Morgan Laurie Aires

My DP, Laurie, and I could not have been more thrilled when we found we were expecting a baby. Although I had 3 children from a previous relationship, Amelia, Harry and Melissa, this was to be Laurie's first and although I desperately wanted this baby, I think even more, I wanted it for Laurie.

The pregnancy passed reasonably uneventfully and was classed as a low risk pregnancy. With this in mind, on Wednesday 8th August 2007 I went shopping with Amelia and spent the day trudging round Exeter. It was tiring but then I was 5 and a half months pregnant so it would be.

The next day, Laurie and I drove 4 hours to go to his cousin's wedding. Again tiring but only to be expected.

On the Friday, we attended the wedding. I sat down most of the time but did get up to dance for at most, 5 minutes.

The following day, Saturday, we drove home - another 4 hours drive.

On Sunday 12th August I woke with a mild tummyache which I didn't think too much about - they happen, but at around 8.30am I realised that although the pains weren't that bad, they were coming with alarming regularity - about every 5 minutes. We rang the Exeter hospital who said it would be wise to go in just to get checked out. So we arranged for the younger 2 children to go to a friend. Amelia was in North Devon at a Summer camp.

Once at hospital, I was examined and it was confirmed that I had gone into premature labour. There was nothing they could do to stop or slow it, our baby was to be born that day at only 24 weeks. By and large, the medical team left us alone during labour, we had a lot to get our heads around. At one point a doctor gave me a scan to check the position of the baby - he was a footling breech which meant his little toes were coming out first. My only concern was that he was still alive - I knew that babies born alive at 24 weeks had a chance of survival. They also gave me an injection of surfactant which can help baby's lungs if they are very premature, but it would take at least 6 hours to have any effect and they doubted that baby would wait that long.

When the time came for our beautiful baby to be born, the room suddenly became very crowded and tiny little scrap was whisked to a corner where he was wrapped in clingfilm and checked for signs of life. Like every other couple, we had been looking forward to this moment of waiting to hear "It's a boy", instead what we were most longing to hear was "It's alive". It seemed like an eternity but was probably only about 3 minutes before we were told that he had a good heartbeat and had pinked up nicely. It was about another 5 before anyone told me that it was a boy. At about 10 minutes old, he was taken away to NNU (Neo-natal Unit).

We went up to see him about 30 minutes later after they had come to tell us that they had managed to stabilise him. He was 1lb 10oz, which sounds tiny but was actually a good weight for his gestation.

He was a mass of tubes and wires and in an incubator, but to us was still the most beautiful baby ever. Unfortunately, because he was so premature, we weren't particularly encouraged to touch him - it was a completely alien sensation to him and although we were desperate to, he would probably find it traumatic. So, although we did touch him and his little hand could wrap around the tip of 1 of our fingers, it was more for our benefit than his.

Over the next couple of days, the poor little lamb had numerous tests done. They all showed good signs but we were continually told that things could turn at any time. The only test result that gave us any cause for concern was that they found a bleed on his brain. This, apparently, was very common in such an early baby. I forget the exact statistics but we were told that approximately 1/3 of babies with this condition would lead a life where there would be little or no sign of brain damge, 1/3 would have a moderate disability eg deafness or slow to learn and 1/3 would have a "severe" disability. There was no way at this stage that the medical profession could say which category our little boy would fall in to.

For the next 9 days, Morgan (as we named him after a couple of days) continued to do well - his ventilator was at a fairly low level and he was only on air (no extra oxygen) and they even managed to tube feed him the tiniest amount of my expressed milk. I went home 2 days after I gave birth as I felt very uncared for in the Maternity Unit but we came back to the hospital daily which was 40 minutes each way, but we were lucky it was only that - it was a government policy that all babies born before 28 weeks in Devon should be sent straight to Plymouth Hospital - not because Plymouth were any better at looking after them, but because Plymouth had put in a lower tender (ie...it was cheaper!!). The Exeter doctors had thankfully seen that this would have been a nightmare scenario for us and had more or less insisted that Morgan stay in Exeter. I learned later that they got a severe telling off. We will always be grateful to them for sticking their necks out and taking the flack.

