Today, the Sunday Telegraph Magazine published our story about Cameron in their ‘Real Life’ section (page 31-32). Here is the link for the article online, and below is the original unedited version:
* * *
It has been three years now since Cameron left us. I was 41 weeks pregnant when he died inside of me. He was our firstborn. Our precious, firstborn child.
The day Cameron died was a beautiful Saturday. It was two weeks into Spring, and the weather was warm and balmy. Golden sunlight bathed our little apartment in North Parramatta. I was already about a week overdue, but neither of us was feeling anxious since we’d agreed with my obstetrician that I would be induced on Monday. We were excited and impatient, but not worried.
However, in the early evening, I began to suspect something was wrong. Cameron had always been an active baby, yet it seemed like I hadn’t felt him move for hours. Dread began to fill my mind, yet a part of me could not fathom anything going wrong at such a late of the pregnancy. By the time I summoned the courage to tell Rick, however, I was trembling with fear.
We drove to the hospital in silence, my right hand tightly clutching Rick’s left. I was imagining the worst, yet desperately hoping to be told otherwise.
When the midwife couldn’t find Cameron’s heartbeat with the Doppler, I knew. She kept attempting conversation about the scratches on my tummy, but all I wanted was for her to be silent as raw pain started seeping its way into my entire being.
Minutes elapsed.
She left the room and returned with the doctor on call. Rick and I grasped each other’s hand even harder.
More time passed as they hooked me up to an ultrasound machine.
Finally, the doctor spoke: “There’s his heart, but it’s not beating. I’m so sorry.”
And with those words, our innocence was lost forever. Darkness fell. Pain penetrated. And grief descended.
Rick called his parents first. Then he called mine.
Mum and dad were so cheerful and excited when Rick rang up to deliver the news. They thought it was “the good news.” Even through my own hysterical sobbing, I could hear Rick trying to explain to my unsuspecting father what had happened. Dad didn’t understand.
I grabbed the phone from Rick. Mum was now on the phone asking whether the baby had arrived. I heard dad laughing in the background.
I couldn’t believe what I was about to tell them. “No, he’s died. The baby has died!” I sobbed despairingly in Cantonese.
The remainder of the night disintegrated into a blur for me. I hardly registered when our parents joined us in that cold hospital room. All I know is that they would’ve seen me sobbing beyond control, my head thrashing against Rick’s chest.
It was decided that I would be induced the next day.
That night, we didn’t sleep. In tears, I told Rick how scared I was to give birth to Cameron, knowing that he was no longer alive. We clung to each other as we cried and wept and lamented. A hole had already carved its way into my heart, and my stomach twisted and churned with shock and anguish. Our grief and our pain rang loudly into the night.
I remember not feeling Cameron move that night. I remember the stillness. And with that, the emptiness.
The next morning, I went on autopilot. I simply did everything Rick told me. He dressed me. He fed me. He packed my bags. He got me to the hospital. He was my leader. My rock.
They gave me the oxytocin drip at nine o’clock. Contractions came thick and fast: the first one was thirty seconds long, and less than a minute separated the first from the second.
I laboured hard for the next three hours, but by noon, I needed an epidural. With no sleep the night before, my exhaustion was beginning to consume me — I was literally falling asleep between contractions.
Only an hour later — having rested briefly with the epidural — I was ready to push.
It took fifty-five minutes, two midwives, the obstetrician and a large pair of forceps, but at 1:55 p.m., I gave birth to our son: Cameron Angus Mason.
He was 4.5 kg and 58 cm long, with jet-black hair. He was beautiful. And he was ours.
For the entire labour, I had been dreading the moment when they would place Cameron in my arms. I had been dreading seeing him — dead. Yet the moment I held him, my heart simply swelled with the love I already had for him.
This was my baby. My little boy. My child.
My tears fell all over his precious face. He looked like he was merely sleeping.
But he never woke up. Never opened his eyes. Never made a single noise.
He was utterly and completely — still. I finally understood why they called it ‘stillbirth.’
We only had eight hours with Cameron. Not the lifetime that we had hoped for.
Family came and left. Photos were taken. Cameron was bathed and dressed in the bodysuit that we had chosen.
