This is the stillbirth story of George Robert, told by his mom Miranda. Originally from Canada, Miranda and her husband Graham have been living in London for work, and they made the decision to start trying to have a baby. She talks about her pregnancy and “going to” appointments (telemedicine) and how George was progressing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After feeling no movement from George one morning around 39 weeks, Miranda headed to the hospital to be checked. They couldn’t find a heartbeat, and Miranda gave birth to George the following day. She and Graham did not want to see George after he was born, and with some encouragement from their bereavement midwife, they both did see him and spent time with him. This is George’s story.
Watch here (YouTube):
Listen here (podcast):
Time Stamps:
00:00 George Robert
02:21 Introduction of Miranda and Graham
09:01 Pregnancy
19:10 Something is wrong and going to the hospital
30:09 Birth
36:26 After birth
41:17 Leaving the hospital
45:50 Funeral
55:04 Autopsy
You might appreciate these other episodes:
- Watch/listen to Miranda‘s advice episode of son George: Click here
- Watch/listen to Tiffany‘s birth episode of daughter Khyana’s: Click here
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Full Transcription:
Miranda Markham 0:00
My baby’s name was George Robert.
Miranda Markham 0:08
Things I remember about him most of all. The first was that throughout the entire pregnancy, I was absolutely convinced he would be blonde like me. I don’t know why it’s the recessive gene. My husband and I have dark brown hair, but I just assumed 100% he’d be blonde. He was born with a full head of dark brown hair, which surprised me. The other thing was that leading up to his birth, the weather was unseasonably warm, beautiful sunny days, pure blue skies every day for what seemed like weeks on end. Then he died five days before his due date. On his due day, the sixth of June, the weather absolutely turned, it got really cold. There was a thunderstorm. I do remember sitting and staring out the window and watching the rain pour down and just think this is so perfect. I couldn’t stand a happy, sunny day on what was the saddest day for me. I just felt like the world was grieving with me somehow. I don’t know, it felt like a very fitting weather turn to mark what should have been a very joyful day.
Winter 1:21
Welcome to Still A Part of Us. A place where moms and dads share the story of their child who was stillborn or who died in infancy. I’m Winter.
Lee 1:28
And I’m Lee, we are grateful you joined us today. Please note that this is a story of loss and has triggers.
Winter 1:34
Thanks to our lost parents who are willing to be vulnerable and share their children with us.
Lee 1:38
If you’re listening to this podcast, just know that on our YouTube channel, there are pictures and videos that are related to the stories that are being shared.
Winter 1:45
Subscribe and share it with a friend that might need it and tell them to subscribe. Why? Because people need to know that even though our babies are no longer with us. They’re Still A Part of Us.
Winter 1:58
We are so grateful to have Miranda on with us today to talk about her son, George. This is actually kind of a fun experience to get to know Miranda. So I’m excited to have you on today. Miranda, welcome.
Miranda Markham 2:10
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Winter 2:12
So tell us a little bit about yourself, Miranda. Who you’re married to, where you guys are living right now, and what do you do on a day to day basis?
Miranda Markham 2:21
Yeah, sure. So my husband’s name is Graham. We just celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary on the 13th of April.
Winter 2:29
Congratulations.
Miranda Markham 2:31
16th of April. It was in 2013. We are originally from Canada. We moved to London, England six years ago, both of us had job opportunities that came up around the same time. It was not in our life plan. We had just got married, we just bought a house and lived in that house for approximately a year. It was very much the plan to stay in Toronto, where we lived. We just kind of packed it all up and fled with the intention of staying in London for two years. That was six years ago.
Miranda Markham 3:15
We both changed jobs a couple times since moving to London. But broadly, my role has been in the world of public relations. I’ve worked in all sorts. Started in consumer PR, so for large consumer businesses and then transitioned into health and fitness PR specifically, which is very much my area of expertise and my passion. My husband’s done a fairly significant career pivot after a career in mining. He went into an MBA program at the London Business School, and decided he wanted to get into the world of food tech, which is where he’s working now. So plant proteins and alternative meat. Yeah,
Winter 3:55
Very interesting. So you guys have just found yourself in London. Do you enjoy living there? Has it been good for you?
Miranda Markham 4:04
It’s been amazing. I think we wouldn’t have stayed, we wouldn’t have stayed for three times the length of time if it wasn’t. I think we were really naive when we first moved to London thinking that after two years, we would have done it all and seen it all. Done everything made all these friends and could have just packed up and moved to Toronto. I mean, I think it really took us two years to feel like we lived in London, and to make some solid friendships. By the time that had happened, it seemed like a shame to reverse it all. So we just stayed, but the city is amazing. I mean, there’s everything you have at food entertainment events. I think a big thing for us was proximity to the rest of Europe and an opportunity to travel extensively which we’ve done over the last six years.
Winter 4:51
Which is so wonderful. You kind of alluded to this that you are very much into the– you do PR for a fitness company. I know that you are a big runner if I’m not mistaken. Tell me a little bit how long you’ve been running? Is that like a pretty big hobby for you?
