over. I parked his rocker in the doorway and knelt beside
him and held his hands. I kissed his cheeks and his hair,
and scooped him up into my arms. I changed his clothes,
and washed his face with a warm washer. I could not wait
to take him home. I’m right in the middle of where I’m supposed
to be, I thought. It feels good.
When Jordan slept, his head moved up and down slightly
with every breath . . . puff puff puff. He slept on his back with
his head to one side and tilted back, lips softly closed. His
wrap would come loose so that one arm, or both, escaped.
He gave regular small, neat sneezes, because of the oxygen,
and every time these gave him a fright and made him cry
until he realised everything was okay.
Ben gave Jordan a massage of sorts. Wearing only his
nappy, Jordan lay over Ben’s forearm while Ben lightly
stroked his body all over with oiled fingertips. Jordan lay
perfectly still, then his breathing slowed and he fell asleep,
right there over Ben’s arm. I sat and watched with goose
bumps.
Setting up Jordan’s room at our new North Adelaide
home was a joy. My sister-in-law, Sophie, had painted a
tractor and an aeroplane for Jordan and Leo, which Benny
hung on either side of the window. There was a wooden
cot in a corner, a bright animal mobile hanging over it,
and a wooden corner cabinet stacked with toys, books and
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folded baby blankets and wraps. In Jordan’s drawers, tiny
white singlets and stripy jumpsuits sat folded in neat piles.
Miniature t-shirts, cotton face washers and baby boy overalls
sat in the top drawer within easy reach of his brand new
change table. Nappies were stacked neatly on the change
table’s bottom shelf, and there was a wooden rocking chair
beneath the window. Jordan’s bed was made.
‘Wednesday,’ said Peter. ‘You can take him home on
Wednesday.’
How do I take you through what happened next?
Jordan deteriorated fast, out of the blue. I was sitting
with him late one night when his sats started dropping.
I didn’t want it to be true, so I didn’t tell anyone straight
away. I just kept sitting in the warm lamplight, listening
to tinkling classical music, holding Jordan against my body
and kissing the crown of his head.
When I did tell someone Jordan’s sats had dropped, the
neonatologist on duty, Amir, was called in. Amir was tall
and unassuming, and I liked him. He stood in the doorway
of our little hideaway room. ‘He has to go back into NICU,’
he said, to my disbelief.
‘What? No! I don’t believe it!’ I held Jordan tighter.
‘We have to watch him closely. He might have picked
up a virus. His lungs are not strong.’
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‘No.’ Still holding Jordan, I fumbled in my bag for my
phone and rang Ben. He came over. We moved Jordan
back into NICU. Jordan’s sats kept dropping. Within a
few hours he was back in one hundred per cent oxygen.
By morning he was back on the ventilator and his sats had
semi-stabilised. No one could explain why Jordan had
deteriorated so suddenly, just that his lung disease made
him so vulnerable that a mild virus could be very serious.
I only remember moments of the blurry week that
followed: Jade holding Jordan against her chest, saying, ‘Go,
Ingrid. Have a break. Walk.’ I remember midwife Margie
bawling beside Jordan’s cot, trying to pull herself together
when I walked in; the pastor standing over Jordan’s cot and
offering to pray for him, or bless him, or something. ‘I don’t
have a great deal of faith in the Good Fucking Lord just
at the minute, Ryan,’ I told him, tears spilling forth, anger
rising like a volcano on the brink of eruption.
Peter was away. We met with David: ‘It would be a
miracle if he pulled through,’ he said.
The whole world was being yanked away from under
my feet. Ben and I were together in an NICU side room
when I suddenly felt as if I could not get enough air. ‘Call
someone,’ I told Ben.
‘What? Why?’
‘Just call someone! I can’t get enough air.’
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Ben stuck his head into the corridor and called for help.
Two women came. My airlessness changed into a long and
desperate wail from the very guts of me, and I let it out.
And out. And out.
‘Let it all out, Ingrid,’ said midwife Ann-Maree out of
the darkness, laying a blanket over me. ‘Let it all out.’ When
I came to, I was very cold and utterly spent.
After six days back in NICU, Jordan was still on a
ventilator and still needing a lot of help. Mum came back.
Thank god. I couldn’t sleep. When I did, I had nightmares
of prongs in my nose, and suffocation.
By the time we left NICU late on 22 May 2006, Jordan’s
sats were about the low seventies and dipping into the sixties,
even though he was in one hundred per cent oxygen. He
had never been this sick before. Never.
‘It’s going to be an eventful night,’ I told Benny. I called
to the next room, ‘Night, Mum.’
‘Goodnight, darling.’
