I Let Him Go: The heartbreaking book from the mother of James Bulger

by Fergus, Denise

  We moved into a little bedsit in Springfields Heights, a high-rise tower block in Southdene, still in Kirkby and near to our families. It was surrounded by houses and had a few shops over the road on Broad Lane. We didn’t own much but I appreciated what we did have. Our families were extremely generous and we were given furniture, bedding and pots and pans – lots of bits to help us make a home and get settled. In reality it was so small that there wasn’t room for much, but that didn’t stop me making it as cosy as possible. When you came in through the front door there was a long hallway. If you turned right there was a bathroom with bath, sink and loo – no shower, it was all very basic. The living room was right outside the bathroom and also contained our bed, a fireplace and then a couch right underneath the window. Just off the main room was a small and separate kitchen, and that was it – nothing grand but it was our home. I didn’t know my neighbours at all the whole time I lived there, as I have always been one to keep myself to myself, but we quickly fell into the routine of being a couple. Ralph worked in security and was in and out of work and I fell pregnant almost immediately. Finally it felt like I was living the life I’d always imagined I would; all the pieces slotted into place and I was so happy.

  I had been with Ralph under two years when I got pregnant with our first baby; I was 20 and actually gave birth just after I turned 21. Our news wasn’t altogether celebrated by our families – their joy was tempered by the fact that we weren’t married. But I didn’t care about our circumstances and what was ‘proper’ – all I cared about was the baby growing inside me, and I vowed to love and protect him or her with everything I had. Our families got over the shock and then became as excited as we were – everyone loves a new baby to fuss over and they all knew how much I wanted to be a mum.

  The pregnancy passed really calmly and I felt great. I was active, healthy and, apart from the odd bit of morning sickness and an achy back, I had nothing to complain about. I approached pregnancy straightforwardly – I wasn’t ill, I was just having a baby, and so I carried on as normal. I looked and felt fine and so had no reason to change anything or worry – I certainly had no clue that things would end the way they did. The baby was active and moving right up until the morning I went into labour. Obviously I was apprehensive, like all first-time mums, but the pregnancy had gone like clockwork and we had all the baby things in our little bedsit ready. As we set off for the Fazakerley Hospital’s maternity unit, on the morning I went into labour, I was excited at the thought we would be returning as a family of three.

  As soon as we arrived they broke my waters and I quickly progressed to full labour. The contractions were coming regularly and the nurse wanted to take a quick look at me before I went to the labour ward. I was taken to a side room and left to get comfortable and a nurse returned a few minutes later wheeling in a great big machine. She brought it over to the side of the bed and started strapping two thick belts around my contracting stomach. As she fastened the final one and flicked on a switch, I watched the green light start flashing as usual. This was all routine, to check the baby’s heartbeat and I felt really calm – if anything I was keen for the nurse to finish so that I could get on with business of having the baby. Despite the pain, I was impatient to meet my little one.

  The nurse then started filling in charts and busied herself as the monitor did its job, she told me she would be back in a few minutes. Ralph was there as I lay on the bed breathing through the contractions, holding my tummy. After quite a long time the nurse came back in, smiling warmly, and made her way over to the screen. ‘How are we both getting on there?’

  She glanced at the screen, pressed a few buttons and, immediately, the atmosphere changed.

  ‘Right, okay, you wait there – I’m just going to get the doctor to take a look at you.’ She kept her voice light but I could see the panic in her eyes and I knew something was terribly wrong but I still didn’t imagine what was coming. I was 38 weeks’ pregnant, technically full term and ready to give birth.

  What happened next was like something out of a film – the doctor swept into the room without even saying hello, looked at the screen and fiddled around with a few buttons. Finally he turned to me and said, ‘I am really sorry but your baby seems to be dead.’

