Charlene Beswick - Our Altered Life: A Mothers Heartbreak And The Boys Who Saved Her

Copyright 2017 by Charlene Beswick.

The right of Charlene Beswick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Smashwords Edition

To the lost mother I was and to those who are still finding their way through an unexpected but magical altered life.
Charlie x

Contents

Something is Wrong

Your son has been born with half a face.

Okay, so thats not exactly what the consultant said, but its basically what it boiled down to.

I had undergone an emergency caesarean a couple of hours earlier and had delivered twin boys. I had assumed that they were healthy. Why wouldnt they be? I dont smoke, hadnt drunk alcohol, ate well and never, not once, did I think Id have anything other than two perfectly-formed, healthy children. But now I was being told otherwise.

Mark, my partner, was sitting to my left having just come back from making all the customary phone calls to announce the safe arrival of two boys. The midwife had popped her head into my cubicle while he had been gone and said that shed come back when Mark was with me. I remember that her smile made me feel uneasy for a moment, but it passed as quickly as it came. I was still fuzzy from the drugs and very tired, and so I dismissed my brief concern.

Once Mark was with me, the consultant came and sat at the foot of the bed, and Sarah, a lovely midwifeabout the same age as me, sat next to him, to my right. I remember being aware that she was watching me intently. Now I know why.

The consultant, Dr Mona, explained that twin one (Oliver) was fine, but twin two (Harry) had some problems. I can still see the way that Dr Mona drew an imaginary line down the centre of his face with his hand and swept it across to the left side as if he were erasing what was there. I processed it all in painfully slow motion, as if I were dreaming. His voice was muffled like he was talking to me underwater. I could hear the odd word, dulled by my delayed understanding and the pounding in my ears. At the same time, he was mentioning something about no eye, a small, underdeveloped ear, no nostril, a short and slanted jaw. He mentioned Golden something syndrome and hemi something or other. I now know these to be Goldenhar syndrome and Hemifacial Microsomia different terms for similar conditions. Associated with this condition are heart defects, spinal problems and brain damage, but it was too early to know how severely Harry had been affected. Hed also been born with only one artery in his umbilical cord instead of two and the implications of this were, again, unknown at that time.

Dream. Bad dream. Thick, thick fog. What?

I remember looking from Dr Mona to Mark repeatedly as he told us the news like a person would look to a translator for help understanding a foreign language. I couldnt process this information. Not us. Not me. No. I felt as though I was drowning. This wasnt what was supposed to happen. Parents were told the weight of their babies. That it was time to hold and cuddle them. Togaze into their little eyes and pour themselves into their perfect creation feeling an elation beyond anything they had ever known. It must be a mistake.

I sat perfectly still, frozen in that moment that I would relive for years to come. All I could whisper as fat, slow tears rolled down my face was, Im sorry. Im sorry. No hysterical outbursts or sobbing convulsions. Just a paralysis of disbelief and guilt.

Despite being shocked and stunned, I found the guilt overwhelming. Mark squeezed my hand and told me I had nothing to be sorry for. Dr Mona also assured me that it wasnt due to anything that I had or hadnt done throughout the pregnancy, but I couldnt think anything else. When did it all go wrong?

Think, Charlene. Think. What did you do? What have you done to your child?

Hot on the tail of guilt came a much darker emotion. Fear. Dr Mona sat in front of me, describing a baby who only had half a face and, for all we knew, no quality of life ahead of him, and yet I was expected to love him. But what if I couldnt? What if I couldnt look at him, let alone hold him or bond with him? What if I was repulsed by this strange looking baby that Id not expected or prepared for? Surely everyone would know just by looking at me. I wasnt the mother this boy needed.

When Sarah asked if I wanted to see him, I was absolutely terrified. Seeing him was the last thing that I wanted to do at that moment, but I said yes. What else could I say? What sort of cold, hard, unfeeling, wicked (feel free to add your own adjectives) person would I have been to admit my fears to anyone? Its only now when I reflect on those moments that I realise they were perfectly normal.

By now I had called the one person who I felt had the magical power to make this all right for me, to hold me through my nightmare and shush it all away. I dont remember what I said to my mum on my phone in the hospital bed. I know that I whispered, partly because only a thin curtain separated us from a ward full of mothers I no longer had anything in common with, partly because I knew that the alternative to whispering would drain me of any bit of energy I now had left. I think I said, Something is wrong, and I cried. Mum left work immediately to come to us.

Many years later, when I faced all these feelings in the safe space of a therapeutic setting, I pictured a vase. Beautiful, big and colourful, but it had been smashed into hundreds of pieces. Every fragment had been retrieved and painstakingly reassembled so to all the world it still looked like the proud vase it once was. It still did the same job, but it was a fragile version of its former self. Changed forever. That moment, that day, was when my vase tipped off the edge of its table, hit the floor and shattered.

I dont know how long it was before the wheelchair came to take me to the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU). The excitement that had filled me fewer than 24 hours ago felt like someone elses now, and all I had left was fear, dread and a sickness in the pit of my stomach. I forced a smile and got in the wheelchair. It was time to meet my boys.

Introducing Charlene

Before I explain how the events following the birth of my boys affected me, I want to give you an idea of the person I was before I became a mum. It will make sense later Im not just being self-indulgent, I promise!

Ive always been a chatterbox, an entertainer and an organiser. As a very young child, I used to sing on buses and encourage the other passengers to join in as if we were all going on holiday. I would run around aisles in the supermarket, returning to my mum and nan with price labels stuck all over my nose, only to hear them giggling at me. (Theres nothing quite like thinking back to the days before bar codes and technology to make oneself feel old!) At my second cousins birthday party, having played some games, I apparently rounded up all her guests, clapped my hands for attention and announced, Right, lets open the presents now. I was five a child full of mischief, humour and imagination who loved to make the people around me happy.