Saturday

Saturday was a busy day for Marty, he met his big sister, his grandparents and one more of his Uncle’s - we got to show our little boy off. He also spent the night with both his mummy and daddy.

One of our most unforgettable moments from our short time with Marty is him meeting Robyn. The doctors had been encouraging us to introduce the two of them and our immediate reaction was that Robyn was too young; we doubted she understood I was even pregnant let alone what was going on now. In the end, what followed, lead me to think she was a little wiser to it all than we gave her credit for. Of course she was. We were persuaded in the end by the doctors telling us that it will be nice for Robyn when she is older to know that she did meet her brother, even if she doesn’t remember it. And that it helps everyone feel connected as a family. We wanted to do whatever we could to ease the loss we knew we would soon feel so we did it.

We put some thought into what we felt was the best way for the two of them to meet each other, we wanted it to be the most positive experience it could be for all four of us. I’d read about introducing new siblings on ‘neutral ground’, so having the new baby in a cot or something. I’d banked that as a good idea for when the moment came, but hadn’t realised it would come as soon as it did. Although Robyn would be able to get closer to Marty if one of us was holding him, we didn’t want her to get upset and then us not be able to comfort her, we couldn’t exactly just pop Marty back down in a cot to give her a cuddle, it was all a bit of a palaver. As lovely as it would have been for the four of us to be close to each other, we felt like it could quickly get awkward and upsetting if that scenario went wrong. It really felt like we had one shot at getting this right.

Mark had been messaging me that morning, sending me photos of dresses, wondering what Robyn should wear for her big introduction. We went for a little patchwork style summer dress that my mum had bought for her. After all the thought he’d put in he was gutted when he later realised he’d put it on back to front!

Mark and Jon walked her down to the hospital first thing. We hadn’t actually spoken about what to say to her beforehand, in hindsight that was probably more important that what she was wearing. Mark said that as they walked he told her she was going to meet her little brother but he couldn’t come home with us. I went out to meet them all in the corridor, she had the brown teddy bear to give to Marty – thankfully she was willing to part with it! Jon waited for Robyn outside and Mark and I walked her in together. I felt nervous about her reaction, but excited too.

The blinds were fully open so the room was bright with sunlight, and I’d taken the cover off Marty’s incubator so she could see him straight away. I sat her on the stool, stood behind her and opened the incubator door so she could reach in. She said “baby” repeatedly, put her hand in, gave him the teddy, closed and opened the doors, and got worrying close to grabbing at some wires. We took it in turns to sit with her so we could both be with the two of them, and took photos of us all together. She was pretty tired that morning so we weren’t planning on keeping her in there too long. It was as we started to talk about saying goodbye that she made that introduction, that one and only meeting, totally perfect. She said “Bye. Bye bro”, the bro bit prompted by Mark. Then totally unprompted (I promise) she learnt down out of Marks arms and kissed Marty’s incubator, went back down for another kiss, then looked over at me and smiled, kissed me, then kissed her daddy. Oh. My. God. If we weren’t crying already (we were), then we definitely were now. Mark got it all on video, it is so special for us to have a record of that moment, and it has melted a few hearts since.

That was it, our 20 minutes all together as a family of four. It was the best that it could have been.

Jon took Robyn off in the pram for a nap on the way back to the house, and we’d arranged for Marks parents and brother David to be at the hospital ready to meet Marty next. We wanted to keep visits fairly short, and for Marty to stay in his incubator, we didn’t want him to feel confused or unsettled being held by other people. Now I wonder if it was selfish of us to not let people hold him but our time with him was so short, and so special; those newborn cuddles were even more precious. I felt like holding him should be an experience reserved for his mummy and daddy, I doubt anyone would begrudge us that.

Marks parents came in first, they sat next to him and put their hands on him, they were both crying and saying how small and lovely he was. Nobody found it easy but I think they found it especially hard; family is everything to them. Marty is their eighth grandchild! The third boy amongst a troop of girls. After a little while I went out to get Uncle David. He was standing in the corridor looking out of the window, as we started talking he seemed really excited to meet Marty, visibly fidgeting with anticipation. It was nice, as if he was meeting his new nephew under normal circumstances. I remember him saying he couldn’t believe how perfect Marty was, “if only love and desire were enough” he kept saying. That phrase stuck with us. If love and desire were enough to keep him with us, he would have been on the road to recovery in no time, and still with us now. Causing chaos no doubt. So many people were rooting for him but sadly that’s just not enough is it.

