Aidan Christopher Duxfield Clark - His Story

Where to start?
We decided to get pregnant in January 2004, and in a very relaxed fashion we tried. I realised late in July that I was pregnant. In August I finally decided I needed to start the monitoring process so at 8 weeks I requested a Level II ultrasound as early as possible. I fight with receptionists over this I got my level II ultrasound with the fetal specialist, I wanted this becuase I am forty, and that poses so many risks for the health and well being of baby. Any way the Friday before the U/S I started to bleed so I took myself in to ER and waited for hours for my doctor to come in to see me then more hours for a low level ultrasound. The technician went silent looking at the screen and she turned it away from me. Then I had to wait again for my doctor he was on duty in the hospotal to see the images. He came in and said that the baby was alive but there seemed to be an encephlacele / neural tube defect. We would find out more on Monday at the Level II. That was a great weekend of tears, worry and anxiety.

On Monday we went in for the ultrasound. No encephlacele but nuchal transluceny measurements off the scale and what the fetal specialist called a cystic hygroma. Which was obvious in the ultrasound. Decisions to make: end the pregnancy now? do a cvs? or wait and do an amnio? We decided to do the CVS as we could do it at 12 weeks and it supplied many answers relatively quickly. The CVS was a very painful scary two hours of my life, I could not bring myself to look at my baby on the screen because I felt I would be loosing him soon. So my four week wait in hell started, at three weeks the results came back clear no chromosonal disorders and we found out he was a little boy. The relief was indescribable.

Now all we had to deal with was the cystic hygroma, at 16 weeks he was looking perfect everything developing well in its correct place and orientation. His brain also looked clear. At 17 weeks the cystic hygroma had resolved or disappered, he was a little bigger than average, and a doppler done on the placenta and cord and his heart indicated everyhting was functioning correctly and well.

One week of absolute joy where I told my friends, my family I had told just after the CVS, and we started planning and we gave him his name, Aidan Christopher.

At 18 weeks I went in for my Level II ultrasound with the fetal specialist only to find that my cervix had shortened and softened and the amniotic fluid was low. They checked me in to hospital and I had two cervical cerclages put in. Two days later they let me out of hospital. A week later I was having severe painful contractions, I was medicated and they sent me home. Three more visits to ER and then Labour and Delivery where they were controlling my labour and stopping it and then sending me home. The last time was at three in the morning I could not bear the pain any more...we drove to hospital and they stopped labour with medication and admitted me. I am now at 20 weeks. I spend a week in hospital where they medicate to try and prevent labour, but they were running out options for me. Friday night at 8 o'clock the contractions were so painful, I call the nurse and tell her what is happening, she comes back and says there is nothing I can give but tylenol for the pain. I ask has she told my OB she says yes but there is nothing he can do. At 9 o'clock I call her again and say get the OB here now something is wrong. She disappers for almost two hours finally reappering with the gurney to take me to Labour and Delivery, I will never forgive her for leaving me alone, scared and in pain for that long, I understand there was nothing she could give me, but she could have done the nursing part of her job which is care and comfort. Now the most painful and heart breaking seven hours of my life happen. The cerclages are taken out and at 3 45 am Aidan Christopher is born still at just 21 weeks. I ask to hold him and I do not know how long I did but it was so hard to give him back. I kissed him held his tiny hand, stroked his little feet, looked him all over ..I thought he looked like his father...same mouth and jaw, the same face, his eyes looked brown but of course they were closed. He was beautiful and he looked perfect to me.

So after lots of test nothing is really known about why we lost our wee man...now we wait to see if we can become pregnant again.

Remembering Aidan.

I took the idea for this blog from another blogger "Julians Mom", her posts about loosing her beautiful baby boy Julian reverberated within me. I want to do something similar for Aidan, my precious baby boy who I lost on the 27th of November 2004. Maybe I will some day be brave enough to include photos and ultrasound images.