  It sounds really dramatic, but I was actually very silent, though my heart was racing. I just remember thinking, What is he talking about – the baby can’t be dead – I’m pregnant! I just felt my baby move, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

  It was like he had the wrong woman. He then slightly backtracked and said that they weren’t 100 per cent sure my baby was dead, that there was a chance of survival. The exact words were that it was ‘likely but not definite’ that I would be giving birth to a dead baby. I can’t really remember anything except for an overwhelming sense of worry and guilt – had I done something wrong? How had this happened to the baby I was supposed to protect?

  I don’t know how I got through the birth – except by clinging on to the possibility that it would all be okay. I remember feeling hopeful despite everyone’s worried expressions and convinced that my baby would come into the world crying indignantly to prove she or he had outwitted the doctors. The labour actually wasn’t as long as it can be for a first baby and I did the whole thing with just gas and air to take the edge off. Eventually the midwife told me that I was ready to push and, with Ralph by my side, I gave birth to our daughter. As soon as she arrived, I felt the normal sense of elation that the labour was over and my baby was here, before everything came crashing down again.

  Kirsty Bulger was born on the morning of 22nd Feb 1989, and weighed 3lbs 3.5oz.

  The nurse wrapped up my baby and gasped, ‘It’s a girl. She’s perfect.’

  My heart leapt and I thanked God a million times over that my little girl was alive after all. I said to the nurse, ‘So she’s okay then?’

  She looked at me, her face clouding over, and said, ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean she was alive, I’m so sorry.’

  Thinking back now that moment of hope was all consuming, a flash of pure adrenalin where I felt that it would all be fine, that this nightmare wasn’t real and I would wake up and everything would go back to normal. It is impossible to describe how easy it is to tell yourself that there is a chance – however slim – that it will be okay. It was similar to how I felt when I was shown CCTV footage of James being led away by two small children rather than a menacing adult. The human brain has an amazing ability to let us hold out hope until there really isn’t a single scrap to speak of.

  Chapter 2

  Loss and Life

  Everything fell apart into tiny pieces, right there. I don’t remember much except feeling in a total daze after the birth. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be: a long labour and no baby. Ralph was trying his best to be strong but didn’t really know what to do, and so he was in and out of the room a lot as the nurses cleaned me up and took the baby away.

  Once I was comfortable the doctor came in and explained that I would be going home empty-handed, like I had failed to scoop first prize in a pointless competition. I was then asked if I would like to hold my little girl and have some photos taken as a memento. I wasn’t sure at first but decided I couldn’t leave without having her in my arms – I had made her, grown her inside me and, now she was out, I was desperate to cuddle her. That maternal urge kicked in regardless of the sad outcome – my hormones didn’t understand that my baby wouldn’t be coming home with me.

  I will never forget her little face, it was so tiny, like a round button really, but completely and utterly perfect. I don’t know what I expected but it felt even more heartbreaking and difficult to understand because, physically, she looked just like she should – so why wasn’t she breathing when she looked so normal? The thought of holding a baby that isn’t full of life, pink and crying, is not what you imagine. I thought it would be a scary experience, but she was my baby and it all felt so natural, even though she was dead.

  She was beauti
ful, with a wonderful complexion, dark hair, fine eyelashes and perfect little fingers and toes. I studied her face, desperate to take in every little detail – I will always remember that her mouth was turned down, like she had been crying and her bottom lip was out in protest. I held her for a short while, kissed and rocked her and I didn’t want to let her go. Ralph decided that he didn’t want to hold Kirsty, but he stayed with me as I did. He tried his best to keep everything together but we both sat there in a trance for a long time. The nurses took photographs for me and eventually they carried her away so they could move me. Later on they offered to bring her back for another cuddle but Ralph said no, as he felt it would be too hard for me to say goodbye again – he could see how broken I was at the thought of letting her go.

  A few hours after Kirsty was taken away, Ralph asked me to marry him. I was still in total shock, lying on my bed and staring up at the ceiling, when suddenly Ralph asked me to be his wife. I said yes and we hugged, both still unable to process what had happened but grateful to have each other.

