Therése and Alan Farrell suffered the devastating loss of their first-born baby, Jasmine, at just 23 weeks
TWENTY-THREE weeks into her first pregnancy, Therése Farrell was alarmed when she started to bleed. She remembers walking the road outside her parents' home in Newtown, Co Kildare, looking for a lift to the doctor. He sent her straight to the Coombe hospital, where they told her to rest and kept her in.
"I had cramps overnight, but did not know what they were," she recalls. "I really thought everything was fine. Early the next morning, I went for a scan, and there she was on screen, heart beating and moving around, still giving me those wonderful little kicks."
Then the doctor made an internal examination. She knew from his face something was wrong. "He just looked at me and Alan and said he was sorry, I was six centimetres dilated and the baby was on the way."
They could not stop the labour. They would do their best for her, he said; however, they should prepare themselves for her to be dead at birth.
When she was delivered at 5.50pm, "she let out such a scream, I couldn't believe it; she hollered", raising the couple's hopes. "I got the chance to give her a quick kiss and she was gone. About half six, they brought her back and said there was nothing they could do," says Therése. "She was still alive, with laboured breathing. They had tried oxygen but they told us her lungs were not developed enough."
At 23 weeks and three days, weighing one pound and six ounces, her life was slipping away. With no name picked out yet, Alan immediately suggested Jasmine, in his head from an Isley Brothers' song, Summer Breeze, which he used to listen to on a Walkman on his regular bus journeys from Dublin to visit Therése at her parents' home.
Members of the couple's families came in to see Jasmine before Alan and Therése asked to be left alone with her. They could hear the sound from a Billy Joel concert at the RDS that night as Jasmine died in their arms, after a life of just four hours and 22 minutes. It comforts Therése to know that they were able to hold her for her entire lifetime.
Perched on a shelf at eye-level in the corner of the couple's living room at home in Foxborough Court, Lucan, Co Dublin, is a framed photo of Jasmine's perfect, pretty face. To this day, 14 years later, they deeply regret not having more pictures of her.
It's one of the reasons that Therése has got involved in distributing an online advice leaflet to people experiencing, or close to, such a devastating loss. When Jasmine was born, there was no one to tell Therése and Alan to have lots of photographs taken; to keep the blanket she was wrapped in after the birth, the sheet she lay on; to take her home before burial if they wanted, rather than handing her back to the hospital staff.
"This is my goal in life," says Therése, to make other people aware of the things they can do in such circumstances to help avoid a lifetime of unnecessary regrets.
"I remember like yesterday her smell, I remember her breath against my cheek, her little hands, her feet. These are things I have to carry in my heart because I don't have a photograph," says Therése.
In the immediate aftermath of Jasmine's death on May 21st, 1994, the couple were in a daze. Aged only 22, they weren't even living together at the time. They found the reaction of some people very hurtful.
"They looked on it as a miscarriage, not a birth and a death," says Alan. Close workmates at Electrolux Ireland, where he is now manager of the sales desk, were understanding.
However, some acquaintances viewed it as a lucky escape for him; with no baby, he would not have to be committed to Therése. "We were being treated like teenagers. We were not allowed to grieve."
But they had been going out together for five years, since meeting in a pub in Crumlin. "We knew how we felt," says Alan. "We had a life planned around this baby," says Therése.
"It gave us the push to get Therése out of her parents' home," continues Alan. "We still had no money but we got a flat in Rathmines and made a life together. We needed to be together."
Yet the impact of Jasmine's death did not really hit until a few weeks after the birth of another baby girl, Kerrie, two years later. It was only then that they realised the full extent of what they had lost.
Again, the well-meaning but misguided comments of others did not help.
"People saying, 'you have Kerrie now, you can look forward and forget about Jasmine'," explains Alan. On a particularly bad day, Therése picked up a leaflet about the Irish Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society (Isands) that she had been given in hospital two years before and rang the woman whose number was printed on the back. She wasn't in, but her husband listened sympathetically as Therése sobbed down the line.
Kerrie was eight weeks old when Alan and Therése went to their first Isands meeting, in Wynn's Hotel off O'Connell Street. "We had never been to anything like this before," says Alan. "But it is true, it's easier to talk to a stranger."
There was one couple who had very recently lost a baby and Therése says she felt like a fake for being there when two years had passed since Jasmine's death. However, there were older couples too.
Therése started to tell their story and broke down, so Alan had to do it.
"It was like it had happened only yesterday," he recalls. "It was the first time we had spoken about it publicly."
They went to meetings on and off for the next three years. They still go to the Christmas memorial service and the annual blessing of the graves at the Holy Angels plot in Glasnevin where Jasmine is buried.
A member of the online discussion forum MagicMum, Therése suggested that Isands should be one of the charities to benefit from the members' ball later this month. It was chosen, along with the Laura Lynn Children's Hospice Foundation.
As Kerrie was growing up, she was aware that she had a sister. "We incorporated her into our life, without being morbid about it," says Alan. "Kerrie took comfort from it, not being an only child, because it was 10 years before the next children came along."
She knew her knitted pink "blankie" had been for Jasmine - put away after Jasmine's death; a quarter finished, Therése completed it when pregnant with Kerrie.
After Kerrie, Therése had four miscarriages, at between five and eight weeks, before she was diagnosed as having the inherited blood-clotting disorder, Factor V Leiden.
A simple daily aspirin enabled her to carry their son, Ryan, to full term. Six months later, just after she had returned to work as a facility administrator at a golf club, she was shocked to discover that she was pregnant again.
Sitting on the sofa, breast-feeding the curly-haired, seven-month-old Hannah, Therése remarks that she thinks this baby looks like their first-born.
"I would not be the person I am today without that experience I went through," she reflects. "Jasmine planted a seed."
Therése Farrell can be contacted for the online booklet, Devastating Loss, at theresefarrell @hotmail.com
Help at hand: What extended family and friends can do to
help after the loss of a baby
To offer a little support, there are a few things friends and family can do to help:
Offer a hug, a tear, a sign of love and concern.
Use the baby's name.
Listen even when the story is being told over and over again.
Let parents express feelings such as guilt and anger.
Send a card, flowers or a gift - mementos are important.
Allow children to share in the grief.
Remember, fathers grieve too. Ask how they are feeling.
Treat the death of a baby with the same respect and importance as the death of any close relative.
Remember to acknowledge the grandparents' grief.
There are also a few things you would be advised not to do:
Do not use platitudes or preach "you've an angel in heaven" or "you're young, you'll have another". Although well-meaning, they are not helpful and can be very hurtful.
Do not take over and do all the organising, especially regarding any decision about the baby. This is the only chance that parents have to do something for their baby.
Do not say "God has taken the baby", as other children may fear that God will take them or their parents.
This advice is offered by the Irish Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society
