I am talking about simply being a mom. Being a mom is a gift that is unimaginably precious. It is a love that never dies; it is a relationship that never ends. Nothing else can produce the pure joy and satisfaction that motherhood allows. I think being a mom and enjoying the journey of motherhood is a dream of every woman. But for me, it has not been easy.
The whole journey begun 9 years ago, when I took a home pregnancy test on a Monday morning, it showed up positive. And I had cried instantly as I was feeling overwhelmed with intense positive emotions. It was the happiest moment of my life. Within few minutes, all sorts of mixed feelings (excitement, nervousness) ran through my body. We (I and my husband) were very excited to find that we were expecting. This is the first grand baby for everyone in the family, on both sides. All family members were celebrating this great news. Everything was awesome.
Of course, being pregnant is the most beautiful time in life for any woman, when you shall fall in love with someone you have not met yet. And for me too, it was the most crowning creative experience of my life. It was the time of transition, growth and a profound beginning for me. The thought that I was carrying my baby was the greatest gift that I could have.
The actual joy of this amazing journey had begun when I heard a tiny heartbeat for the very first time. I still remember the day when I went down for my ultrasound and heard my baby's heartbeat; it was the most amazing feeling in the world. It gave me Goosebumps. I never want to forget how incredible it feels the first movement of the baby. I was wondering all the times, who is this person coming,
growing, kicking, and turning inside me. The days were passing with the flying speed. Every day, when he kicks from the inside, I forget my all worries. He reminds me every time that a miracle was growing inside me. I was enjoying the each day with an impatient feeling that when will baby arrive?
Everything was smooth and normal. But, destiny has written something else for me.
One day, my life turned upside down and everything was taken away from me in an instant. I had something terrible that I would never have thought. Unfortunately, during the last week of the 6th month of my pregnancy, I had developed sudden and severe symptoms of pre-eclampsia with high blood pressure, bursting headache, swelling in limbs and protein in the urine.
We rushed to the hospital and doctor says that we do not have anything better except bed rest and delivering the baby. He had prescribed me some medication and dietary modification. We were feeling helpless. All we wanted was a healthy baby. We had done every possible effort…frequent doctor visits, close monitoring, but nothing has worked out. The sudden rise in blood pressure has restricted the proper blood supply to the baby. The pain of dealing with knowing that my body is betraying me was difficult to share with anyone. Initially, it was a case of intrauterine growth retardation (a condition when the foetus does not develop at a normal rate)…but within few weeks I had intrauterine death (death of baby inside the uterus) of my baby.
How could I forget that most unfortunate moment of my life, when the doctor came in and she had put the stethoscope on my belly like she had done thousand times before? She kept moving it and turned to me and said words that I shall never in my life time forget "there is not a heartbeat". I was in a state of emotional shock. I could not believe that we had lost our baby. Our first baby…our dream of being a parent unexpectedly shattered within few minutes. I was living in the nightmare.
I was shocked and filled with so much emotional pain that was almost unbearable for me. I was going through the most difficult phase of my life. The emotional pain was infinitely more difficult to bear than the physical discomfort. I felt that I could not face going out. I had a deep feeling of failure inside me. A sense of guilt and self-blame were overwhelming me. I was feeling that my body had let me down. We both felt quite alone with a question why this was happening to us? Our whole family had a painful emotional outburst.
During those tough days of my life, I used to felt alone and depressed. Depression had drained my energy, hope and drive. Sometimes I sat down quite for hours and suddenly wept in next moment. Even reaching out to close family members and friends was not easy for me. People surrounding me were consoling me constantly by saying the same thing “It is not your fault” “It is pure bad luck and unfortunate”. But I know it was not mere a bad luck.
After getting an initial physical and emotional recovery from my loss, I had realised very soon, that it was not only a routine case of pre-eclampsia. There is much more behind this unfortunate event and the fact that I had analysed were not only the shocking for me and my family…but frustrating as well.
I had realised that I was an innocent victim of “Medical Negligence”. During my pregnancy, I was under the strict medical supervision because of the previous history of miscarriages. In spite of that, I had a dreading complication of pre-eclampsia. I had suffered from medical negligence twice during my pregnancy period.
My doctor had not put an adequate attention to warning signs. He had not taken a proper action for protecting me and my baby at the time. And because of his negligence, I had the most traumatic experience of my life…losing my baby.
Whenever, a doctor does a misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis or delaying in treatment, these mal-practices always puts patient’s life in danger.
Of course, victims of medical malpractice and their families deserve an answer and a full accounting of what went wrong. It is very necessary if a loved one has passed on because of medical mal practice his family member should get justice for avoiding the future tragedies. Medical mal-practice is so threatening during pregnancy; it can have devastating and lifelong effects. It may be a cause of pre term labour, still birth or may cause the permanent defects in baby’s development.
So as on my personal experience I had learnt that it is good to follow your doctor’s guidelines, but do not keep a blind trust. Always being self-aware, know the risk factors and preventive measures. Sometimes, their so-called busy-ness and negligence may put you in a deep trouble. And we may loss a precious thing that may be more precious than our life
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I had realised these all facts after losing the most precious thing of my life…my first baby. If I would not make a deep analysis of my pregnancy…I would think that pre-eclampsia was the only killer of my baby. But it was not…there was much more than that.
After learning a life lesson about the “being self-aware”, I had started my fertility treatment with positivity and optimistic approach. And with the grace of god my dream of being a mother came to reality after a brief period of waiting. After overcoming all obstacles, I become a mother of a healthy and beautiful daughter. The day when “my angel "came in our life I had the tear of happiness in my eyes and immense satisfaction in my heart. But I still had a silent grief of losing my first child. And I still had a strong anger for any kind of “medical negligence” that takes away so many precious lives just because of careless ness
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Do you have an experience like this? What else we can do to avoid “medical negligence”? Please share!
I had contributed this post firstly on mycity4kids
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