  ***

  Losing Kirsty was a pain so deep inside me that I don’t have the words to describe it – I would happily have traded places with my baby so that she could have lived the life she was due. You feel so useless as a mother – your one job above all else is to grow your baby and then protect your child once they are here. In a way I am glad I didn’t know for sure at the start of the labour that she had definitely died, as the thought of giving birth to a baby I knew was dead would have been too much to stand, that little bit of hope that she might be alive got me through the pain of labour. That’s the awful reality of stillbirth – being told there is no heartbeat and the baby is dead is heartbreaking enough, but it is easy to forget that the baby needs to come out and you have to give birth.

  I stayed in for two nights and once I was strong enough they discharged me and Ralph took me home. We got back to a bedsit full of baby equipment but no baby to use anything – the Moses basket, the little white vests and Babygros, the bottles and steriliser – all there staring at me but, ultimately, useless. It was like walking into a ghost bedsit. Just days earlier we had left for the hospital so full of excitement and anticipation and now there was only the grim reality of loss. Putting the key in the front door and seeing an empty basket where my darling daughter should have been nearly finished me off. I remember so clearly thinking, Today is the worst day of your whole life, Denise. It will never get worse than this.

  Surely nothing could be worse than giving birth to my dead baby and leaving hospital without her, leaving behind all the dreams I had for her and all that she could have been. But two years later, leaving The Strand shopping centre on that pitch black and freezing February night without my little boy’s hand in mine, well that was the worst thing of all. Then I became a mother of two children, but without either of them by my side.

  We buried our daughter in a tiny coffin after a small and simple funeral service. No fuss, and once it was over we went straight home where I stayed for a while. I would walk around the bedsit imagining what it would be like to have her there with me, what we would be doing now if she hadn’t died. I spent the first few weeks in a total trance, not really taking anything in or caring much about what was happening around me, a bit like floating through the motions. I couldn’t form any clear thoughts apart from one: I knew right after Kirsty died that I needed to fill that basket with another baby.

  We didn’t really talk much about what happened. It was hard to get Ralph to open up about his feelings generally, although he did support me as much as he could. But my body ached for my baby and was confused by the fact I’d given birth and now had nothing to nurture. Long after the actual birth, things happen biologically that you have no control over, like producing milk, which was devastating. Even though I hadn’t planned to breastfeed – it wasn’t as popular back then – it was another very physical reminder of the emotional trauma and all that I had lost.

  The one thing that became immediately clear was that I couldn’t deal with being around other people’s children, even my own nieces and nephews. Friends and family would offer to come and see me but I would turn them down flat as I couldn’t even look at a baby for those first few weeks – it was all too much. People often ask if I had any counselling – either for Kirsty or for James – the answer is no, as it just wasn’t the done thing. I can’t even remember if the hospital offered it to me and I declined or if I was just sent home to get on with things, but my family rallied round and I slowly got back on my feet.

  Not too long after I came home from the hospital, I agreed to let my sister Barbara visit with her new baby, Natalie. She had been born just a few weeks before I lost Kirsty. Looking back she must have been so nervous about how I would handle seeing her baby – a little girl the same age as my daughter should have been. But one thing that runs deep in our family is loyalty in a crisis – and if anyone could pull me back into the ‘now’, it was my family. Another reason for her wanting to come over was the fact my brother Gary was due to marry the following week and the family wanted to know if I would be attending. It was only going to be a small affair in a registry office with close family and friends, but there was no way I could face being at such a public event so soon after the birth. I had barely left the bedsit since we had got back from the hospital; Ralph was going out and about to keep family and friends updated on how I was but I seemed to spend all of my time shut up inside.