Miranda Markham 5:12
Running was a huge part of my life. I started running in my late 20s. A friend of mine was the leader of a local running club and basically invited me to come and join at a time where I never really put two feet in front of her. I really enjoyed it. So I kept going back. As part of the group she was in, they wanted two new runners to train for and run their first half marathon and blog about it in exchange for free clothes and shoes. So I thought, Yeah, why not? Why not? I had every intention of running one half marathon and saying that was what got my free shoes. I’m out of here.
Miranda Markham 5:54
Obviously, you know where the story goes. But I fell in love with it. I suddenly just awakened to this desire to see how far I could go. If I can do this, how much more can I run? How much faster can I get? How much further can I go? It was just this massive source of pride and accomplishment for me. So I continued, and over the last decade or so, less than a decade, I’ve run over 55 different races. All my two full marathons and five triathlons. I would say I’m still very much a recreational runner, but posted some times in the past a couple years that I would have thought inconceivable in my early days. So, I think there was something really rewarding about getting older and still being able to improve.
Winter 6:45
Yeah.
Miranda Markham 6:46
So I say it was a big part of my life. I think it’s sort of dropped down the priorities these days. But it’ll be there for when I want it back again.
Winter 6:55
Yeah, exactly. That’s a nice thing about it. So it sounds like as a couple you guys like to travel. Any other things that you like to do in London or around?
Miranda Markham 7:08
Definitely travel, but eat. Think of there’s no shortage of amazing cuisineI in London. I think it gets painted with a bad brush. People think that English food is just a bunch of fish and chips and fried stuff. I mean, if you want that you can have it. But it’s also a very worldly city where if you want any type of cuisine from anywhere around the world, you can get it.
Winter 7:31
Right.
Miranda Markham 7:32
So I think nights out with friends and enjoying great food. Either in their homes or at a restaurant has been a huge part of our social calendar. I think just the entertainment side of things. I mean, there’s aside from the obvious theaters, and kind of Western shows, there are just so many interesting events that you can go to. Whether it’s festivals or secret cinemas, or interactive art exhibits, I mean, it’s endless. You can find something to fill your weekend, every week, if you want.
Winter 8:02
That is so fun. I think that is great. Thank you for letting us know. I think you’re technically our first international. Yeah, international guests. So welcome.
Miranda Markham 8:14
Hey! All Right.
Winter 8:15
Yeah. For a little bit of context, can you also tell us how long ago George was born at the time of this recording?
Miranda Markham 8:24
It was coming up on 11 months ago.
Winter 8:29
Yeah, it’s right. June.
Miranda Markham 8:31
So it was June, June of 2020.
Winter 8:33
Right. Okay. So it’s you and your husband, Graham, and any other members of the family? Just, it’s just the two of you. Right?
Miranda Markham 8:43
It’s just us and the puppy who joined us in December of last year.
Winter 8:48
Okay.
Miranda Markham 8:48
His name is Eddie.
Winter 8:50
Wonderful. So were you guys planning on getting pregnant then? Was that part of the big picture? Or was that something that was a little bit of a surprise?
Miranda Markham 9:00
It was not a surprise. I think we really, as a couple, I don’t want to say struggled, but certainly postponed the idea of starting a family for quite a long time. We like our lives. The freedom of being able to pack up and travel and do whatever we wanted when we wanted. It was really difficult for us to envision a life where that suddenly came to a standstill.
Miranda Markham 9:29
I think at the same time, both being very career focused. We were busy. It was hard to imagine how a baby would fit into our lives. So we really delayed our thinking around starting a family for quite a while. But I think we sort of have complete predictability. The second I turned 35 I suddenly felt like okay I’m ready now and we need to start. We need to start because obviously there’s no reason to believe that we would have any issues, and I wasn’t concerned about any fertility challenges. But I think age being a factor certainly weighed on my mind. It sort of felt like it was now or never.
Miranda Markham 10:15
I think the other thing was that I’m an only child. I always said my whole life that I would want to have two kids. So it was trying to plot that timeline. I’m a bit of a control freak. So trying to plan how that would look. Really sort of thought, okay, at 35, we’ve got to start the process. I think we took a very sort of laid back approach to it. It’s not like I was tracking anything, we just sort of, I don’t know if they say this and other countries that pulled the goalie, as they say. We just said, and just thought, if it happens, it happens. And that’s how it will be.
Miranda Markham 10:53
So it wasn’t a quick process, because, as it turns out, it’s really actually hard to make a baby. You spend your whole life worried that you’re gonna get pregnant by accident. And when it comes down to it, it’s like some Einstein level science experiment where the moon has to align with something or another. Anyway, it eventually happened. A month before my 36th birthday, I found out that I was pregnant.
Winter 11:18
Awesome. Were you guys excited? Was that just like, okay, we have been planning for this. How did you feel about that?
Miranda Markham 11:24
I remember the day that I told Graham, I was pregnant. I did the test in the morning before work, and it was positive. I came and told him. We both kind of went, hmm, all right. Well, I gotta go. We’ll talk later. It was like the most anticlimactic thing there was no celebration, jumping up and down. It was kind of like, Okay, this is the thing we’ll deal with later.
Winter 11:44
Yeah.
Miranda Markham 11:46
So I wouldn’t say the initial emotion was one of overwhelming excitement. I think there was certainly happiness, but also an element of being terrified as well. This is suddenly everything is going to change.
Winter 12:01
Yeah.
