We had a dream of a happy family, Chris, me and baby. Chris already has 2 sons from his marriage and New Year’s Eve 2004 we made our wish list. We wanted a daughter born at the start of the school year before the end of 2005. Kieran wanted a little sister so that he could look after her as she grew and be a big brother to her and Logan wanted a little sister so that he could play dollies with her. For two years we had tried and each month we had the same result, that is except for February 17th 2005 when two very clear blue lines appeared on the testing strip. The beginning of our future was here at last. Nevermore would we just want a child we would hold one in our arms. We had already become parents to a very special little girl. The following day the sickness started, I had severe hyper emesis and for the next 16 weeks I spent more time in the hospital on a drip then I did at home.

I got to see my baby on the screen on many occasions and had a 4d scan that showed we would be having a baby girl due on 17th October. During the scan she had her legs crossed and refused to open them until near the end of the scan and had her hand up to her head so that we couldn't see her face. Chris named her India there and then in the car on the way home from the scan. He said he always wanted a little girl called India to whom he could show the world, well what could I say to that? He giggled cheekily and said I could choose her middle name. So being a Poe fan I gave her the name Raven a couple of days later. As the pregnancy wore on the sickness just did not stop. I was told it would go for 12 weeks, then 17 weeks and then I was told that I would probably have it all the way through.

On the morning of 4th June I woke up and everything was completely normal. I'd been out of the hospital for four days and was feeling pretty good. We had even been out together the night before for the first time since I became pregnant. I got up and everything was still normal. Then I realized that I'd had a show. We made what seemed like the world's longest journey to the hospital. It just seemed to take forever and all the way there I couldn't stop crying. I made Chris repeatedly promise me that we weren't going to lose our baby girl. I was only 21 weeks pregnant and still had a long way to go so she couldn't be born yet, not our princess. We gave her the name Isis in the car on the way to protect her and keep her safe and strong. I got to the hospital and was checked over by a midwife and listened to India's heartbeat on the Doppler. It wasn't a strong heartbeat, but it was definitely there. The midwife told me that the registrar would need to come and examine me, which she did and she didn't get very far into the examination when she stopped and the midwife and registrar just looked at each other only for a second, but in that second I could read their faces very clearly. In that second our whole world came crashing down around us. Then everything seemed to happen in slow motion and the registrar said that she could see the membranes and I had gone into premature labour. Now when I look back and re-live that day, which I do every single day as I never want to forget a moment that I shared with her, everything from this point is very blurry. I remember wondering at the time if the drugs they would give me to stop the labour would stop me from being sick, too, as nothing else seemed to have worked. But they weren't going to give me drugs to stop it. They said there was nothing that they could do. They also said that there was nothing that could be done once India was born as she was under 24 weeks. I couldn't understand how I could be in labour as far as I was aware labour hurt, but I didn't have any pains. My consultant arrived and it was at this point that we realized that we would never be going home holding our baby in our arms. It was then that I felt my first dull ache. 

Our baby had a heartbeat and we had listened to it on the Doppler when we arrived. Now we were being told that there was nothing they would be able to do to save her. The labour would continue and she would be born naturally, tiny and perfect, but as she was so young she would quietly slip away during the labour and wouldn't be in pain or suffer at all, just slip away peacefully like going to sleep. She would be written in my notes as a late miscarriage and would not have a birth certificate to say that she had ever been born. There was also a possibility of her being born alive, but legally there would be nothing that they would be able to do to save her and she would die shortly after birth as her body was not developed enough to survive on its own. At this moment we made our new wish list, we just wanted our daughter to live through the labour and be born alive so that she would have her birth certificate and death certificate and be a registered person. She would be there forevermore on the register of life. She meant so much to us that we couldn't bear the thought of her as a "late miscarriage" as to us she was a person, our precious daughter, our whole future that we had planned together included her. As hard as it was to know that our baby was going to die, if she lived first then she would always have her space in the register.

We refused the Doppler again and a scan as we knew that it was going to happen, but we just didn't want to know when. We were just clinging to the hope that she would be born alive and as long as we didn't know when there was always that hope. Every moment she stayed in me was another precious moment that I shared with her. I just did not want to let go of my daughter and held on and held on and I gave her all that I could but after 8 hours of labour I could hold her no more. India was born into this world with just one heartbreaking push. Our princess was born that night on 4 June 2005 at 22:05 weighing just 13 oz, measuring just 26cm long and with hands so tiny they would fit on your fingernail. I heard the midwife say those magical words "she's gasping" and I looked to the end of the bed. There she was, the tiniest and most perfect little baby you could ever see, so beautiful, just so tiny that she looked like she would break if you touched her. I had the most immense rush of love towards her and it felt like my heart was going to burst and just wanted everyone else to get away from her. She was mine and I just wanted to hold her close to me. If they could have done anything to save her I remember thinking at that time that I wouldn't have let them and I meant it from my heart. Just one look at her and you could see that being so tiny, if they did anything to try to save her then they would have only caused her pain and I loved her too much to let her suffer. She was wrapped up in a blanket and placed in my arms. Her life was very short but very peaceful. She was surrounded by the people that loved her most and saw her entry into this world, her parents and her grandparents. Oh how my mum wanted me to have a little girl, her first granddaughter, and she was so excited when we told her that we were having a girl that she went out and brought India her first pair of ballet shoes. 

Our precious tiny baby girl didn't cry and didn't moan and didn't ever open her eyes as she lay there in my arms in the same position that she was in most of her 17 week scan pictures with her legs crossed at her ankles and her right hand on her head. She looked so comfortable and we gave her the name Keilantra which means "princess of the night". Just an hour after she was born at 23:05, our perfect little princess died in my arms.

India was buried on a Tuesday, it wasn't hot and it wasn't cold, and there was a light breeze in the air, but it was a day like no other. This was the day that our baby was going to be buried. Both of us still could not comprehend the enormity of it and everything that we had now lost. Our heads hurt from trying to take it all in at once. I can't describe how it felt as it was like having my heart torn from my body and ripped into tiny pieces and scattered on the floor just out of reach while my body was being pulled in 10 different directions at once. My stomach ached from thousands of invisible punches that it felt like it had received. But here we were standing in front of where she lay in her tiny coffin, our precious baby, and not being able to hold her and take care of her. Not being able to make any more plans for her future and not being able to be the parents to her that we so desperately wanted to be. The only thing that we could do was stand there and say goodbye and this was goodbye to the most precious thing we ever had, goodbye to our whole future, goodbye to our perfect princess.

India had a huge full-size child's coffin all to herself because we felt that we couldn't put something so tiny into such a huge hole in the ground. We picked one for her that had pixies and fairies on it and was just so big compared to her. She was laid to rest in the Children's area of Rushden Cemetery so that she could be with other angel children. We had a beautiful humanist ceremony of life at her graveside written and conducted by Nichola Dare to mark her entry into this world and to wish her farewell. At the end of the ceremony everybody there let off 100 helium filled balloons each with a tag and cast evergreen into her grave. One balloon refused to make it over the fence so my Uncle Pete who was absolutely determined that he was going to make it fly so he took it away with him and loaded it into a hercules and released it out of the back somewhere over Wiltshire at midsummer.

http://www.india-westley.memory-of.com