This is my first post on BB. I’d just like to introduce myself and share my daughter’s story…

In August ’03 I discovered I was pregnant with our first child. The pregnancy started out beautifully. Not a day of morning sickness and no problems to speak of. At the 12 week ultrasound we got low risk results for all the tests done. At the 19 week ultrasound, all the results were perfect and we found out that I was having a little girl. We named her Georgia Kate that same day. At 20 weeks I felt her move and at every appointment with the obstetrician I heard her heartbeat.

Things continued ‘as normal’ until about one month before Georgia was due. At that time her growth slowed dramatically. The obstetrician made an appointment for an ultrasound to check if she was ok.

The night before the u/s Georgia stopped moving. The next morning she still hadn’t moved so I rushed to the obstetrician's rooms and made him check her heartbeat. We heard the heartbeat loud & clear. The Dr told me it sounded fine and told me to wait for the results of that afternoon's u/s before I got too worried. In my heart I knew that something was wrong though.

A few hours later, I went for the ultrasound. It revealed that she wasn’t getting enough blood & oxygen through the umbilical cord and she quite clearly was not ok. We were sent to the hospital that same night for an emergency c-section. She was 35w5d.

Unfortunately, once I got to the hospital, I got a severe, sudden case of preeclampsia. My blood pressure hit 220/150 and so, not only did we have a very sick little baby, we a very sick mum too. I was on the verge of seizures or a stroke or a coma, so they had to pump me full of medication to stop me from fitting before they could deliver Georgia. (I didn’t find out until later that there were concerns they would lose both of us - my poor husband was beside himself. The weird thing was I felt absolutely fine. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about; I just wanted them to get Georgia out).

Once they got me to surgery, they delivered Georgia. Her heart stopped beating just before she was delivered. She was resuscitated but did not gain consciousness and had to be placed on a ventilator to make her breathe. The next morning the doctors told us that she had no brain activity due to the loss of oxygen and would never gain consciousness. They told us we would have to decide when to take her off the ventilator.

We spent the full day just sitting with her and holding her and taking photos. She was beautiful, with long eyelashes and a full head of hair. All the family was able to drive or fly in to meet her and we held a little naming ceremony. That night we let the doctor take her off the ventilator. She took little breaths on her own until the next morning when she quietly passed away.

The doctors did tests for every disease and condition under the sun, but have found no physical or pathological reason for the malfunction in the placenta/umbilical cord that made Georgia so ill. They’ve just put it down to being ‘one of those things’ that happen but can’t be explained. In other words, they know what happened, but don’t know why.

It has been 14 weeks since Georgia died now. I have to admit that while I have come a long way and can have ‘ok’ days, some days it just hits me and I still feel like the grief is going to crush me. The last thing I expected to be doing at 26 years of age was planning a funeral for and burying my first child. Luckily I have a beautiful husband who has been there for me and shared the pain with me every step of the way. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have got this far.

Thank you for letting me share Georgia’s story. I know it has ended up being quite long but it has helped me to tell it. I’ve been meaning to post for a long time, but only felt I was ready today. Thanks for reading.