No Holding Back

by Amanda Holden

  Chris and I decided that I should be the one to tell Lexi the news. All she knew was that Mama had been in hospital because she was poorly but now she was coming home.

  Waiting for her to come in from school, I sat propped up in bed. I heard the front door slam and Lexi’s little voice shouting happily for me. ‘Mama!’ For the first time in my life I dreaded seeing her. My stomach turned over and my heart pounded in terror. I had nothing planned to say.

  Jackie had been through something similar twenty years earlier and her experience had prompted her to help others by becoming a grief counsellor. Ironically, when we made the midwife documentary we had covered stillbirth and loss in pregnancy, but it was something that until then I’d never thought about and found difficult to comprehend. In the documentary, we were both filmed crying as she talked me through the process. Neither of us can watch it any more. Who could have guessed that three years later it would be me she was talking to as a mother who had lost her baby?

  I truly believe there are reasons for people being in our lives and that Jackie, Pippa and Natalie were in my life for a purpose. They looked after us like family, and on Jackie’s advice, I knew I had to be very matter of fact to Lexi. ‘Be as kind and simple and honest as you can be,’ she’d told me. I didn’t want any wafty talk about the baby being taken by angels. I wanted to tell her something straightforward but gentle that would help her understand that the baby brother she longed for wasn’t coming back.

  Lexi came running into the room and bounced up on my bed excitedly. Ever protective, Chris said, ‘Careful, Bundle. Mama’s still a bit poorly . . .’

  I took a breath. ‘Mama has something sad to tell you, Lexi,’ I said.

  ‘What is it, Mama?’

  ‘Mama and Dada are very sad because the baby’s heart has stopped beating. It means he’s not coming to live with us now.’

  Lexi looked confused.

  ‘Do you know what Mama is trying to say?’ I whispered, barely able to breathe, a hard lump forming in my throat. There was absolutely no way I was going to cry or let this moment scar my little girl.

  Chris squeezed my hand. I took a massive breath.

  ‘It’s a bit like Peter Pan,’ I heard myself saying. ‘He’s decided he doesn’t want to come and play with us and would rather stay in Neverland with all his friends. What a naughty little boy he is!’ I joked, and I smiled into my darling girl’s green eyes.

  She lifted her head. ‘Okay, Mama. Can I watch children’s now?’ (That’s Lexi-speak for ‘Put CBeebies on.’) It took me a second before I said, as lightly as I could, ‘Go on then, Minxy-moo, and you can have some lemonade as a special treat.’ She jumped off the bed and walked towards the door.

  I said again, ‘You understand what Mama said, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My baby brother’s heart stopped beating and he’s gone back to heaven. Maybe the angels will give us another baby.’ (So much for the wafty angels chat.) And with that she skipped out of the room.

  The days that followed are still clear to me. The midwives – or my ‘white witches’, as I’d come to think of them – came and told us that we had to go to a registry office and register my baby’s birth and death. ‘We’d go for you but you have to go yourselves,’ they said. I got up ever so carefully and went in the car with Chris to Isleworth registry office to do what the law requires – writing our dead baby’s name and the date on an official piece of paper – 1 February 2011.

  Back at home I lay in bed or on the sofa mostly, wracked with guilt over what I might or might not have done to contribute to our baby’s death. We had deliberately kept him secret for so long; we were afraid to bond with him and we’d hidden news of his arrival. I felt so guilty that he’d been ignored by us for all those months. I hadn’t allowed myself to connect with him or talk to him because of my secret fears. I was so walled up about the possibility of losing him. Had he sensed that somehow?

  Chris deliberately didn’t release a statement about what had happened to us but I’d slipped off the media radar heavily pregnant and it was only a matter of time before the press got wind of the fact that there had been a tragedy. Sadly, within hours the paparazzi were double parked all the way along the driveway and in our neighbour’s driveway, waiting for a photo of me. There was no escape. Colin Myler, then editor of the News of the World (which I still wrote for via my column in Fabulous magazine) phoned us to say he’d received some long-lens photos that had been taken of us and bought them all off the market after warning the snappers to leave us alone. (Sometimes the tabloids do brilliant things.)

