How Life Changes

So today Isaac would be celebrating his 6^th birthday if he was here with us. People say that it gets easier, time is a healer…but the reality is very different. Life does go on, but as major events happen in your life, you are constantly reminded and thinking of how different life should be.

Isaac should be about to finish his second year at primary school. He should be preparing to be the big brother looking after his little sister who would be starting at the same school in September. Starting to learn musical instruments, getting more involved with sports – and in my ideal world desperately wanting the Wolves team strip as they embark on their first season back in the Premier league, with Neves written on the back if he didn’t want “Smith”.  I’m sure he would have mastered the dab, be showing us all how to floss and generally growing in to the special little boy that we all know him as being.

It’s fair to say this past year has been incredibly challenging for us. In April, Simone’s Mum passed away, after a hard fought battle with cancer, and losing her has understandably affected us all greatly. She was Simone’s absolute rock and Isla thought the world of her. Her death has affected us all in different ways, and explaining to Isla naturally brought up a lot of thoughts about Isaac as well. We’ve always ensured Isla knew all about her very special big brother. She’s always known that he is up in the sky looking over us all, and over the years it’s shocked us, brought tears, but also brought very special moments that she knows and is happy to talk about her big brother being up in the sky.

Isla often will now talk of him, and that he is up there with Nanny, and also with my Dad who obviously she never got to meet, but has seen pictures of. And it’s not just with us that she talks – we quite often hear how she has been in a contemplative mood at nursery and has spoken with Denisha and Gizem (her teachers at nursery) about how both Isaac and Nanny are up in the sky, can see what we are doing, and are in the stars.

But despite Isla’s understanding of where Isaac is, it doesn’t make it any easier. In fact, as she grows in to the most amazing little girl, it hurts even more that she doesn’t have Isaac here to play with her, to look after her. We see her friends with their brothers and sisters and it is incredibly heart-breaking that Isaac isn’t here growing up with Isla and loving her as much as she loves him.

And this really brings us on to the other main news of this past year. Whilst understandably not as heart-breaking as the death of Simone’s Mum, it has been an incredibly difficult subject that has lived with us over these past 6 years. After 5 and a half years of frankly torture, we settled out of Court with North Middlesex Hospital over Isaac's death. It’s taken us all of this time to finally receive the only thing that we wanted – an apology that the actions of the hospital and the staff at his birth had resulted in Isaac’s death 6 days later.

I feel it’s necessary to go into a bit of details on what has been happening over these years and the impact and difficulties it has caused us – after all, one of the purposes of our page and our blog is to break the taboo’s and give an insight in to what it is like for a family to lose a child. In the days that followed Isaac’s death we were made aware by Isaac’s consultant at St Thomas’s that after reviewing the timeline of events – something wasn’t adding up. Something wasn’t right and that it needed to be investigated. As you can imagine, at the time, and in the months that followed Simone and I were struggling to come to terms with the fact Isaac, who we had longed for for so long was not here with us. So to add to that the fact that, what we thought had been a tragic situation at his birth may have issues that could possibly have been prevented was incredibly hard for us to take.

In the months that followed we met with the team at North Middlesex and it’s fair to say we were led a merry dance – initially being told one thing – such as there wasn’t a procedure at the hospital for dealing with a major bleed, to being told the complete opposite. Eventually a year after Isaac had died and after sending a very aggressively worded letter to the hospital and copying in such groups as the Royal Society of Midwives, the board of North Middlesex agreed to meet and in the coming months we had a number of very difficult meetings. Those meetings were to do two things – to get to the bottom of what happened, and also to try to ensure that this would never happen again to another family. What was evident at these meetings – the hospital knew that things hadn’t been done correctly – but their standard view all along was that Simone had had a placenta abruption, and that Isaac was therefore going to die anyway in the circumstances.

Roughly a year after Isaac died, with the help of Sands, we appointed a solicitor and started down the road of a medical negligence case against North Middlesex. We were advised at the time that it would be difficult, and painful, but I don’t think for one second we realised quite how difficult it would be.