Miranda Markham 12:02
So we could eventually talk about it. I think as time went on, I became more and more excited. But yeah, certainly it was scary. I think we were mostly focused on how our lives would change.
Winter 12:15
Yeah because it is a big change when a child comes into your life. How was the pregnancy? Were you? I would say that you are relatively fit. I’m just wondering how the pregnancy went. Morning sickness. How did the baby look?
Miranda Markham 12:32
Yeah. I mean, overall, I would say my pregnancy was really smooth and really easy. I had really intense food aversions in the first trimester, which caught me a bit by surprise. I thought I knew about morning sickness, obviously I didn’t know that I would literally feel like rushing at the smell of my own refrigerator. I subsisted on a diet of bagels and crackers for probably 12 weeks. I also made hiding the pregnancy from people at that time extremely difficult knowing both my love of food and my high level of activity, when suddenly I started acting like a slob and eating nothing but carbs. It was a rather difficult thing so I’m sure most people had a suspicion before I ever mentioned this.
Miranda Markham 13:24
Otherwise, I think as soon as I passed the first trimester, I felt great. I had a high level of energy. I continued running until I was 25 weeks pregnant, I think. Carried on with a fairly high intensity fitness schedule. Group after five classes modified Of course. I also worked with a personal trainer who specialized in prenatal fitness, just to make sure that I was– I have a tendency to push myself too hard all the time. So I needed someone to kind of pull me back and make sure that I was still exercising safely.
Winter 13:53
Yeah.
Miranda Markham 13:54
But yeah, and we still traveled. We went to Mauritius, when I was probably about 26 weeks, maybe 24 weeks pregnant, and had a luxurious holiday at this beautiful resort. Then in March of 2020, we went to France and my friends went skiing. I snowshoed and booked a massage therapist to come to the chalet and massage me. I mean it’s all very luxurious.
Winter 14:20
Yes, that sounds nice.
Miranda Markham 14:22
Yeah, I didn’t have any issues. I was very mobile, very new. I felt good. I felt great. There were certainly no warning signs that anything would go badly.
Winter 14:35
Yeah. I am not totally sure how healthcare is in London or in the UK. But do they generally also do a kind of anatomy ultrasound around 20 weeks? Is that a fairly common practice still?
Miranda Markham 14:51
Yes. So I think similar to most places, they do a 12 and 20 weeks again. My particular hospital also offered a third a six week scan, but due to COVID, it was canceled. So I never actually had that one. But I think potentially unlike other countries, I don’t know this for sure. But there’s lots of private care options where there’s several clinics that will do private scans for a fairly reasonable price. So if you are concerned, you can book what’s called a reassurance scan and go in and have another scan. Your cost, of course.
Winter 15:24
Right, right.
Miranda Markham 15:26
It’s certainly affordable, I think, for most people, and I think what’s the price of reassurance?
Winter 15:31
Yeah, yeah. So you guys got your scans at 12 weeks and at 20 weeks. And how was George looking at that time at those times, looking good?
Miranda Markham 15:41
He looks great. He was, I mean, it was, I think we totally took for granted at the time, but I went into all of those appointments, assuming that it would all be everything is fine. All graphs trending upward. Everything is perfect. So I always left feeling quite smug that everything was great. And therefore everything would be great.
Winter 16:01
Yeah. I know. So tell us a little bit. So you, just to kind of back up a little bit. I just want to point out that you had George, basically in the middle of the pandemic. It was probably full, like you guys had shut down? I mean, I think the UK had shut down quite a bit of stuff by June, May, June.
Miranda Markham 16:20
Yeah, so just to set the sort of timeline. I think I was entering my third trimester in March of 2020.
Winter 16:29
Okay.
Miranda Markham 16:30
So right when the world was basically pulling the panic alarm on COVID. I left work one afternoon of I think, March 17, or so. thinking it would be thinking it would be a couple of weeks, and I’d be back. It was the last time I was ever in the office.
Winter 16:49
Right.
Miranda Markham 16:49
I haven’t been back. Everything shut down. Like fully locked down after that. It was at first kind of a funny thing, a novelty. But it was this sort of bizarro world that everyone assumed would be temporary. And it was made bearable by the fact that the weather was beautiful.
Miranda Markham 17:12
Oh good.
Miranda Markham 17:13
I just thought, well, great. I’m working from home, I’m pregnant, I don’t have to get on public transit. I’m just going to lounge in the garden and drink 100 iced tea while in between meetings.
Miranda Markham 17:25
I don’t think initially, I was terribly concerned. I think when things started to become more concerning was when obviously hospitals became overrun. The NHS was at a breaking point in terms of being able to accommodate all the critical patients. Of course it wouldn’t have necessarily impacted maternity care. But what they did do in order to prevent more people from entering the hospital was to cancel what they called all non essential appointments. So for anyone like me, that was deemed low risk and healthy.
Miranda Markham 18:03
Pretty much all of my appointments, with the exception of one of 38 weeks was canceled, or done over the phone. Which I was deeply concerned about, at the time, because I thought, How on earth could they possibly know, if something’s going wrong with a phone call? I panicked. I remember calling multiple other hospitals to see if I could switch. But they all basically had the same rules in place. So there was no point. I kept trying to tell myself that they have to make changes in an unprecedented situation. So if they tell me that this is the right thing to do, and that the risk of going into the hospital is greater than staying home, then I have to just believe that that is in fact, true.