  For our safety and privacy we decided to move back into our penthouse. Chris packed our belongings and took care to fill the apartment with candles and flowers and everything to make us feel at home. We fled in the middle of the night. We felt safe, cocooned in our little tower away from the nightmare. I have never seen the headlines or papers from that terrible time but cannot get over the sacks of mail I received from people sending me their stories and their love.

  Every day I would wake up and – for a split second – feel normal before my stomach flipped over and the blackness descended on me. I felt like there was a wicked spirit trying to hurt us, or that we’d been invaded by evil. I didn’t want Lexi to go to school or Chris to go to work. I was so afraid something might happen to them too. Every day, though, I forced myself to get up, dress Lexi and make her brekkie. I then put a coat over my PJs and sat in the back of the blacked-out car with her whilst Chris drove her to school. I kissed and waved her off and looked out of the window, watching everyone else’s life carrying on around me. It was amazing to me to think that the world outside was normal when we were burning up with grief and desolation.

  The mothers, families and staff at Lexi’s school were amazing. They arranged play dates and small chats. They offered brief hugs. There was no nonsense, which was all Chris required to get Lexi through the door. We monitored her through her teacher who said she was doing fine and had told everyone her baby brother’s heart had stopped beating and he wasn’t coming home.

  If ever Lexi brought it up with me, I’d tell her, ‘He was such a naughty little baby, he was always doing karate in Mummy’s tummy, he just blinking well didn’t want to come to us, which is a shame because we were really looking forward to seeing him, weren’t we?’

  She’d nod and talk about ‘nearly’ having a brother. She has never really talked about it since, other than once to Jess, when she said, ‘Mama did have a baby boy and she called it something weird, but he went back to heaven!’ And I said to Jess, ‘Oh my God, how did she sound when she said it?’ And she said she was fine, she just said it as a statement, as a matter of fact. Who knows what goes on in her head? Recently we had a little chat about Nyah Nyah. She said, ‘Remember when we got that blue Nyah Nyah – where is it?’ I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I probably put it in a little box somewhere because it’s special.’ So she definitely remembers some things. My heart ached for her. It still does.

  I spent those early days in tracksuits (Juicy Couture, mind you – still a bit stylish!). Every day one of my white witches would come and spend hours drinking coffee and entertaining my ridiculous questions about why my baby had died. Chris was out of his mind with worry – he says I was just sitting at home and going round in circles about what had happened.

  We had given permission for our baby’s little body to be taken away for a post-mortem. Although part of me desperately wanted a reason, I’d been warned that there is usually no explanation for a stillborn baby. I have since learned that at least seventeen babies a day are born dead. But still, I needed an explanation. It seemed to take forever as we waited for the results.

  Knowing that others had gone through the same thing helped me, somehow. I would wake up in the night and search the Internet. I tried and tried to get on to the website for Sands (the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society), but I always found it so difficult (it was a long-winded process to get on to the forums, an
d then I couldn’t ever tell whether my posts had gone up correctly. When you are dealing with people who are blinded by tears, you need to make things as easy as possible). Nevertheless I sent the links for bereaved grandparents’ sites to my parents and Chris’s. I read blogs from people who had gone on to have more children and I became obsessed with those as they were a great source of comfort. Night after night we had stayed up until 3 a.m. watching back-to-back episodes of the TV series Entourage. We deliberately didn’t watch any news programmes or read any headlines. Chris protected me.

  I even started painting. (I am rubbish at art, so this is definitely not the moment that I discovered through grief that I was the next Monet!) Chris bought Lexi and I proper easels and we stood side by side painting. She painted rainbows, while I attempted to paint the view. Along with a lot of Lego building, it was very effective therapy.