In the early evening, when we were finally alone, Rick and I took turns cradling our little boy in our arms. I kissed his cheeks, his nose and his forehead. I stroked his perfectly formed hands and fingers. I breathed in the smell of his skin. I was storing everything up for the days, months and years ahead.
It was about nine o’clock when we decided it was time to for goodbye. I wrapped Cameron up for the final time and watched as Rick placed him gently in the tub. We left a little teddy with him.
I leant down and kissed my son one last time and wished for the moment to last forever.
Unable to support myself, I held onto Rick as we watched the midwife wheel Cameron out of the room and out of our lives.
And just like that, he was gone. My baby. Taken away. Gone.
Without warning, we had been torn apart.
After nine months of union, I was suddenly without my child.
* * *
We held Cameron’s memorial service five days later, and we were in awe of the friends and family who took the time and made the effort to attend. We felt extremely loved and cared for.
In the weeks that followed, however, I grew increasingly bitter and resentful of some people as I struggled to cope with the added pain caused by their various responses to our grief.
I resented other Christians for quoting bible verses and reminding me that God was in control and that I would see Cameron in heaven again some day, as if that was somehow a quick-fix remedy for my grief and sorrow.
I resented others — including my own relatives — who wanted me to “be strong,” to “be positive,” to “move on” and to “let go.” A few even suggested that we shouldn’t have so many photos of Cameron around our home. I tossed and turned through many sleepless nights, mulling over such harsh and thoughtless comments.
There were also the trite remarks about how Cameron wouldn’t want me to be so sad. Or that he was looking down on me from a better place. Or that he was better off not having to suffer in this life. Or that it was “not meant to be.”
But the worst culprit of all: telling us that we were young and that we would have more children. I could never understand why anyone would say (or even think) such a thing. Was Cameron somehow replaceable just because he was a baby who died in utero? And what if we didn’t — or couldn’t — have more children? What then?
It was all out of good intention, but none of it helped.
It wounded me when others seemed to suggest that Cameron was not truly unique or significant — that he was “just a baby,” and that we never knew him anyway. No mother who’s lost a baby or infant should have to suffer such added pain.
It infuriated me when others seemed to think they knew better than us in terms of how we ought to be grieving — or not grieving.
I wanted people to understand that they couldn’t possibly know what we were going through: Had they ever come home empty-handed from the hospital after nine months of pregnancy, only to face an empty house and an empty nursery? Had they ever woken up every morning to be confronted with the ugly reminder that they would never hold their baby again? Had they ever been forced to organise their baby’s funeral just a few days after giving birth to their child? Had they ever needed to contemplate collecting their baby’s ashes? Had they ever faced a lifetime ahead of them without their child?
All I wanted was for people to mourn with us, to grieve with us, to weep with us. I wanted them to acknowledge what a terrible tragedy it was that Cameron had died, to tell us they were deeply sorry for our loss and to reassure us that they would never forget that Cameron was our firstborn child.
I didn’t need other to try and ‘fix’ our situation. I needed them to realise it couldn’t be fixed.
I needed people to realise that I had to grieve for Cameron, that we wanted to grieve for him and that it was okay to do so.
I didn’t need anyone to say anything if they didn’t know what to say. They just had to say that they didn’t know what to say, and that would’ve been just fine.
And then there was the silence from those who couldn’t deal with our tragedy and so remained at a distance without saying a word. Even today, the wound from such maddening silence cuts me deeply still.
* * *
Fortunately for me, there were certain friends and family members who were willing and able to care for me the way I needed to be cared for.
They read my blog everyday as I poured out my grief online. They held me when I broke down into tears. They mourned with me, and they wept with me. They shared my sorrow and my pain. They never put a time limit on my grief. They never tried to ‘make things better.’ They never told me how I should be feeling or coping. They simply listened as I talked about my son and how much I longed for him. They looked at Cameron’s photos with me. They understood that he could never be replaced.
They were the ones who said: “I’m so sorry Ronnie; I wish he was here with you Ronnie; he was such a beautiful boy Ronnie; I don’t understand why this has happened to you guys; I can’t imagine what you are going through Ronnie; we will always remember Cameron with you; we will never forget him…”