Winter 18:51
So you have had basically telephone phone call, I mean, telephone appointments, and or none at all, basically, for your last trimester?
Miranda Markham 19:00
Correct.
Winter 19:01
Were they having you do any sort of checks of, say blood pressure or? So nothing extra?
Miranda Markham 19:10
No. So I think this is the other thing I thought normally they take blood or they check your urine, or they do your blood pressure, none of that was happening. They basically just asked how I was feeling. I think the question that stays with me is the midwife who called me and asked, Are you happy with the baby’s movements? And I thought, like, what an absolutely absurd thing to ask a first time mom, and I said, I don’t know what you mean. Like, yeah, like, give me more to go on. What should I be looking for? I remember her sounding quite exasperated with me, as if I was just wasting her time. And she just basically asked if the movements were regular. If I’d noticed any difference in the patterns and at the time, I just thought, I mean, I’m not paying attention. I was working 15-16 hour days because working in the fitness industry, when all of our clients that basically had to shut our business was in a tailspin. We were trying to save clients who were leaving us in droves. It was really stressful. The last thing I was paying attention to was counting my baby’s movements. So I just sort of said, Yeah, I guess so. And she said, Great, okay, call us if anything changes. The conversation lasted 45 seconds.
Winter 20:24
So you’re in your third trimester, you are told to note down. I mean, it sounds like there was not very good direction given regarding what you’re supposed to be looking for in regards to movement.
Miranda Markham 20:36
Not particularly.
Winter 20:37
Not particularly and they are and you are just kind of starting to get worried. Right. I mean, I would be, like you said,I would be panicking.
Miranda Markham 20:47
I panicked, I was properly panicked. And not just about the baby, but about all aspects of my life. What was going to happen with my company? What was happening? It sounds trivial now. But fitness was such a huge part of my life, and all the places I would go to fit and do classes were shut down there for the foreseeable. I mean even our families for travel, they live in Canada, they wanted to come visit us when the baby was born, would that be possible?
Miranda Markham 21:15
I remember, I was awake in the night, I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried about things. I woke up and I wrote, feverishly, six pages of worries. Months and months later, I went back and looked at those and it is shocking. How many of those things actually happened. Most people say when you write down your worries that most of them end up not coming to fruition. In his particular case, I would say 50% plus actually, indeed did happen. Which is a terrifying thing.
Winter 21:45
Yeah, it is. So tell me what happened. Yeah, tell me kind of what happened when you found out about George.
Miranda Markham 21:55
I mean, things carried on through the third trimester. I did actually go to an appointment at 38 weeks, where everything appeared to be fine. So then I carried on working right up until the end. I worked until the 30th of May. I think that was the right day, 30 or something around there.
Miranda Markham 22:15
I remember being quite smug having done the best job I could, I was on great terms with my boss. We’ve done a lot of great work together in order to kind of salvage a lot of things that were going wrong. So we had a friend over that evening, and you’re having some food in the garden. I remember feeling quite smug. I could feel George moving around, and was feeling quite good about everything.
Miranda Markham 22:40
I woke up the next morning, I guess this was now June. June, the first, which was Monday, my very first day of maternity leave. I sat up in bed, and I just remember I normally every morning when I would sit up in bed, and I would have my morning drink, the baby would start moving. He’d start moving straight away. I start noticing his movements, especially if he could hear me or Graham talking. But this morning, there was nothing. I didn’t panic, not straight away, because I knew not to. I’d read enough by this stage on my own and based on my own research that you shouldn’t panic.
Miranda Markham 23:17
So I did everything that I was told to do. I had something cold to drink, I ate something sweet. I lay down on the couch, and I tried to feel if I could feel any movements. I still didn’t believe that there was anything too wrong. So I had a shower, dried my hair. By this point, more than an hour had gone by, and I still hadn’t felt anything. I thought I should just go in just to be sure. I’m sure it’s fine. But I’ll go in. I told Graham not to come even though I think he could have despite the COVID restrictions, but I told him not to go because in that moment, I was sure that everything would be okay.
Miranda Markham 23:58
I remember getting in. I just took an Uber to the hospital. I remember on the way there. I didn’t know just suddenly getting this increasing sense of dread. I even googled, I know I did this because like the web page was still open on my phone weeks and weeks later I googled rate of stillbirth. I just I don’t know, I just had a horrible dreadful feeling that something was wrong. I got to the maternity ward and they still had me wait, even though I said I was concerned about the baby’s movements. I still waited in the waiting room for 25 minutes before someone saw me.
Miranda Markham 24:36
Then finally a midwife came and put the doppler on me and couldn’t find anything. That’s when I really started to panic. I kept shouting at her, is something wrong? Something is wrong and she just kept telling me that it was fine and not to worry. They brought in a different midwife and she checked and still nothing.
