Hi and welcome to my blog!
My name is Natasha (Tasha) and as I write this I am 35 years old, a devoted wife, loving mother, passionate teacher and above all a ‘crazy cat lady’.
My husband, Steve, encouraged me to do this blog to get down my thoughts and feelings around the loss of our son when I was 20 weeks pregnant, the current 2 year struggle to get pregnant again and the fertility testing we pursued which has now led to our needing to go down the IVF route.
We have always been big travellers and have enjoyed many a unique holiday or ‘adventure’, as we call them – hence the website name! Through this blog I would like to show you what our incredible son has encouraged us to do; whether that be explore Mother Nature, take his spirit and show ourselves what the World has to offer, open my heart to the strains of motherhood or manage the ups and downs of marriage.
So let me take you back 10 years. I was 25, hadn’t really had a long term boyfriend and was looking for something meaningful. Then came ‘eharmony’, a dating website which completely turned my life around. Now, me being me (thinking it would take ages to find Mr. Right) I signed up for a discount rate for the year…..Steve did a free weekend! Cheapskate!! But even from that free weekend came my rock, my best friend, my partner in crime and my husband for life!
We made, sorry Steve made, the decision to wait two years after getting married to have kids as he was starting a new career path, retraining to be a paramedic (yes I know, I have my very own superhero at home!), so financially it wouldn’t have been the best timing. In December 2016 we started our journey to make three into four (we had a cat at the time called Ozzy who was my other ‘baby’) – I even had to come up with a ‘business proposal’ for starting slightly earlier than originally planned! – Steve likes to place these silly demands on me thinking I wouldn’t be stupid enough to do them….oooooh he REALLY doesn’t know how determined and stubborn Polish women can be!! It took us 8 months to pregnant and me being me (OCD, massive planner in all things) this felt like a lifetime where I was constantly questioning WHY it wasn’t happening for us straight away. Me questioning every tiny aspect of our lives drove Steve insane and we argued quite a lot about it.
But then, the day after we arrived on one of our USA tours, (no we are NOT rock stars but we have family there so we like to tie in a tour round parts of the States whilst visiting them once a year) I found out we were pregnant! I did the test and it went straight (within 20 seconds) to ‘PREGNANT’! I then thought about all the ways I could tell Steve (I love to make a big gesture when it’s something important). So when we stumbled across a cute little church/religious space in Millennium Square, Dallas and in the entrance was a ‘thankful’ wall where you could write what you were thankful for, I was like ‘BINGO!’. I wrote on a card that I was thankful to God for bringing Steve to me and now, for granting us a child! He looked at me and we both cried. It was fate, like it was meant to be, as the day before leaving for this adventure we’d just bought out first ‘family’ home.
Friday 24th November, 11am, we were in York District hospital for our 20 week scan. Everything up to this point had been great; a little nausea but nothing bad, a great 12 week scan where we got to see our baby for the very first time, and a super 16 week heartbeat check. I was happy to be seeing Pea again…yes that was and still is his name. Pea, because he was the size of a pea ish when we found out we were pregnant and our surname begins with a ‘P’. Whilst I was looking at the monitor talking to him and smiling and laughing, I noticed that the sonographer had been silent the entire time. Then came the 5 words that changed our lives forever…’I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat.’ It took a few seconds for me to comprehend those simple yet so complicated words. I screamed/ wailed turning to Steve as I always do. I was so sad, so angry. I even shouted (and sorry for the expletive) ‘Fucking work, I fucking knew it!’ I will discuss this comment in more detail later. We spoke to the nurse and then to the doctor who talked about ‘inducing’ and ‘delivery’. Up to that point the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
From the hospital we went to my work and Steve spoke to my boss, whilst a colleague, Emily (now one of my best friends), came to comfort me in the car. She lost her son Harry 5 years previous at around the same time in her pregnancy. Just talking to her about the feelings we share that none of my other friends do (and I am so glad they don’t!) has been a comfort I can never thank her enough for.
From there we went to our home…our ‘family’ home, the home we had bought the day before finding out about the pregnancy and the day before we had finally moved into. Walking into that house where my parents and Steve’s Dad were was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I am an only child and my parents have wanted to be grandparents for so long. I was disappointed in myself for allowing this to happen; I mean all I had to do was keep him safe and I couldn’t even do that! We spent the rest of the day and the following day all painting the house almost silent as no one knew what to say to either Steve or I.
