Declan Born En Caul

My Medical And Spiritual Experiences During Stillbirth

I was told to expect a grave outcome. I hoped harder than I had ever hoped for anything before that he would be okay. His kidneys were failing him. He wasn’t producing enough amniotic fluid to thrive. Three miscarriages before him taught me how fragile pregnancy really is but still, did not prepare me for this.

The phrase “I was beside myself” is something I say in conversation to describe how upset I feel about something. Before Declan though, I never really understood what it means to experience just that. Being “beside” oneself; until I did. The doctor turned her face away from the monitor and inhaled deeply. She exhaled an emphatic sigh, looked me in the eyes, pausing for only a second before speaking the words that still haunt me today.

“The baby has died. I’m sorry, your baby is dead.”

In that moment I found I was beside myself. I believe it to have been a trauma transformation of sorts so my brain could protect my heart. I was looking at myself, from within myself, but beside myself.

I felt suffocated by the air now filled by the doctor’s poisoned words. This could NOT be real. This could NOT be happening. In her next breath, as I was attempting to catch mine, she advised us to stay close to the hospital but get something to eat and come back in a few hours to be induced. I watched her leave my room and vomited into the basin beside my bed.

My husband and I went to a nearby restaurant, but we didn’t eat. We sat in the parking lot and both cried. Upon our return, the staff was there to meet us at the desk. They had been expecting us; their smiles awkward and full of pity. The nurse guided us to the Labour and Delivery ward and buzzed us through the wide double doors to where I would be delivering my dead son. I stood still in front of them as they opened, and the hallway flooded with the paralyzing sounds of newborn baby cries.

Declan was my third birth but my sixth pregnancy. Six babies, two living children. Several hours passed after being induced before I really felt like I was in labour. I was in denial now and kept thinking that they were mistaken, and they were all wrong. I had visions of telling the doctor with the cold face and life shattering words that she owes us an apology for her error. “He would be born alive. He would cry.” I hoped. Our nurse was gentle in her approach, telling me I still had time but I knew the baby was on his way. Soon after as the dark December night turned to morning, I felt the urge to push. No one had been in to check on us in a while. I hardly blamed them; I wouldn’t want to face us either. I needed the doctor. NOW. My husband opened the door, and the room was engulfed with sounds of new life, the way smoke fills a room in a burning building. No one responded to our call for help. He yelled down the hall, through the thick cries of babies and the hustle and bustle of the hospital, but nobody came.

Before anyone responded, Declan was here.

His birth was unique, not only because of the lack of medical support. His physical arrival was what I now know to be en caul. A veiled birth. It is said that these babies are teachers of higher learning in the spiritual sense. A “miracle” with mystical significance, some say. He was intact. I stared down at him on the bed between my knees in his amniotic sac.

He looked completely perfect. Almost like a yellow hued snow globe, but with my tiny son inside.

The nurse walked into the room, inhaled a gasp and exhaled a shriek. The doctor came running in with apologies and took me by the hand to tell me in all seriousness how exceedingly rare this type of birth is. I thought he meant a hospital birth without a medical professional present, but soon realized he meant being born en caul. I’ve since learned this thing of rarity happens only in approximately 1 in 80,000 births and is less common in vaginal deliveries. I now understand the doctor’s interest and why he wanted to take photographs. Those pictures were never shared with me, but I wish they had been. I didn’t know what I could and could not ask for. I didn’t even know what to ask. The nurse was visibly shaken. I wondered if this was the first stillbirth she had been a part of but knowing what I know now, I realize many healthcare professionals will never experience an en caul birth in their career. After taking my baby away to clean him up, she allowed Declan to stay with me for several hours and I had a nap with him in my bed. It had been almost thirty hours since I awoke the day before to find he wasn’t moving. She took footprints and put together a Memory Box for us which I will be forever grateful for. She included his hat that still smells like him. These boxes are given to bereaved parents, so we do not walk out of the hospital with arms empty, where our baby was supposed to be.

We were discharged within 5 hours of delivery. Once at home, no nurse came by to check on us later in the week the way they did when I had my living children. The only support my family doctor gave me at a follow up was an offer to write me a prescription for something to help me sleep. I had a funeral to plan and young kids to tend to, but no one gave direction how to do any of that. Trying to think and plan through the fog was a struggle. Choosing a cemetery that had a baby section, picking his plot, registering his death with the city even though I did not have a certificate of birth. All a blur. Without realizing the date the funeral home suggested, I found myself agreeing to bury my baby on the Friday of that week.

I buried my son on Friday December 21, 2012. The date according to the Mayan Calendar would be when the world was supposed to end. In many ways mine did.

I was devastated. Heartbroken. We do not go back to being who we were before our losses but we can move ahead with our grief and live a meaningful life if we do the work. I chose to join support groups and utilized grief resources that I found on my own by scouring the internet. I joined a baby loss organization to feel less isolated and aid in my healing. After using their services for more than two years, I decided to volunteer for them to give back to the community that had supported me when I needed it most. On occasion I am asked to speak in hospital lecture halls to healthcare professionals about my medical experience when having Declan. I do this work in an effort to advocate for bereaved families and bring more compassion to the healthcare system for those who will walk this journey behind me. After several years of speaking, I presented on a panel at the hospital I delivered my son in. I shared the story of my experience, careful to not identify the doctor or nurse assigned to me that night. Afterwards as I was leaving the lecture hall, a woman came running up to me in the corridor. She asked if I remembered her because she remembered me. She had been my nurse that day. The one who didn’t make into the room in time for my baby’s arrival. The one who did her best to provide the care I needed using the limited resources she had. The one who had never before experienced an en caul delivery. The one who didn’t know what she didn’t know. She was crying and apologizing profusely, saying she had never forgotten our sweet Declan. I’m glad we got that moment so that she could release the burden of guilt she had been carrying for all of those years. We all did our best the night Declan arrived, and we are all okay today. She was visibly relieved during our conversation. I hugged her. The chances of that nurse working at the time I was presenting that day was a divine intervention to free her.

The magic of an en caul birth is debatable of course, but I choose to believe in it. My son was a gift to teach me love like I never knew love before and to show me a life I would never have envisioned before him. I feel his presence in everything I do. The essence of him lives within me. I am forever changed because of Declan’s existence.