Miranda Markham 24:53
Then they told me to move and I had to go to a different area where they did a proper ultrasound with a more senior I don’t know if she was a midwife or an obstetrician, I’m not sure. That’s when she told me, well, she didn’t actually need to tell me. I just remember looking at her actually all three of them. There are three midwives there. They were all wearing masks because of COVID. I just looked at her eyes. They were filled up with tears. I knew before she even said anything. She just said the words I’m so sorry. I don’t know. I kept screaming at her. Are you sure? I demanded that she check again, over and over. She kept telling me that she was so sorry that he had no heartbeat.
Miranda Markham 25:42
After a few moments of trying to absorb this news, she told me that we had to go to a different room. I mean, understandably, I was hysterical. We’re separated by curtains in a room full of other pregnant women. Obviously, it’s not a good scene. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t move. Then I obviously had to call Graham, I had to call him, how do you call your husband and tell him that your baby’s dead? I’ve somehow managed to get through to him. I just shrieked something down the phone and then threw my phone at whoever was sitting or standing next to me and told them they had to sort it out.
Miranda Markham 26:25
So they took me to this other room. I remember sitting there just crying and asking, are they sure ? They kept telling me they could check again. But the woman who checked me is the most senior. I don’t know what her title is, a senior kind of ultrasound technician in the hospital and that if she had not seen a heartbeat, it was very unlikely that it would be any different. I remember I just kept asking what do we do now? What do I do? What do I do?
Miranda Markham 26:56
They wouldn’t answer me forever, they just wouldn’t tell me anything, they wouldn’t speak to me other than just to sort of try to calm me like they wanted Graham to be there first. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do, because I don’t think I would have heard, or I would have heard, but I wouldn’t have listened to anything they said.
Miranda Markham 27:16
Anyway, eventually he arrived. We talked about the different options, it is exceedingly difficult, in that moment of extreme shock to try and make rational decisions about what to do next. They give you the sort of doctor’s perspective of you can have a C-section or you can be induced, and they give you a bunch of various sort of sexual risks and benefits of each. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide. And that’s horrible, because all I wanted in that moment was for somebody to tell me what to do. So to force me to make decisions like that, I think was cruel and horrible. And equally, I think the worst thing was that even once we decided, it’s not like it could happen immediately, we had to just go home.
Miranda Markham 28:05
At this stage, maybe 10 o’clock in the morning. We just had to go home to a house that had a baby’s room completely set up and ready for a baby that was never going to use it. And just sit with that fact for an entire day and night, that was the worst. I think people often say to me how awful they think certain things would have been like the funeral or packing up his room, or all these different things. But I think for me, that was the worst, having to turn around and leave the hospital and go home, and just be there with that. With that feeling completely helpless and out of control, and not able to do anything to help myself or the baby that had died. It was the worst 30 hours of my entire life.
Winter 29:01
Did you guys decide to be induced or to have the C-section then?
Miranda Markham 29:07
I think that if they had told me that I could have had the C-section immediately, I would have done it. Because I couldn’t imagine the idea of what I’ve just described as having to go home and just sit with that fact that they said regardless of what option I chose, it would have to be the following day. They had explained that the induction would be safer for me. An easier recovery and the safest option should we want to try and have children in the future. That seems like a good enough reason to me. So that was what we decided despite the fact that the thought of it was utterly inconceivable. But based on those facts alone, that’s what we decided.
Winter 29:53
When Graham finally came, got there and everything, was he also in shock? I just imagine him getting the news on the other side of the phone. Do you know how he reacted?
Miranda Markham 30:09
It’s really hard for me to remember because I was so in my own head, but I remember him running in. He had my hospital bag, I remember the one that I had packed for going to the hospital if I was in labor. I don’t know if he brought that out of his own accord, or if they told him to. He just ran in and hugged me. I don’t know if he cried, I can’t remember. He’s a very sort of practical and rational person. I think that in that moment, in those, especially that momentum, the many moments to follow, he really sort of assumed the role of sort of managing all practical things. Being the clear headed one that is going to deal with the sort of administrative and necessary parts of this. Because I couldn’t, I was incapable. So he asked all the questions and he listened to the answers. He knew where we had to go and when, because I just didn’t have the capacity to listen.
Winter 31:13
So you guys stayed at your home for the day and for the night, and then went back to the hospital the next morning?
Miranda Markham 31:23
Yes.
Winter 31:24
It was obviously going to only be you and Graham that were able to come in.
Miranda Markham 31:30
Yeah, I think that was the only time certainly in the early days where I saw Graham panic. When we woke up the next morning we’re just sort of forcing ourselves to eat breakfast together. I think he just, I don’t know. I just remember him panicking, and he called our friend and told him what had happened. I don’t actually know what he asked him for. Now, I’m saying this, but I think he just needed it. I don’t know, he just needed to tell someone and to let them know that if he fell apart and needed help that somebody could help us.
Miranda Markham 32:07
But somehow we managed to choke down breakfast and call ourselves an Uber. I remember the Uber driver asked if I was in labor, absolutely the worst journey to the hospital ever. The worst part is that Uber driver actually lives in our area. So I see that van multiple times a week parking near our flat, even today. Every time I just shudder to think that was the vehicle that drove us to the hospital that day.