I was already awake when Ben’s mobile rang on his
bedside table at 3 a.m. I knew it was the hospital. Ben
answered. I watched him. He nodded. He said, ‘Okay,
we’ll see you soon.’
He turned to me. ‘That was Vera,’ he said. ‘We have
to go to the hospital. Jordan’s sats have been down in the
fifties for the last hour. Amir is on his way in.’
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Mum stuck her head in our bedroom door. ‘Was that
the hospital?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, shaky. I knew what was ahead. We all did.
Fuck, fuck. ‘We’re going in.’
I pulled on my jeans and jumper, and wrapped a shawl
around my shoulders. ‘You ready, Benny?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll stay here,’ said Mum.
With a rush of affection, I followed Ben’s familiar
silhouette down the dark corridor to the front door.
A familiar nurse greeted Benny and me at the NICU
doors. Her face showed a puppy dog look of pity, which
made me angry. I didn’t respond to her look and marched
past her to Jordan’s room. Amir and Vera were leaning over
Jordan’s body, naked except for a nappy. His perfect baby
legs and stomach lay motionless and pale under the stark
hospital lighting.
‘Can we put a blanket over him?’ I quickly asked.
‘I’m sorry, Ingrid . . . no,’ said Vera. ‘We need to be able
to see his body . . . his colour.’
Amir and Vera kept looking from Jordan to the monitor
and back at Jordan. ‘The only way to bring his sats up is by
“bagging” him—manually blowing air into his breathing
tube, the ventilator tube,’ sa
id Amir. He did that and, when
he held his finger under Jordan’s chin to minimise the air
leak around the tube, there was a horrible squeaking sound.
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Amir watched the oxygen numbers on the monitor. We
all did. They weren’t coming up. I felt sick, light-headed.
Mum joined us, crowded around Jordan. I bent down to
hold a kiss on Jordan’s forehead, breathing in his baby smell
and telling him I loved him. Benny swapped places with
me and did the same. Benny, Mum and I all had our hands
on his small body—holding his arms and legs. A blanket of
hands. I was so saturated with adrenalin that I felt strangely
light and removed, like I might float up.
‘Is he uncomfortable?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Vera. ‘He’s been given the baby equivalent
of pethidine.’ The room felt cold. I real y wanted to put a
blanket over Jordan.
‘Oh. Are you sure he’s not in pain? I mean . . . it must
be hard to know how much to give him . . .’
‘Give him an extra dose,’ said Amir. I was disappointed—
did that mean they weren’t sure? Fuck.
Another midwife came in. Amir talked with Vera and
Tracey about putting Jordan onto nitric oxide in an attempt
to bring up his sats. Vera left the room and came back
wheeling the big nitric tank.
Benny piped up, ‘Is there really any point in putting him
on the nitric?’ He was looking at Amir. ‘I mean, is it just
prolonging the inevitable? What are his chances?’
My heart pounded in my ears.
‘His chances are very slim,’ said Amir.
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We could see that Jordan could not live for much longer,
though no one was saying the words. My whole body
buzzed. Everything was crisp and clear, and not real at all.
We knew it was not right to keep doing every single thing
possible, just to keep him breathing for a few more minutes,
and Ben had had the courage to say so.
Mum left the room. Benny and I sat down on the couch,
and together Amir and Vera picked up Jordan and passed
him down into my arms—Vera carrying Jordan and Amir
holding the tubes. I passed him to Ben. We huddled over
him. His eyes were closed.
I knew Jordan wanted to go. I could feel it. And as
strange as it may sound, I knew he was partly going for
our sakes, for Benny and me, so we would be free to live
our lives. I didn’t want him to go, but I knew it was right.
Jordan’s leaving did not feel wrong.
Vera’s hand was poised over Jordan’s face, ready to take
the breathing tube out of his nose. The tape had been
loosened off his silky soft cheeks.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked. Never, never, never.
‘Yes.’
She took the tube away. Behind my eyes and the wailing
there was a galaxy of darkness, and the feeling that I had
stepped off a cliff but hadn’t hit the bottom yet—just falling,
falling.
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I called him: ‘Jordyyyyy . . . Jordy!’ I called to him over
and over. ‘No! No!’
Long, loud and deep I called to him. Benny bawled too.
Jordan lay in Benny’s arms. We could see his whole face
without tape or tubes. Perfection. Peaceful. So peaceful.
‘I love you, Jordy,’ said Benny.
‘I love you, Jordy,’ I said, then dropped my head on
Ben’s shoulder and sank into an exhausted, despairing space.
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Mum did this drawing when Leo died—it’s Jordan saying goodbye to him.