Sunday was delivery day. The journey took longer in Steve’s head than in mine. Our family has been hit by tragedy before; Steve’s mum went into hospital in January 2015 (6 months before Steve and I got married) for eye surgery which went well but then she caught an infection and ended up in a coma for almost 4 years! Unfortunately December 2018 she passed away. The journey that Steve’s dad did to take Mum (I have called her ‘Mum’ and my father-in-law ‘Dad’ since the day we married) to the hospital that day took forever and he wanted it to, as he was scared something would happen. Steve had that very same feeling that morning, I found out later, so took the long route there.
We settled into our suite, yep that’s right, suite – apparently when you loose a baby you get upgraded! Haha – I apologise if this offends anyone, this is absolutely NOT my intention. It’s how I deal with this sometimes. We had a room with a double bed, TV and our own bathroom separate from the maternity ward. It’s called the ‘SANDS’ room standing for Stillborn And Neonatal Death Society who are a charity who help bereaved family’s like ours. I was given my first tablet at 10am, then every 4 hours until I had had 4 in total. All day we had midwives, nurses and doctors come in, check how I was feeling (stupid question!) and talk to us through the process of what was going to happen and the options we had during and after his birth. The people there, especially our midwife Sue and our Bereavement consultant Leanne, did an AWESOME job with us.
At 11.20pm I started with contractions…..man they are a (insert expletive here)!! I had some oral paracetamol but that was it for a while. Then, due to an infection I had contracted, they wanted me on the maternity ward as it is closer to the theatres should something go wrong. I didn’t really want to as I was scared I’d hear other mothers but they assured me that all of them were hours off delivery. Once Steve and I were in a private room (single bed – downgrade!) I was given gas and air, tastes like crap but it worked. It was getting painful even with the gas and air so the midwife said she’d go and get some IV paracetamol which is apparently better. Pea chose that very moment (no-one in the room other than Steve and I) to make his appearance into the world! I felt the need to push, so I did and voila, Baby Pea Poulton was born at 1.12am Monday 27th November. Our angel baby.
We spent the next few hours with him, holding him, just simply being with him. We had decided this ourselves. We had been given options to make informed decisions. This was the respect given to us and Pea which meant a lot to us. Most parents have the rest of their lives to make memories with their child/children….we had a matter of hours! They took photos, did foot and hand prints, dressed him and gave him back to us. Leanne, the Bereavement consultant had organised a blessing for us by the hospital chaplain, Rachel, as unfortunately babies born before 24 weeks are not given the courtesy of a birth/death certificate or any legal status. It disgusts me that Pea does not legally exist, like the pain Steve and I and our family went through and continue to go through means nothing. Yet we have still got to remember how far we have come in the last 50 years…back then, the baby was taken from you as soon as it was born, sometimes before you even got to lay eyes on them, and it was ‘disposed’ of. You never knew what happened to them. It makes me sick thinking about it.
At about 10/11am that Monday morning we said our goodbyes, knowing we could come back at any time and see him – the nurses had said we could before or soon after the post-mortem we decided to have. It was one of the hardest things we’ve had to do, I mean, how do you say goodbye to something, someone you have dreamed most of your entire adult life about?!
We chose to see Pea twice after that in the mortuary (there is a room you can do this in) but there has to come a time to say a proper goodbye. His final goodbye, his funeral, was 11th January; a quiet affair with only my parents and Steve’s dad attending with us. We’d asked Rachel, the Revd who had done his hospital blessing, to do the ceremony for us as we had made a lovely connection with her. Steve created the service sheets (his first degree was media so he was good at stuff like that – I married a very talented man I know!) and I carried Pea’s coffin and read a poem to him.
I imagine that some of you reading this will be in tears (I actually am re-reading this) and some will feel sad not understanding how anyone can go through what we went through and come out the other side, in fact positive about life. Well, we are! I struggled for a couple of months but then Steve helped me ‘’see the positives’’. There’s so much that our baby boy brought, and still brings to our lives. For example, I had always wanted to be a mum, and Pea gave me that honour, and Steve being a dad too! He brought Steve and I even closer together, something which I didn’t think was possible. And finally, he’s taught me that my job is ‘a job’, it pays the bills, but my LIFE….THAT is what is important….Steve, me and our (now) two girls (the cats)!
So, like I said before, the purpose of part of this blog is showing you the other side of ‘holidaying’ which for us is normally crammed full of visiting different places, walking/hiking, taking part in wildly different cultural experiences….whilst of course aiming for that healthy tan – I mean really, who doesn’t like a healthy glow! We want to help you find places to go, must sees, dos and don’ts. There are so many extraordinary places to visit in the world – we’d like you to share adventures together with us.
Happy adventuring!
