Told by: Deborah
I am now ready to share my Alfie’s story.

It all started on Tuesday, October 18. It was my 3 week of maternity leave and I was just about getting used to it, but this day I had to rest a lot. I had this constant aching back pain but I thought nothing of it. I was 35 weeks pregnant I was supposed to feel uncomfortable (wasn’t I?). Later that night I knew I was in labour but I didn’t want to go to hospital too early so I had a long warm bath (like they tell you to) and counted the time between the contractions but with him doing somersaults in there it was getting quite difficult.

Around 2am (19/10/11), I went to hospital where we were left in a room for what seemed like hours before I was led to another room where they got me settled on the bed and tried to hook me up to monitors to check on little Alfie. It was only at this point I started to worry, as she couldn’t find his heartbeat (Matthew says he looked at her face and she knew… and at that point, deep down, so did he). She scurried off to find another piece of equipment but still had no joy so she called for the doctor who did an ultrasound. He then confirmed that Alfie had indeed died inside me. In that single moment, all our hopes and dreams were gone. Our whole world had come crashing down around us and there was nothing we could do about it.

I was sick constantly for a good hour after this news, but then I was offered morphine to help me deal with the labour pains (which as I remember made me itch so bad, I asked for a wire brush). I remember the pains like it was yesterday but somehow it didn’t matter. I was more concerned with meeting my Alfie face to face, I had gone from uncontrollable wrenching to feeling very relaxed and serene. I was pressing the button for morphine more and more when Matthew went to make the phone calls (about 5/6 am). He returned about 20 minutes later still sobbing with the heartache of it all and I was angry at myself for being so calm, I was in a daze. About 6.30am, my mum and dad arrived with tearstained cheeks, my dad who rarely shows emotion had the look of a broken man. He looked so old (he’s only 49) and he hugged me the tightest he ever has, like he was afraid of losing me too. Matthew’s mum and dad appeared too. His dad looked so frail and broken too. In the pictures we have, he looked as though he were about to pass out.

Just a few short hours after this, at 9.21am, Alfie James Jackson was born silently into this world into the arms of his doting devastated daddy. I was so high from the morphine, I don’t actually remember the next hour or so. I was drifting in and out of consciousness for a while but I had lots of pictures of the time my memory forgets which helps to fill in the blanks.

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