It was just a little white piece of paper lying there on the coffee table as we lay on the couch watching telly on a Monday evening.
But it was taunting us. It was an appointment card, a return to Holles Street on Thursday morning. And we knew in our heart of hearts what that appointment would tell us.
We had been there just a week and a half ago and seen our little heartbeat on the scanner. But tonight it was gone.
Ciara had complications in the late afternoon so we rushed into hospital and waited three hours to be seen.
We were seen at 8.15pm. The heartbeat was gone. But the doctor offered us a lifeline. Nothing could be told for certain without another scan only we would have to wait till Thursday. But Thursday was three days away - three days of hell.
Why couldn’t we have the second scan there and then? We didn’t even ask the question. I don’t know why.
So home we went with our little white piece of paper. And it taunted us for three days until we returned for the inevitable. Lucky we prepared for the worst I suppose.
And we left again, our little white piece of paper replaced with six little tablets and our little heartbeat gone forever.
I can only imagine that our three day wait was because we arrived on a Monday evening and there was nobody qualified available to give us the bad news.
One of the stats they gave us as some sort of comfort is that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. One in four! I thought that was an amazing statistic.
But surely that’s an argument that there should always be somebody qualified available to give the bad news there and then and to save couples like us from the trauma of the three day wait with the little white piece of paper.
Anyway, I’m only guessing, I could be completely wrong. But it seems like my way of dealing with this is to write about it. And now I’ve done that.
So to our little heartbeat on the monitor we say good bye. We would have loved to meet you, take care of you, to bring you up and love you.