Over the coming two years we would get updates every few months – as different expert witnesses were appointed to give their view. With each one, a report was written, and tears were shed – an expert Midwife, an expert Obstetrician, an expert Paediatrician, and then finally we had to meet with a Clinical Psychologist to see what impact the actions and death of Isaac had had on us. It was incredibly difficult to go through, and relive what happened at Isaac’s birth over and over again.

Once our solicitors had compiled all of their information for the case it was then sent to the North Middlesex team and roughly four years after Isaac’s death we were asked to meet with their expert Clinical Psychologist to see what his view was of how we had been impacted. It was constant, it was hard, and we were put in a position where we had no choice but to relive it over and over again.

Eventually, North Middlesex Hospital accepted that they had been medically negligent, but that doesn’t end the case, as it is then down to seeing if they will pay the costs that we had incurred – Isaac’s grave, the cost of the ongoing counselling, the cost of specialist counselling to help us get through what can only be described as an impossible set of circumstances to live with, and most importantly to us - a letter of apology.

It took until earlier this year, with the possibility of going to court looking very likely, before finally North Middlesex came to agreement and issued a full letter of apology. Along the way we had previously received a letter that was seen as appropriate by them which stated that they were sorry for the shortcomings in their treatment of Isaac – but to us this was just a kick in the teeth – we wanted an apology for the actions of the hospital that caused the death of our beautiful little boy.

Eventually that was received, but not without legal sacrifices – we had to concede that I was not a victim in the medical negligence of Isaac’s death – because he had survived for 6 days – and through ‘dawning conscious’ we apparently should have got used to the idea that Isaac was going to die and as a result not suffered any form of post-traumatic stress. If it wasn’t for the fact that it had been Simone’s body that they were negligent to, we would also have had to concede that she was not a victim as well.  I think it’s fair to say, that this alone shows that despite all the improvements that are happening surrounding support for parents losing a child, or dealing with miscarriage, there is still a long way to go – for courts to use the concept of a car crash (one shock incident) as to whether we should suffer Post Traumatic Stress or not when our son fought so hard for 6 days to spend time with us – showing us his strength, his determination, his love…….it’s heart-breaking.

But what’s worse, is that not only have we lost our son, our beautiful daughter has lost her brother. And what is truly crushing is what came out in the medical negligence expert witness statements……..if North Middlesex Hospital had followed the correct timing and procedures for a suspected placenta abruption, the experts have said that Isaac would not only have survived – he would have been fully healthy , with no brain damage.   If North Middlesex Hospital had delivered Isaac four minutes earlier……..it is believed he would still be here today although would have suffered a level of brain damage. Isaac was stolen away from us as a result of the actions of the hospital, but more importantly Isla never got to know her big brother. He should be here with her as she grows up.

And that is the simple, sad, devastating facts.

Isla is an amazing little girl – she is incredibly excited about celebrating Isaac’s birthday this weekend with a super hero and fairy picnic in his honour…….but he should be here…..blowing out those 6 candles that will be on his cake. Life does move on, time does to an extent heal, but when you lose a child there are constant reminders, and you can never heal completely. Part of you is gone forever. There will always be situations when you know he should be here physically with you instead of looking down over you, with his Nanny and his Grandad. And we know that our situation is repeated up and down the country with every other family that has sadly had a child that has grown their wings far too early.

Happy 6^th Birthday strong, inspirational, beautiful Isaac. Your Mummy, Daddy and Sister, along with all of your family miss you very much, and we wish more than anything that you were here with us celebrating today x Through you, there is a lasting legacy. Through you procedures have been changed at the hospital you were born at so that hopefully no other child suffers the way you did, and through you the Evelina Hospital where we all received such incredible care, and where all the fundraising that we do in your memory goes to is able to help prevent other families from going through what we have had to.

Darren x