I left the hospital with them all so I could go and shower, as was the routine…Mark stayed with Marty. Back at the house I think Robyn was a bit bemused as the family gathering started to grow and she was getting more and more well deserved attention. David dropped me back at the hospital after an hour or so. There was a festival on in Nantes that week so there were lots of road closures. As he negotiated the typical narrow French streets and the road blocks I remember saying that I was a bit worried about just how precious Robyn would become now. We knew we were about to lose our son and what would that do to our relationship with our daughter? I didn’t want to become an over protective mum, constantly petrified that she was going to hurt herself or become ill. Sending her off to nursery in a hard hat or something. At the same time, obviously it absolutely made us realise for all good reasons how precious she was, and how lucky we were to have her. I felt like such an idiot, and so guilty, for all my worrying about how useless she was at sleeping. It really doesn’t matter, I wish I’d been more patient with her.

Back at the hospital a new doctor came in to see us and asked if we had made any ‘decisions’. He said that Marty may soon begin to feel some pain and that a group of clinicians were due to discuss Marty’s condition on Monday. We knew what that meant, and we didn’t want the decision we knew we needed to make to be forced on us, or worse taken away from us.

My mum and dad arrived in Nantes train station late that afternoon and came into the hospital to meet Marty in the evening. Unlike the other visits that day, I was holding Marty when they came in, it was purely down to timing. I was worried that seeing my parents for the first time since he was born would open a flood gate of tears from me but we all held it together pretty well. We asked everyone to try their best to treat this like a usual first meeting of a baby, and not a goodbye.  My mum and dad took it in turns to sit next to me and talk to him. My mum was so excited to get close to him that she kept leaning on the bed and almost accidentally pulling his tube out. She said “you wouldn’t have thought I used to work in intensive care would you?” No! We all said. My dad told Marty that he’d been thinking about him while he was travelling around Norway, of all of the things he could see and do. All of the things we all really knew he would never get to see and do.  As I suggested they left to be fair to the rest of the family, my dad asked if they could come back tomorrow. I paused, “probably not…”

After they left, Mark and I went downstairs to talk for a while, away from Marty's ears, Mark never wanted him to hear the sad conversations. We sat in the deserted reception area and ate some crap food from the local supermarket. We both knew what we needed to talk about and the decision we needed to make. When? Thankfully, but with the heaviest of hearts, we agreed on the ‘right’, the ‘best’ thing to do. Neither of these words are correct because it all felt far from right or best. But, Robyn had met him, some family had met him, we’d had hours of skin on skin time, his morphine was being increased, he may begin to feel pain, he would not survive. We knew we needed to let him go. We decided we’d both spend the night in the hospital and would say goodbye to him tomorrow.

We messaged our family in France and said we wouldn’t be back until tomorrow and asked them to look after Robyn for us until we got in touch. I don’t know if deep down they knew what was happening.

We went back up to Marty's room and Mari had been busy. She’d pushed two beds together for us, with a little cocoon in the middle for Marty to sleep between us. She’d dimmed the lights and put on a lamp projecting stars and moons onto the walls. It was beautiful, as beautiful as this scenario was going to get.

That night I remember crying to Mark. You know the kind of uncontrollable crying that takes over your whole body, gut wrenching. He held me and told me to let it all out. I had been crying that week, of course I had, but I had also been holding myself together for many reasons, and now I knew that we were about to spend our last 24 hours with Marty. This whole insane and horrible situation was coming to an end we didn’t want.

I don’t really like saying it was a horrible week or awful time. It was, but it was also the only week we spent with Marty so it doesn’t feel right to associate that with negative feelings. But it really was all of the very best that life can offer you, combined with the absolute worst.

Late that night Mari and another nurse set Marty up in the middle of the bed, on the little white cocoon, they piled him high with blankets so he didn’t get cold in the night. Mark and I lay either side of him, each with one hand on him, and the other holding each others hands. I could not believe this was going to be our first night together with our son. And our last. Again, I wanted to try and enjoy it and not be sad – try. We soon fell asleep together.

(We tried to make sure some kind of normality resumed during that week. It's what we wanted for Robyn.  That night Mark took a photo of me asleep next to Marty. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? It’s not. Mouth wide open, catching flies, head at a really awkward angle, looking awful. For those who know Mark, standard. And a ‘normal’ family photo of time with a newborn baby)

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