  Around this time I started exchanging heart-wrenching emails with someone else in the public eye who’d also recently lost a baby. She said that at first her husband hid all the newspapers about me from her, in case it brought everything flooding back. We spoke on the phone and were able to open up and express ourselves quite darkly to each other over the ensuing months. Her hand of friendship during that time is something I will never forget. We are not really in touch now as I think we needed each other for that time only. However, one day I will share a glass of wine with her at some function and be able to give her the hug I have long waited to give.

  She gave me a little necklace with the name we gave him on it (she wears a similar one with her lost baby’s name on it and never takes it off). When it first arrived in the post, Chris asked if he could have it. He wore it around his neck for ages and then one day he quietly put it back in my jewellery box.

  Then I received an amazing letter from Hayley Mills, which I will always keep. She is a Buddhist, and told me that because of what had happened I would now be in touch with the atrocities of the world and be far more sensitive to others. She said, ‘We always think we are here to teach our children a lesson but we forget they are here to teach us one. Your last son was your greatest teacher. Learn from him.’

  I came to the conclusion from that day on that I had been chosen for this because I can handle it. In my heart I always knew we weren’t going to have our little boy. When I told Chris, he said that he felt the same. Chris has always had psychic dreams (my favourite ones are about property!). But after we lost our baby, he reminded me that when I was pregnant with Lexi he had dreamed we would be pregnant with a little boy but never have it. I knew I was pregnant with a girl that time, so hadn’t worried. But now I totally believe that I was a vehicle for our baby to finish his spiritual life.

  He is now a warrior waiting for me in another world; a good little man somewhere around me on a different plane. He never has to come back to earth because his job is done. I am so flattered and honoured to have been chosen. I totally and utterly believe that and it is absolutely right. I’m glad it happened to me and not somebody else. We are all part of a vast universe and I gave him back to the universe. I will always have given birth to my little boy even if I wasn’t able to be his mother – I was his little driver.

  Not long after this, someone started to follow me on Twitter who’d given birth at term to a little girl who died. Her mother got in touch with me first and I put her in touch with Jackie Nash who helped them. I told her mother how I perceived our experience and said although it was a hard thing to get my head around, I felt that my body had been a vehicle. She passed this thought on to her daughter, who adopted my theory too, and which helped her get over her terrible loss. I felt happy I’d been able to help and encourage her to try again. We met last year when I invited her to Britain’s Got Talent and she confided she was pregnant again with a boy. He was born October 2012.

  The days passed and I wished them all away. I wanted to put distance between me and the past. Fifteen days after my baby’s birth, I turned forty. Any grand plans we’d had to celebrate before the baby died had melted away and I didn’t want to do anything public, so Chris arranged instead for my closest friends (and honorary girlfriend Ben) to come around. I insisted that it was a tracksuit and no make-up party. We ordered Indian food from Tangawizi, my favourite restaurant in Twickenham, and David Coulthard flew over from Monaco to support Chris and be a waiter. Moments before he walked into the penthouse Chris said David stopped outside. He was frightened to come in, because he didn’t know what to expect. I opened the front door and said, ‘Come on in, darling! There are no more tears left in this house. We need you to make margaritas – naked if possible!’

  Lexi was very excited as everyone arrived. I told them that nobody was to talk about the baby or act strangely in any way. Chris had created a funny video which featured images of me, including my Blind Date appearance at nineteen as well as outtakes from other shows, and it was all fine. Another milestone that had been passed.

  I don’t want to look like I’m trying to be a hero when I write this. I don’t think I’m especially courageous but it is very important to me that everyone knows that one thing I am not is a victim. I have been criticised on social media for wallowing in my misfortune. This is something I would never do. I hate being pitied, even though I know it comes from a good place. I especially hate people who use their sob stories for sympathy or gain. All I wanted was normality. Sarah Brown, the wife of ex-prime minister Gordon, wrote me a beautiful letter about when she lost her daughter. She lights a candle for her every night, and she said after something like that all you want is to – well, I interpreted it as, what you want is to be able to take things for granted again, to carry on going and get back to normality.