15
As I write, it is Jordan and Leo’s third birthday. The two
and a half years since they passed feels like nothing, and the
word died is still a jackhammer to my chest. My ache for
them is still merciless, thick and deep. In the photo of Jordan
I carry in my wallet, he looks surprised and concerned.
He was a thoughtful, sombre boy. Leo was restless, forever
throwing his arms in the air and furrowing his brow.
But today I am not brave enough for photos. What I
could not have imagined in my wildest dreams was the joy
they would bring me, or the full-body drunken delight of
being their mum.
At first, after leaving the hospital, Benny and I were
both relieved—no more worrying, no more not knowing.
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It was over. Our lives were our own again, and Ben was
light for the first time in as long as I could remember. We
wanted to get away, and planned a trip to the countries of
our heritage—Holland and Poland for me, Italy and Ireland
for Benny. In the meantime I swam, cycled and stretched
most days at a good gym with clean, wood-panelled change
rooms and hair dryers on the benches. In the spa I closed
my eyes and pressed my lower back against the pulsing jets
of hot, foaming water.
North Adelaide was good—a short trip to Central
Market for Korean pancakes, or to Rundle Street for movies.
Parkland, trees, big old houses and good-looking terraces.
A twenty-minute drive to Belair National Park, and great
coffee around every corner. There were too many gold
sandals and blonde streaks, but it was fine for the time
being—gentle, civilised. We weren’t in the market for
action, nor was diversity a priority.
But with time, the reality hit. I crashed from normal
to raging pits of loss and despair. I bawled in the gym
showers, gripped our car’s steering wheel to howl in peak
hour traffic, and replayed Leo and Jordan’s last minutes in
vivid detail, at 3 a.m., over and over. I dreamt of snakes
travelling through my nostrils and into my lungs. I smashed
a cup onto my kitchen floor and hurled a wine glass into
Mum’s fireplace. I curled into a corner of the couch with
a box of tissues and tried to touch Jordan’s skin through
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photos. I missed them like a howling wolf. Lying in the
bath, I closed my eyes to remember holding Jordan against
my body and vowed never to forget, pressing my forearms
together over my chest to fill the space.
I talked about what had happened with whoever was
brave or kind enough to listen, while Ben stayed quiet on
the subject. He pushed on with his workdays, focused. I took
him cups of tea and he barely looked up from the screen as
I backed quietly out of the room. Sometimes I threw myself
into his lap despite the risk of a cranky reaction. He was
so different from me in his grief—quietly confessing to a
daily two-minute vigil for the boys on a park bench as part
of his morning run. When Ben did talk about it, he used
different language to me—explanations, blame, solutions
for moving forward.
‘We should have been warned about the risks of putting
two embryos back,’ he said. We lay on our bed, staring at
the ceiling. ‘Those people were hacks. They
should have
followed up on your care after you got sick from their
treatment. They wouldn’t even talk to the doctors at the
Alice hospital. It’s really bad. We have to write a letter.’
‘You’re right. It’s bad. But it’s also partly my fault that we
put two back—I talked you into it,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so
sorry. I was just excited, so desperate. And we should have
been better warned. But I don’t want to put energy into
remorse, or being angry with IVF or anyone else. It’s too
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negative. And there’s no point . . . I’m not writing a letter.
I mean, in hindsight it was a mistake to put two back, but we
wouldn’t be saying that if the outcome had been different.
We don’t know that I went into labour early because of being
pregnant with twins. It might have happened with just one.’
When Ben found me slumped forward and howling
into my hands at the kitchen table, or stifling sobs as I lay
in bed with my back to him, he held me. I learnt to let
myself go into grief’s scary darkness when it came, because
otherwise it bubbled in my chest and throat until I could
not think straight, and everything hurt. And I learnt that
I always came back—the wailing always stopped and the
darkness receded. I would open my eyes and be in the room
again. I am so different without you, Jordan, I wrote. Being your
mum was safe. Now it has sharp edges and pits to fall in when I
remember the soft touch of your skin and the warm weight of your
body against my chest.
I went to SANDS meetings—Stillbirth and Neonatal
Death Support. A group of us sat in a circle and, one at a
time, told the story of how we lost our babies.
‘I can’t say died!’ I bellowed to the circle of empathetic
faces through a wad of tissues. I produced a photo of Jordan
I had brought along for show and tell and, through tears,
giggled with love and pride as it was passed from hand
to hand.
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I moved the boys’ framed photos, and their urn of ashes,
on and off shelves—guilty when I hid them, and disturbed
when they were on display. Grieving and living was a
balancing act, and I couldn’t get it right.
And then, the most amazing discovery.
I had been feeling unwell for days, and tired—so tired.
Just the thought of packing for our big overseas trip was
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