Mikala

Mikala Louise

by

Penny Peterssen

I never expected to fall pregnant again, let alone so quickly after a six and half year wait between my sons but I did. It was amazing. The fact that we were having a little girl was the icing on the cake. There was so much that as a mother I wanted to share with her when the time was right. Knowledge that my mother had passed on to me, I wanted to share with my daughter.

Choosing her name was easy, Mikala Louise. It had a nice ring to it and sounded just right! Everyone referred to Mikala as Micky, which we thought was extremely cute.

I never expected there to be any problems with the birth.

Mikala’s due date came and went. Weekly trips to the doctors had now turned into twice weekly with the obstetrician on duty at the hospital saying, “Any day now.”

On Sunday the twenty first of July 1996, I was admitted to our local hospital to be induced the following day. Nearly three weeks late, our daughter was finally going to be born.

The doctor inserted Prostaglandin gel to my cervix to help the induction process start overnight. I had a few contractions, then nothing. What a stubborn little girl I was carrying.

Oh well I was sure once Mikala was born, I would be able to teach her that there are only certain times in a woman’s life where being late is acceptable.

The next morning my husband Shane, arrived, excitement bubbled up then fizzled out, when told that today would not be the day.

I wanted to scream at the doctor, just induce me now, and let my baby girl be born.

That night, they once again applied the gel.

Every night at the same time, Mikala would kick the living hell out me. I loved the thought of her little feet kicking against the inside of my stomach. It was comforting knowing she was there and I was the only one who could nourish and protect her at this time. Only on this night, this cold Monday night, Mikala was not kicking, she was not moving and it was scaring the hell out of me. Buzzing furiously for the nurse, she to told me that there was nothing to worry about Mikala was just resting for her big day.

Tuesday the twenty-third of July 1996.

This was it. This was the day my little girl was going to be born. Fingers crossed nothing was going to prevent it this time.

Shane arrived early again. This time they decided yes, the waters were to be broken.

Because this was my third delivery, they assigned two resident doctors to my case for observation. The doctor efficiently broke my waters but I was shocked to see that the water was green. Panic grew rapidly within me as I knew that green water meant that it was Meconium, They placed the heart monitor on and it immediately started to drop. Questioning the staff did no good as they were very dismissive about it all.

Contractions began to hit hard, my baby girl was  pushing to be born. They rushed me into the delivery room, a nurse on the trolley with her hand inside of me saying that she couldn’t feel the cord around her neck. She had no idea it was wrapped incredibly tight around her little neck. The doctor told me to push; I was only six centimetres dilated. Shane held my hand tightly, pain and concern on his face as I pushed our Mikala out into this world.

It seemed everything began to happen in slow motion. The doctor placed Mikala on my stomach, urging me to rub her back, and then taking her away to a group of nurses and doctors who kept saying “clear”, over and over. The resident doctors on the side of the room were silently crying. I remember looking towards them wondering why they were crying.

 I then saw my Oma (grandmother) standing near the doorway, holding Mikala, telling me she would look after her until it was my time. Shane was sobbing as the doctors told us that our beautiful baby girl was dead. She was stillborn.

They wrapped her up and gave her to me to hold. This gorgeous little beauty with her cupid bow lips and black curly hair. Fingers and toes so perfectly formed, yet never to open her eyes. Why? Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented? Maybe if I fought harder for her and made the staff listen to my concerns, what if this, maybe that…nothing was going to bring my daughter back. Nobody could explain to me why I would never see my daughter’s eyes open or hear her cry.

Shane called his mother who brought our sons, Joel and Rhys  in and it was then that we had to explain to them that they would never see their little sister grow up and be a beautiful young woman. Rhys  sat on my lap and cuddled up, not saying a word. Joel would not leave his sister’s side. It was almost like he was hoping she would wake up.

Ringing the family to let them know of Mikala’s passing was perhaps the toughest thing we had to do that day. How do you break the news over the phone that the granddaughter/niece they had been waiting for, arrived but went, all in the one instance. How do you tell them that instead of a welcome home party where they could see our precious little bundle, it would in fact be a funeral and a wake?

Oh Goddess, how does one make arrangements to bury their child. Nobody prepares you for these things, it is one of the taboo subjects that unless you have to go through it, you never speak about it. Never even think about it. But we had to, we had to think about it and organize it.

The funeral directors were lovely and basically walked us through the whole thing. The celebrant understood our need not to have a church service but to instead celebrate what Mikala meant to us as a family unit and part of the extended family.

Choosing a song for the funeral was not hard at all, in fact it was very easy and both Shane and I said the name in unison, “Tears From Heaven” by Eric Clapton. To us it conveyed all the emotion that we felt deep inside of us and he said those words that we wanted to say but didn’t know how to.

We were asked to choose a poem or reading for her funeral and again it was an easy choice to make. When I was little I used to have my Mum read me a certain poem written by Henry Lawson called “The Water Lily". This same poem was given to me in a book at the hospital by the staff. It was only right that it should be read and how ironic that the poem I loved and cried over when I was a child, should be the one to see my baby girl off with.

Anyone who has not gone through the pain of losing a child has no idea of the emotional turmoil and physical pain that not only the parents go through but what it can do to their other children.

The ensuing days, weeks and months were spent making sure that my husband and sons were coping okay. I never gave my own grief a chance to come through. My youngest son Rhys, who was only twenty-three months old decided to stop speaking by the time he turned two. His last words to me were that he would be the baby; he didn’t speak again until he was four. My eldest son Joel, who was nearly ten, alternated between wanting to be affectionate and keeping an emotional distance from me.

When my grief finally broke through, I could not let it out in its entirety. I wanted to blame someone but having no person to blame for what had happened I blamed myself for Mikala’s stillbirth and still do. Shane keeps assuring me it wasn’t my fault and even though my head tells me what he says is right, my heart refuses to accept it.

Going through the first year was difficult and by the time the second year came around, it was no better than the first. This has continued on with each milestone she would have made in her life.

Mikala will turn eighteen on the twenty-third of July 2014 and it will be the last milestone I have to cope with since she passed through our lives. I am hoping that each year will be less painful then the last. I know that it will be better not to mourn her but celebrate those short nine months when we waited patiently with love for her arrival.