Miranda Markham 32:39
Anyway, yeah, so we got there sometime in the morning. I remember they brought us to, I guess, like a delivery suite or delivery room. Then we waited forever. We needed some additional, some kind of tablet to start the labor. We waited for it for four hours. I remember thinking like, how can this not be the hospital’s number one priority? Like, we’re just supposed to sit in this room and just do nothing, for four hours? They kept apologizing and they kept coming back being like we’re looking for the pharmacist, we’ll get it soon. I just thought like why would you have me come in at 9am or 8am.
Miranda Markham 33:25
Anyway, so eventually, we got the tablet that was required. Very thankfully, things progressed really quickly from there. It sounds weird to say, but I was so thankful to just start the process. Because I felt so helpless before, at least now there was something I could actively be doing. It meant that we were moving forward from this extremely painful state of limbo.
Miranda Markham 33:29
Once things started, they were quick, the entire labor was only three and a half hours. There were no complications at all. There was, I mean, I don’t even remember it being particularly painful. Other than emotionally painful. I didn’t have an epidural. I remember they sort of thrust this pamphlet of pain relief options at me and sort of had me decide which one I wanted to go with. All I can remember reading on the pamphlet was all these sort of vanishingly small risks associated with the different options for pain relief. I remember thinking to myself, well, I can’t have an epidural because I’ll probably be paralyzed. Like anything that was on there. I was just convinced that the risk would happen. So I just said, I don’t want any of it.
Miranda Markham 34:09
I ended up I don’t even remember what it’s called, but taking some kind of pain relief. It’s administered through the cannula like the intravenously I guess. With gas and air, I don’t think it was tremendously effective because it was one of these like self administered ones that you have to use. I had to press a button preemptively to every contraction and it’s like you’re not even, I don’t know who can do this effectively. So I would say it virtually didn’t work. Whether it worked or not, who knows.
Miranda Markham 35:12
Anyway, thankfully, everything was fast. George was born. I mean, that’s another horrible moment is the silence that followed that. I mean, they just whisked him away so fast. I remember I didn’t even see him. I was facing away sort of on my knees on the bed. George came out, and they just– by the time I’d turned around, he was gone. It was like he didn’t exist. Now, in hindsight, Graham tells me that they asked if I wanted to see him. He says that I’d said, No. I have zero recollection of that conversation ever happening. I trusted that it did happen. I probably just don’t remember due to some cocktail of emotions and drugs.
Miranda Markham 35:58
So I suppose they were doing what they thought I wanted. But it’s very weird to give birth to a baby and turn around and there’s just nothing. Nothing there. So yeah, and that was kind of it. It was kind of anticlimactic after that. I didn’t have any significant tearing. I think they put too little stitches. Then I took a shower and went to another room to recover.
Winter 36:23
So you really did not see George at all?
Miranda Markham 36:26
No.
Winter 36:26
Not that day?
Miranda Markham 36:27
Not that day.
Winter 36:28
Okay.
Miranda Markham 36:32
After that they eventually introduced me. I think the same day to a woman named Sarah, who was our bereavement midwife. She was amazing. She continued to encourage me to see George even though I was convinced I never wanted to. Eventually, not on the day he was born, he was born on June 2, on the third.
Miranda Markham 36:59
We were still in the hospital, they basically said, we can stay as long as I wanted, even though there was no real medical reason for me to be there. I didn’t know where to go. We didn’t know where to, we felt like we couldn’t go back to the flat. So we just sort of stayed until we could formulate a plan.
Miranda Markham 37:17
Anyway, Sarah continued to give us the option to see George and encouraged us to do it. Graham eventually went to see him first. That was extremely hard for him, really emotional. I think he felt like at that time that he was doing that for both of us. And that I would never see him and that he felt like he needed to go and say something to our son on behalf of both of us. Eventually, Sarah suggested that I might like to look at some photos that they had taken of George first and see how that felt.
Miranda Markham 37:50
Again, at first I said no, that I couldn’t do it. So then on the morning of the fourth of June, we were still at the hospital. I remember I started feeling a bit jealous that Graham had seen George and I hadn’t, which I thought was an odd emotion even at the time, because I kept asking what did he look like? Did he look like this? Did he have this shape of nose? What color was his hair? What does his hand look like? And he’s just, I don’t know Miranda. It wasn’t on the top of his mind to strip the baby down and look at his, every crevice of his body.
Miranda Markham 38:22
I remember feeling jealous that he got that opportunity and I didn’t. So when Sarah came back, I said, I did want to see the photos. So she brought them in for me. I looked at them. I remember immediately I thought my reaction might be that I’d be scared or horrified. That he would look like a baby that he’d look like some horrible version of a baby. I was completely just like, took my breath away, just to see him that he just looked like the perfect sleeping Angel. I wasn’t scared of him at all. I was actually the emotion that I remember having overwhelmingly was that I felt proud. I felt proud of him. So right away I said I wanted to see him. That I needed to see him.
Miranda Markham 39:25
Two days later, after he was born, I finally saw him. They brought him into my room. Graham left because he couldn’t he couldn’t see him again. They brought him in this little thing they called a cold cot. A horrible little refrigerator instead of a nice warm bed. He still looked perfect. Like he literally looks like he could just start moving at any point.
Miranda Markham 39:54
I remember asking what he was wearing because it didn’t occur to us to bring clothes to the hospital for a baby who had died. But he was wearing a little baby outfit and a hat. She said that there’s a woman who knits things for babies that have died. So he was wearing one of those hats and this little outfit that was too big for him. So I just spent some time with him. I held his little hand and I talked to him.
