knew it, it was time to make our way back towards the hospital and as we approached the front steps we were greeted by the ‘lovely’ smell of cigarette smoke and the tears welled in my eyes.
Here we were seeking consultation for the loss of our beautiful boy and sitting at the entrance way of the building was this stupid woman, heavily pregnant, smoking a cigarette! I say stupid because she was not only impacting the health of her own baby, but also every other unborn baby and pregnant woman who walked past – yet we were the ones who had lost our baby – yeah – that’s fair!
It was like Dave had read my mind because he put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer as we continued through the doors of the hospital and made our way upstairs – to be again, surrounded by pregnant belly’s.
As we took a seat in the waiting room, I overheard a conversation about ‘pregnancy after loss’ and I felt my eyes tighten. I could feel my anxiety taking over – please tell me, we hadn’t travelled 3 hours to have another doctor be uninformed and unprepared for our case? Please, please not!
But the Doctor we met with, was right off the bat the most beautiful, empathetic and understanding person that even just being in her presence made my eyes well with relief.
Dr Kent asked a lot of questions and was excited to have access to my files, particularly that our case consisted of the placenta showing a high-grade chronic villitis which was of current interest.
‘We have literally just covered an information session on this exact complication, and here you are,’ she said.
My mind went straight to Louis and I thought, there you are my beautiful boy, things had aligned again and our appointment had been worth the wait. She explained that to avoid the same fault from occurring in the future, a daily intake of prednisolone would be prescribed for the entirety of the pregnancy. Dave and I laughed, as prednisolone was known in our family as ‘grumpy pills!’ Yes, they cleared my skin and resolved my asthma outbreaks, but they gave me cravings for ham and pickles and they kept me awake into the early hours of the morning. Dr Kent asked how many children we wanted and what our thoughts were on pre-natal care, and when we expressed our hesitation to return to Shepparton, she dug a little deeper and I handed over the ultrasound report from the last time we saw our little boy alive.
She read aloud ‘Umbilical artery Pl appears to be at the 5th percentile. Recommend short interval follow up in 10 days to confirm no deterioration.’ ‘When was this? Was there any follow up and were you made aware of this finding?’ she asked.
‘Two days, no follow up and no, I walked out of there thinking everything was ok, until it wasn’t,’ I said.
The conversation continued of our ordeal and we asked her professional opinion on the actions that were taken and the final findings – to which we had found ourselves. Did we need to be seeking legal advice? Could Louis have been saved?
Dr Kent suggested that we start by submitting a complaint as there were several issues regarding information not being disclosed adequately and we were clearly still holding onto our concerns. But as for moving forward, she would be taking us under her wing and she would be there when we were ready. We even waited while she conversed with a colleague about our case – it really was ironic timing, but we were used to the universe aligning – this would be Dr Kent’s first encounter with our little Louis.
We left our appointment feeling heard, reassured and relieved that we had not been let down again. We had a clear plan for moving forward and we had been promised a successful outcome for our next journey, whenever that may be – soon we hoped.
It was on our way out of Melbourne that I remembered at six weeks gestation with Charlie I was struggling with severe asthma and ended up heading into Numurkah hospital. I remember the nurse giving Dave and I are hard time due to the lingering effects of COVID-19 and I ended up in tears – she was rude, but more importantly I remembered being prescribed prednisolone! Was this why my placenta didn’t also fail with Charlie? Because this would have been the time that the vitelline duct narrowed and disappears – exactly what it didn’t do with my pregnancy with Louis. Instead, the duct implanted an incision in my placenta, termed a vitelline fistula, causing the placenta to fail us and our beautiful boy.
Had we been destined for the same outcome the first time around too? Was this what we had missed the first time and what could have saved our little Louis?
That and I had actually been hospitalised with Charlie at 36.5 weeks gestation due to extensive vomiting resulting in rupturing a blood vessel in the oesophagus. We were transferred to Shepparton where we were given fluids and monitored throughout the day. Could we have lost Charlie this day too? Had he too been destined for the same outcome, yet something had intervened?
We would never know – or understand why things had been so different for our boys.
'Our Little Louis' 