Morgan had a succession of visiting relatives during that week. Amongst others, Harry and Melissa came a couple of times and the kind Summer camp people brought Amelia down to see her new baby brother. We even started to feel just a glimmer of hope.

We rang the hospital every morning as soon as we woke to see what sort of night our little boy had had (sometimes as early as 6am!). We were just starting to get complacent as he seemed to be doing so well, until on the 22nd August, when we rang in the morning, the news wasn't so good. His breathing had become more difficult to maintain - they had had to turn the ventilator right up and he was now on quite a high level of Oxygen. His blood pressure also had taken a turn for the worse - they were now giving him the maximum amount of drugs that they could in order to keep it at an acceptable level.

Laurie and I drove straight to the hospital - all 3 of the children were now spending a week with their dad.

On arriving at the hospital, the news got even bleaker. They had done another scan of Morgan's brain and where Morgan's little body had tried to absorb the blood in his brain, there was now a space. The paediatrician told us very kindly and thoroughly, that if Morgan survived (and that was looking extremely unlikely at that moment) he was going to be in the severely disabled category. He would have no movement down 1 side of his body, he wouldn't be able to see, he wouldn't be able to communicate, he would have limited intelligence and there would very likely be other problems too. We thought our hearts would break. Morgan had also started fitting - the doctors couldn't tell us why. We asked whether there was any connection between his brain going downhill and his breathing, blood pressure & fitting problems. They said there wasn't, but in our hearts and minds, his little body was giving up - his quality of life wasn't going to be worth the struggle. The doctors advised us that in their opinion, it was no longer fair to be putting Morgan through any more medical intervention when he had such a slim prospect of survival and no prospect at all of a reasonable quality of life. We supported their decision. We both knew that if we were in Morgan's position (and God how we would have done anything to have swapped with him), we would want our Mum & Dad to love us enough to not want to put us through any more pain. It was because we loved him so very much, that we had to let him go.

We managed to get Laurie's dad to Exeter to see his only grandchild for the 1st and last time - he had been unwell before so the hospital had not allowed him to visit and my ex-husband brought Amelia, Harry and Melissa to the hospital so that they could say goodbye. Things don't get harder than that - taking your children to say goodbye to their baby brother, but the hospital had encouraged us to do this and in retrospect it was very much the right thing to do. Children need to be able to grieve as much as adults. We all sobbed together before the children left with their dad.

The nurse brought our little boy to us at around 7.30pm on Thursday 23rd August. We held him for the first and last time. The nurse went to draw the curtains but we told her not to - it was a beautiful sunset and we so wanted Morgan to feel the sun on his face before he died. We held him and whispered to him and kissed him and tried to cram a lifetime of love into a few moments.

We spent the next few days away from everybody - we went to lots of beautiful places that we would loved to have been able to take Morgan to as he grew up. We felt like we were showing him all the things we loved.

We had Morgan's funeral on the 5th September. No one should ever have to bury their son. Laurie made the coffin - he's really good at woodwork and made him a beautiful coffin out of oak. I lined it with something soft. Laurie had a leather wristband that had been on his wrist since the day I put it there - the day we met. It meant so much to us, we both knew it should go on Morgan's arm. His head was laid on a rather nasty cotton mat that I had made when I was 12. We just wanted part of us to be with him. The children all put in little cuddly toys that belonged to them. We all wrote messages on the inside of the lid that would be with him forever.

The service was beautiful. Everyone cried the whole way through. The 3 children let off 3 blue helium balloons that had personal messages attached.

We miss our little boy every moment of every day. The pain never goes away but, gradually we are all finding ways of coping with it better. We can now control our tears when we are out and about - people are so uncomfortable about crying. We save them for when we are at home where they can flow freely and no-one feels awkward about seeing them.

I'm sorry Morgan's story has turned out so long. It's partly for the benefit of friends and family who don't like to ask too many details in case it "upsets" us!! Aren't people funny.

We are getting a headstone organised at the moment. We're going to enscribe it with :

"On Earth for 11 days, In our hearts forever"