  Even though I wasn’t up to going to the wedding, I wanted the rest of my family to enjoy themselves. I refused to bring everyone else down, which is why I kept myself to myself in those early days. I definitely didn’t want to go to such a happy day and be the one in the corner not really joining in. It wasn’t fair on Gary and Pat, his fiancée – they had saved so hard for their big day and every bride wants their wedding day to be perfect. That said, I had a brilliant suggestion for how I could help out – I would offer to have Natalie for my sister so that she could go and let her hair down and have her first day out since the birth. My sister had been so good to me during those early days, it was the perfect way to say thank you. Also, truth be told, I was desperate to spend time with the baby on my own.

  I think Barbara could see how much good this would do me, plus she knew the baby was safe and so she could really relax and have fun. The wedding was only up the road, meaning she could pop back and see Natalie whenever she wanted to check all was well.

  From the minute the baby arrived on the morning of the wedding, I couldn’t put her down. I sat in the chair feeding and hugging Natalie, I was in my own little world, but still with one foot in reality. I knew she wasn’t my baby and wasn’t pretending or anything like that, but it felt so good to have a baby in my arms. After an hour or so, there was a knock at the door, which was unexpected. I reluctantly opened it and standing there, with her mouth open in shock, was the midwife who had come round to do my post-birth check-up. Her face was a picture – she looked like she had seen a ghost and it very quickly became clear that she thought that, in my wild and grief-stricken state, I had gone out and stolen a baby! She started giving me the third degree, asking loads of questions as she furiously scribbled notes on a pad – it was almost funny! In the end she refused to go until I got my sister to leave the wedding, come back to the bedsit and confirm that Natalie was hers and that I hadn’t kidnapped her! That was a rare humorous moment after the stillbirth.

  Looking back I am not sure how I coped, I don’t think you ever really know that’s what you are doing at the time – it is more like putting one foot in front of the other and surviving for those first few months. It doesn’t occur to you to give it a label like ‘coping’; it’s just not going under, I suppose.

  We packed away the baby things and drifted from one week to the next, trying to be ‘normal’ and like everyone else. Although I was drowning in grief, I was also determined to stay together and build the family I longed for. Losing Kirsty was the worst thing possible, but I knew that
I had to carry on. I know that Ralph felt the same even if he didn’t always show it. The loss of a baby is such a different experience for a woman as you have carried the baby, there is a physical pain that is hard for men to understand, but he did his best even if we dealt with it in our own specific ways. Then suddenly there was a ray of hope when, four months after losing Kirsty, I discovered that I was expecting my James.

  ***

  As soon as I realised I was pregnant, Ralph and I decided to get married and we arranged it for my birthday, 16th September 1989 – somehow it seemed fitting that he proposed on Kirsty’s birthday and we married on mine. It was a small do, nothing fancy as we couldn’t afford much, plus I was in the early stages of pregnancy and wanted to keep the news quiet until I got to the 12-week mark and felt sure everything was okay.

  Looking back I realise we were still so young, I was 22 and Ralph was a year older, and yet so much had happened. I was determined this would be our fresh start and the beginning of proper family life, all I wanted was for us to be happy and raise a family together.

  Everyone was happy to see us tie the knot after everything that we had been through and it was a lovely day. My mum made my wedding dress and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I loved it and, despite the beginning of a bump, I felt so glamorous. We had a little party afterwards at Mum and Dad’s but it was all very low key, just as well as it didn’t take much at that stage of the pregnancy to exhaust me. It felt good that the baby would be born into a stable home where Ralph and I were man and wife, and I was sure that he or she would complete things.

  I started to feel like myself again, as if the fog was lifting slightly after all the sadness. It helped me to reconcile what had happened because I now had another purpose: I was going to be a mum. We had lost our beloved daughter, but I was determined that nothing would ever happen to this second precious baby. I wouldn’t let him or her out of my sight. But, as soon as I told everyone the happy news, the worry set in immediately and what followed was an angst-ridden second pregnancy. All I could think was that it had happened once, without warning or explanation – why wouldn’t it happen again? You hear about some people who just have such bad luck – in the back of mind I thought, Perhaps that’s me.