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This section attempts to describe what happened
immediately after Jasper died and leading up to the Celebration of
Life.
After having spent over an hour with Jasper out
of the incubator on our laps, we felt concerned that he was getting
cold and so called the nurse, Alison, to put him back.
It was hard because we knew that the next time we would take
him out would be the very last but above all we wanted to make sure he
was comfortable. Almost
as soon as he was back in the incubator his heart rate dropped.
At first we all thought it was the monitor playing up, as it
did from time to time, but we could see the colour draining and the
doctor, Lindsay, confirmed that she thought the heart rate shown on
the screen was genuine.
We didn’t know what to do at first then with
Alison’s help we removed all the monitors and the drip and finally
Lindsay removed the ventilator. We
wrapped him up in the blankets knitted by Jasper’s grandmother, Oma
and his dad carried him to our bedroom in the hospital.
We cried and held him and kissed him, then after a while asked
Lindsay to come back in to confirm that he’d gone.
We sat holding him and talking to him.
This was the first time we’d been able to hold our son
properly and I held him up to my chest as I’d been longing to do
since he was born. It felt so good to be able to do that and not to be hindered
by drips and tubes or worry about the ventilator.
We didn’t have to worry about Jasper anymore. We knew he’d
be alright now.
Alison brought in a baby bath and some towels so
we could bath him. I was
pleased because she also brought in some BabyBath and everything was
as if we were a normal couple bathing our baby for the first time.
I checked the water wasn’t too hot, we took his nappy off and
carefully lowered him into the water.
His skin felt so soft, just as it should do.
We then dried him and dressed him in a clean nappy and little
jacket that had been knitted for him by a friend of Oma’s and laid
him in a moses basket that the hospital had lent us.
He looked wonderful, just as if he was asleep (see
picture).
Pete confessed afterwards that he wasn’t sure
about taking Jasper back to the room and bathing him but that it was
the best thing he could have done.
We took some photographs and Alison helped us make a handprint.
Then some of the other nurses came in to say goodbye to him.
There were tears all round.
We thought that the staff who worked on NICU would have been
used to death but they were upset too.
We were touched that Jasper had had such an effect on them.
(see picture)
We could have stayed in the hospital that night
but we’d been there for 3 days and desperately wanted to be at home.
We insisted that we would carry him to the Chapel of Rest
ourselves. The porter
came to collect and drive us over and Karen, the nurse who admitted
Jasper to NICU came with us. When
we got to the Chapel we kissed Jasper goodnight and handed him over to
Karen. It was the hardest
thing to do, leaving him behind, but we knew he’d be ok.
Nothing could hurt him anymore.
We went back to the ward, gathered up our
belongings, including Jasper’s name tags and some of his hair which
they’d had to shave off when they put a drip in.
Then we went home and got drunk.
We made a few phone calls to family and watched the video
we’d taken of Jasper over the last 3½ weeks.
It was lovely to watch it and see how he’d changed in that
short time.
The next day we both woke up in tears and with
severe hangovers. We got
up and updated the website. It
was strangely therapeutic to write about what had happened.
We phoned some friends and although it was difficult to start,
we found it helpful to talk to people about what had happened.
Some people had already checked the website and phoned or
emailed us. We were
touched by how many people had been checking the website so regularly.
I hadn’t expected to need to visit Jasper in
the Chapel of Rest but I telephoned the ward that day and asked them
to arrange an appointment for us.
We went in to see him and held him for a while.
We went in to visit Jasper every day, sometimes twice until we
buried him. We wondered
if we were making it more difficult for ourselves by doing this but we
felt that we would never regret seeing too much of our son but we
might regret not seeing enough of him.
We spent the rest of the week arranging
Jasper’s Celebration of Life.
We
chose to have him buried at Bristol Memorial Woodlands the following
Saturday. We didn’t want a religious ceremony so the funeral director
helped us find Carol Pool to conduct the service. Carol lost a baby at 24 weeks, 26 years ago, so we knew she
was the right person for the job.
Close friends and family either wrote or chose pieces to
include and we selected some music to be played at the service which a
friend kindly put on a CD for family to keep.
On the day of the funeral we went to collect
Jasper from the Chapel of Rest and brought him home.
We walked around the garden and house with him, showed him his
room and sat by the fire in the sitting room as any parent would do
with their baby. Pete
played the piano for him and we read him a letter that his gran had
written for him. Eventually our friend Mark arrived to take us to the Memorial
Woodlands. We laid Jasper
in a beautiful willow casket and carried him to the car.
We'd invited friends and family who wanted to see
Jasper to come to the Chapel early.
We felt very proud to be holding Jasper and passing him around
for cuddles as any parents would, showing their baby off to the world.
Finally the time came for Pete and I to say goodbye for the
last time. We laid him
gently in his casket, wrapped up in the blankets that Oma had knitted,
accompanied by his rabbit and duck, some pieces of the gemstone Jasper
and the letter from Gran. Closing
the lid for the last time was even harder than leaving him behind in
the hospital each day, but we knew we had to do it and we were glad
that were able to do this ourselves.
Planning and preparing for Jasper’s
Celebration
of Life was an all consuming experience.
There seemed to be so much to do but it was our last
opportunity to do something for our son and it got us through the
first week. Almost 100
people turned up to share the day with us.
We could not have been prouder of the effect our beautiful baby
had on so many people. He
was and still is a very special little boy.
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