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GAZING at my newborn son, swaddled in a blanket in his pram, I felt overwhelmed by a storm of emotions – love and joy colliding with grief and disbelief.
This would be my one and only walk with Orion – my first baby – because 10 days earlier, in April 2021, he had been stillborn.
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My husband Gary, 39, an electrician, and I had been allowed to bring him home so we could spend time together and introduce him to family and friends, before we had to say goodbye forever. But even in that heart-breaking moment, as I pushed his pram through a local park, I was determined to treasure this bittersweet memory.
Orion was conceived by IVF in July 2020. It was our sixth cycle of fertility treatment after Gary – who I met through our church in 2007 and married in 2010 – and I were diagnosed with unexplained infertility in 2017. We’d been trying to conceive naturally for two years, and embarked on IVF full of hope and optimism, both of us desperate to be parents.
Our first cycle was on the NHS, but for the others we had to go private, spending around £8,000 from our savings. By that sixth cycle we were emotionally exhausted. None of the previous attempts had been successful and it was hard to stay hopeful.
So much so that when I tested on that summer’s morning, with Gary by my side, and it was positive, I refused to believe I was finally pregnant. Even when a blood test at the fertility clinic a few days later confirmed the news, I couldn’t allow myself to feel excited. I was too frightened.
Six weeks later, I had a scan and it was only when I saw a tiny heartbeat flickering on the screen that I wept with happiness.
I was finally going to be a mum. I had a perfect pregnancy – I had loads of energy and no sickness at all – and I loved watching my bump grow. Furloughed from my job in hospitality because of the pandemic, I had lots of time to decorate the nursery and read baby books.
We decided not to find out the sex at the 20-week scan, preferring to have a surprise when the baby was born. On April 2, 2021, when I was 39 weeks and five days pregnant, after a day of gardening and general nesting, I realised the baby hadn’t been kicking as much as usual.
I wasn’t overly worried, I’d still felt movement that day, but decided to go to hospital to be checked. As I lay on the bed, convinced I’d be told everything was fine, the doctor did an ultrasound of my bump and there on the screen was my baby, perfectly still, with no heartbeat.
‘I’m so sorry’
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “Your baby has died.”
Gary was by my side, pale with shock, and listening to those words, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. This couldn’t be happening. Not after all we’d been through. The next few hours passed in a blur, with midwives and doctors speaking to us about the fact I somehow had to deliver my baby.
Gary and I spent the next two days in a private room at the hospital, trying to come to terms with our baby’s death and make a decision about the delivery. My family live in New Zealand and calling my mumto tell her what had happened was awful.
On April 4, my blood pressure rocketed and it was decided a C-section was the safest option for me. Lying in theatre, while a sombre team of medics delivered my silent baby, was like a bad dream I couldn’t wake up from. Gary was with me and we just looked at one another, willing each other to get through this terrible experience. This wasn’t the labour and birth we’d imagined, with a pink, healthy baby placed in my arms at the end.
After I was stitched up, Gary and I were taken back to our hospital room and our baby was brought to us, wrapped in a blanket we’d been given by friends, with “Baby Tuttle” embroidered on it.
That was when we learned we’d had a son. We named him Orion, after the constellation of stars. I knew that every time I looked up to the night sky, I would think of our son.
Gary was by my side, pale with shock, and listening to those words, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. This couldn’t be happening. Not after all we’d been through.
Trinity Tuttle
He was beautiful, with fair hair and chubby cheeks, weighing exactly 8lb. We spent the next two days at the hospital, where there was a cold cot to keep Orion’s body cool enough so we could cuddle and dress him.
We talked to him, as well as FaceTiming my family so they could meet him. Those days were both so special and so sad, but I was grateful for them and the opportunity to make memories with our son and tell him how much we loved him.
Three days after his birth, Orion was taken for an autopsy – which failed to reveal the cause of his death – and I was discharged. Leaving the hospital without my baby was agony. I insisted on using a side door instead of the main maternity unit door, in case
I bumped into another mum with her newborn and found it too upsetting. Gary and I spent the next week at home in a state of shock, trying to plan a funeral, surrounded by baby paraphernalia. The wound from my C-section and my swollen breasts were painful reminders that my body had given birth, but I had no baby home with me.
The following week, we were able to bring Orion home for just one day, something that was very important to us. That was the day we took him for a walk, read stories to him in the nursery and close friends and Gary’s family came to visit us.
Together, Gary and I cried, but also cherished being a family, if only briefly.
Trinity Tuttle
Together, Gary and I cried, but also cherished being a family, if only briefly. Orion then spent six days at a funeral home, where we visited, making clay prints of his hands and feet, before his funeral and burial near our home, which my family in New Zealand watched on Zoom.
The pain of seeing your child’s tiny coffin be placed in the ground is indescribable. Fifteen months on from Orion’s death, Gary and I have had counselling. Loss like this can tear some couples apart, but thankfully we are stronger than ever.
I’ve found gardening and growing flowers for Orion’s grave therapeutic, while keen runner Garyis running 600 miles this year to raise money for the charity Tommy’s.
Some days are harder than others, like Christmas, when we went on holiday to the US rather than stay at home and dwell on how it should have been our first with Orion. And then there was his birthday this April, when we released balloons at his grave.
Our dream is to try for another baby. It will mean starting IVF again and we’re not ready for that yet – we need to heal more first.
We still have the cot and nursing chair in the nursery though, along with a memory box containing Orion’s hand and feet prints, and a lock of his hair.
If we are lucky enough to ever have another baby, we’ll never forget our firstborn and the precious time we spent together.
● Gary is fund-raising for baby charity Tommy’s at Justgiving.com/fundraising/RunningForOrion.
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