  Yes, I’ve grieved and cried and shouted in private but my mask goes on when I need it to. I have metaphorically worn that mask since I was a little girl and it has served me well over the years. It’s something to hide behind in disappointment, regret, unhappiness, anger and now death. It’s not denial – it’s more to do with my pride. I’ll always have it as I want people to feel at ease and not uncomfortable around me. I won’t allow anyone to see the cracks. I want them to feel normal even in the direst of circumstances. If that is people-pleasing, then so what? I am fine with it. I will never be beaten by circumstance. I am determined not to be defined by the bad things that happen to me, but rather channel them to mould me into a better person. I’ve said it before, but I don’t care who or what judges me. Nothing is going to stop me from living my life how I choose.

  The results came back from the post-mortem and it was as we expected. There was nothing physically wrong – just some slight scarring to the baby’s umbilical cord. That cord is made of strong stuff and usually bounces back. The scarring could have meant one of the three tiny arteries inside was momentarily constricted, cutting off the oxygen or blood flow to the baby, which would have caused death in less than a minute. There would have been no struggle and no pain, the experts assured me. No scan could have predicted it but my question to the doctor all those months earlier came flooding back: Could the baby’s frenetic kicking have meant that he’d bashed his own cord? This was a possibility, the hospital told me, but not definite. We would never know. They reassured me that, medically, everything was healthy and there was no genetic or other reason not to try again.

  Now there was the matter of the funeral. Our baby boy was born, not miscarried, as some newspapers said. If nothing else is learnt from this book I hope the differences between a stillbirth and a miscarriage become clear. Anyone pregnant with a baby that has died within them from four/five months onwards is more likely to physically give birth than take a pill to miscarry.

  A born baby has to have a funeral. I could not face this. I did not want the image of a tiny coffin in my head. I wanted his tiny face, which I have. I did not want to involve family in an already tragic circumstance to endure any more. I did not want to make a fuss. I didn’t want a grave to tend to or remind Lexi of him. It sounds harsh but we never knew our son. We
only knew expectation and hope of him. He was already buried deep in my soul

  In the end my lovely midwives stepped in again and went to the funeral on our behalf – just the three of them in a little chapel behind the hospital as a vicar presided. Jackie picked a simple casket and I gave her some clothes, his blue cashmere blanket and his Nyah Nyah comforter Lexi had chosen. Jackie dressed his little body and said goodbye for me. I went to bed and drew the covers over my head. Do not judge me for this decision. I still ask myself if it was the right one, just as Chris asks himself if he should have held him when he was born. Unless you have experienced grief like ours, you won’t ever understand. A friend of mine had an eleven-year-old daughter who died suddenly from a brain tumour and she couldn’t bear to go to that funeral either. It’s too final – it’s too much for a mother and father to bear. I completely understood. Chris and I were saying goodbye in our own way.

  I asked Jackie to bring me the ashes. She handed them to me in a mock wooden box and told me the blessing was ‘just right’. She also brought me the blanket he’d been wrapped in when I held him at the hospital. I’d asked for it – there was still our blood on it and she was right to think I wanted to keep it. I silently took it and held her and then she left. I opened the box and looked at the ash inside but there was so little of it. I went to my walk-in wardrobe and cradled the box and the blanket in the darkness. Chris found me there and kissed me tenderly.

  We had to make a decision about what to do with that little box but in my head I knew I had to take it to my heart place – my Norfolk. To a beach where we would continue to go to as a family, and where I could think of him on happier days. It was Easter when we finally made the journey to the cottage that has seen me through the best and worst of times. The morning we decided to carry our baby’s ashes to the beach was beautifully crisp and sunny.