Miranda Markham 40:36
I don’t know, even now I look back and think that it just wasn’t enough. I’m so grateful that I saw him at all because there was a long period of time where I wasn’t going to. I know deeply now that would have been such a huge source of regret for him. One of my biggest regrets now is that I didn’t hold him. I couldn’t at the time, I just like it just seemed inconceivable to me. But I just keep reminding myself that I did. I did the best I could at the time.
Winter 41:08
Yeah. So you left three days later, after he was born? Is that right?
Miranda Markham 41:17
Yeah. So I think we left on the morning of the fifth of June. Again, we didn’t feel like we could go back to the flat. But while we were in the hospital, they were really kind to us. They fed us really well. And they were really attentive. I had really low blood pressure, actually. I actually fainted and fell in the hospital, which was not right. If you were to have this conversation with Graham, he would recount that story as being one of the worst and serious moments for him. For me, I barely remember it. I do, however, remember the massive bruise I had on my head for the six following weeks. In fact, I would even maintain that that fall in the hospital hurt more than the birth is an absurd thing to say.
Miranda Markham 42:11
Anyway, we stayed there and they were very kind to us. While we were there, we basically formulated a plan that initially we would go to a hotel. This doesn’t sound like a tremendously large undertaking, except that you have to remember that this was in the peak of Coronavirus, lockdown, and only key workers were allowed to stay in hotels, otherwise, they were completely shut down. So a very kind friend of ours called a local hotel and explained our situation, basically begging them to give us a room. Very thankfully, they agreed.
Miranda Markham 42:49
I think that was a good thing for us to do, at least initially, because it afforded us a bit more time to just be in a neutral space. Away from all the reminders and everything in our flat and work out what we were going to do next. Just the way to shut away from the world for a little bit. So we stayed in that hotel for I think three days. I barely left the room. It’s funny now, it’s hard to remember what we did all day. I mean, we never turn the TV on. We barely left. I don’t know how we filled the days. But somehow we did.
Miranda Markham 43:31
We got through it and eventually made the plan to go to Edinburgh. My parents own a flat there. It’s normally a rental property, especially in the summertime, but again, because of COVID it was vacant. Nobody had been there for many, many months. Actually my parents were thrilled to be able to offer it to us and be just that somebody would finally be going there and checking on their place.
Miranda Markham 43:57
It did mean that we had to go back to the slot. We had to pack up some stuff. So we did so in the most sort of formulaic and sort of mission critical kind of way. I made a list. It was very rigid. I went in with the sole purpose of putting stuff in a bag and then to leave immediately. That’s what we did. Then we stayed in Edinburgh for two months.
Winter 44:19
Wow, that’s– Yeah. Did you and– I’m assuming you guys just took some time off. You were on maternity leave.
Miranda Markham 44:28
Yeah.
Winter 44:29
Graham was able to take some time off I’m assuming too?
Miranda Markham 44:31
Yeah, so I was already on maternity leave. So obviously there was no work obligation to do anything. By that point, we had communicated with sort of the main people what had happened. My team was included in that. Graham took a month off work. I don’t think it was really ever like an agreement. I think it was his boss at the time who basically just said, do whatever you need to do.
Miranda Markham 44:59
His full time job essentially became taking care of me. I was– I could– I didn’t– I couldn’t have taken care of myself. I would not have gotten out of bed, there is a 0% chance I would have done anything. I wouldn’t have eaten. It took me months to get my appetite back and enjoy food again. Eating was such a challenge. I made a goal for myself in the early days to eat breakfast before noon. That was my only day objective was to get out of bed. I didn’t even have to put clothes on or shower, just go and put food in my mouth. Even that would take me hours, hours and hours. Those were really hard days.
Winter 45:41
Yeah. When you guys were in the hospital, did they approach you about what you guys wanted to do with George’s body?
Miranda Markham 45:50
Yes, they did. They very kindly talked us through the different options. I remember we continued to ask well, what do people normally do? Because there’s no rulebook for this. I think when you’re so blindsided as we were, you have no guideline.
Miranda Markham 46:15
I think for lots of families, religion often becomes something to lean on when the unexpected happens. There are very specific customs and traditions around what happens when someone dies. I think for us we’re not tremendously religious, or spiritual people, or we weren’t prior to George’s death. We had nobody in our lives, other than you know grandparents had died. That wasn’t really our responsibility to arrange any funerals or anything right? We had no idea what to do. Our families couldn’t really help us because they’re so far away, and with no option to get to us.
Miranda Markham 46:59
So we were told many, many times, we didn’t have to decide right away at any point. Again George, because stay at the hospital, and he would be well taken care of, and that we could decide when we decided.
Winter 47:16
Oh, okay.
Miranda Markham 47:17
I remember waking up in an absolute panic on so many occasions, just needing to know where George was. Where is he ? Who is taking care of him? Is someone looking after him? Calling the hospital and asking our bereavement midwife, if she could just tell me where he was at. Every time she would very kindly go and check and tell me that he was in the, whatever they call it mortuary or morgue, and that a really nice man named Simon was looking after him. It did provide me with a bit of comfort, whether or not Simon was actually looking after him or not, I don’t know. I just thought his little body is just locked away in some cold, dark place, and we’ve just left him there. It defies every instinct in your body to do.
