Our Charlie Ray of Sunshine

Our Story

On the 6th of January, as the warm sun hit our living room, we discovered we were having a baby boy. Only moments later had we discovered that our baby was going to be born in a breech position. It was a planned homebirth. My second pregnancy and second birth.

Grace, our first child, was born in a hospital but despite our efforts to birth without intervention, she was born after 28 hours of labour and 36 hours after my waters had broken. We spiralled into the typical cascade of intervention and she was born via caesarean section, after traumatising efforts to get her out.

So this time, we had decided to do things differently. To give my body the best chance it could to labour naturally in a place that felt safest to me. For 12 hours I laboured. It, of course, was hard work but it was beautiful and empowering. I dreamed of being able to pull my baby out myself, perhaps in a water birth, which had been denied to me in hospital.

Charlie was born at 8:17am after a very difficult extraction. We didn't know it at the time but he wasn't moving so not only was he in a terrible position, breech, the wrong way around and with his arms stuck behind his head and his head up but he wasn't helping me at all. I tore heavily but that was the least of my concerns as he came out not breathing with an APGAR score of 2, a heart beat. My midwives and the paramedics, who had arrived even before he was born when we found out he was coming breech, began CPR and resuscitation.

After 25 minutes of recussitation, they intubated him and he was whisked away in an intensive care ambulance to hospital. I was left lying there with the placenta detached but unable to be removed without risk of postpartum hemmorage. We were a puddle of grief, guilt, panic as we assumed that our choice in birthing our baby at home had lead to this.

Charlie was transferred by helicopter to Royal North Shore that afternoon. I went into surgery to repair my tear. The doctors at the NICU decided to err on the side of caution and put Charlie into a hypothermic state to reduce the risk of any secondary swelling on the brain that may have been caused by a lack of oxygen at birth.

After three days, they began the slow warming over 12 hours. He regained consciousness and could look around and grimace but he still wasn't moving from his neck down. They concluded that there may be either severe brain damage or spinal injury from the birth but an MRI conducted showed that Charlie actually didn't suffer any brain or spinal damage at birth and so they ruled out birth trauma as a cause for his presentation. They were still concerned why he wasn't moving.

Charlie was hypotonic from the neck down, had severely contracted limbs, no gag or swallow reflex and little tone around his chest or stomach which meant he wasn't able to efficiently breathe for himself. We are still undergoing genetic testing but they assume that his condition was created at conception because of a genetic abnormality.

At 12 days old, we made the decision to take out his intubator. The doctors advised us that he wouldn't be able to breathe on his own and he was becoming immune to the morphine and was in a lot of pain. At 2pm on a Saturday, we gathered in a little room to say goodbye. We got to hold him properly, sing him songs and read him books. His big sister and dad was there, his nanny and poppy too. We got to control how he died and to ensure he was loved which is a gift but also a searing memory that will always stay with me.

Charlie's body left us and left us with intense grief, a muddled perception of life, changed identities, challenged relationships, smashed dreams and an ache that I don't think will ever leave us. But he also left us with so much love that at times, I don't know where to pour. His life mattered. It mattered when he was alive and it matters now that he's gone. We love you our angel bear.