Miranda Markham 48:14
Your body still reacts as if you’ve had a baby, it still thinks you have one. Mine thought I’d abandoned ours. It was really, really difficult. So for that reason, the easiest thing to do was not make a decision about what to do, because that felt very final. We didn’t want to do anything impulsive, because we didn’t want to regret it. So we took our time, and ultimately decided that we would have him cremated for the probably most practical reason. Which is we’re not sure that we will stay in London forever. If we bury our son there, and we leave the country, it’s like abandoning him all over again. I couldn’t do that.
Miranda Markham 49:02
So we decided to have cremated. Once we decided that we were given a date, that we could do the funeral. I didn’t actually know this, but you legally must hold a funeral. For anyone that dies, including–
Winter 49:18
Oh!
Miranda Markham 49:19
–a baby. It was some sort of legal requirement. I mean, I think we would have liked to anyway, but I’m probably paraphrasing that too, simply. I remember it being that we had to conduct some kind of funeral for George, which was fine.
Miranda Markham 49:34
So I think the sad thing was that nobody could attend. It’s not like we would have had a big congregation of friends and acquaintances, but I think it would have been nice for our families to be there. Unfortunately, given the fact that they’d be flying from all over Canada and the US. None of them can come because this was now July of 2020.
Miranda Markham 50:01
So we were given the option to do a live streaming thing of the funeral, which we both just felt was really sort of weird and trivialized the whole thing. So instead, what we did was, we arranged the funeral we picked songs and readings that were meaningful. We both wrote quite lengthy comments to say to George. The only other attendee at the funeral was Sarah, our bereavement midwife.
Winter 50:32
Oh really?
Miranda Markham 50:33
She is the only other person on planet Earth who met George. So we felt like that was appropriate. She offered to come, which I don’t know is her usual offer. I like to think that we were special, but maybe she makes that offer to everyone. I don’t know. But it was nice to have her there. So we did our little funeral, we had a 30 minute slot. That was that.
Winter 51:03
Just at the hospital then?
Miranda Markham 51:05
So it’s arranged through the hospital with the City of London cemetery and crematorium. So we didn’t have to pay for it. Which I’m sorry I don’t know it sounds awful to be talking about the practicalities of such a thing. But I know lots of people are concerned about how do you pay for a funeral? It was just part of what was offered, which, I mean, maybe I need to go and reflect on that and be more grateful for it. I think if financially that became a concern, that would have been another layer of challenge on an already very challenging situation. It was all sort of coordinated and paid for through I’m not really sure through who. Through the NHS, the National Health Service, and in collaboration with the City of London.
Miranda Markham 51:52
The cemetery that we went to was beautiful. It was a beautiful, sunny, gorgeous summer day. This I mean, if it sounds awful to say, but the funeral was really nice. It was I think the absolute best thing we could have done for a send off for George.
Miranda Markham 52:12
My aunt had sent me and members of the family this storybook called wherever you are my love will find you. It’s a children’s book, but I think that it seemed very appropriate. As the final thing on the agenda for the funeral, I read the story to George. Because I always thought about reading stories to him as a child or boy. So it was just a nice way to end it.
Miranda Markham 52:41
Then afterwards, because it’s I mean, obviously it’s a city run thing. So there’s funerals right before one and after another. It just was sort of a conveyor belt of funerals. Which just sounds awful again, but it wasn’t. There were loads of people outside after who were all gathering for other people who have died, mostly much older people.
Miranda Markham 53:03
When people are cremated, they put these little stands with their name on it in this area where you can come and lay flowers, but nobody told us that. So we didn’t have any flowers. So George’s little stand was just there. It said baby George Robert and nothing. Somebody had put this dried old flower on it from I think somebody else’s area. I just felt so guilty that we hadn’t brought flowers. Then this really lovely family that was next to us, who were sending off their grandmother Jean came and gave us this huge bouquet of white flowers. They told us that we could leave them for George.
Miranda Markham 53:56
I just thought it was so nice, because I just couldn’t leave without his little area being there. So they also told us about Jean and said they were releasing balloons for her and they would release one for George too. So they tied it together with one and said it was for both of them. There was such a nice gesture from complete strangers. So that really stayed with us and felt like a really important way to end that day.
Miranda Markham 54:29
I think we both felt sort of a sense of closure after that. Because I mean George was born on June the 2nd and his funeral was the 31st of July. So I mean, this is a long time after. It took us a long time to just figure out what we wanted to do and then get it sorted. I did feel guilty about that. But I’m happy that we took time to do it right because I don’t think we have any regrets about his send off. I think it was the best we could do.
Winter 55:03
Yeah. Did they find anything conclusive about what had happened? Did you guys do an autopsy? Was that something? I’m not? Like I said, I’m not totally sure about the UK health system. So was that something that was offered? Or is it pretty typical? Tell me a little bit about that?
Miranda Markham 55:22
Yeah. So along with everything I think they were very persistent in a kind way about all of our different options. Including having a postmortem or sort of autopsy for George. We didn’t need a lot of convincing. I think both Graham and I were very convinced from the very beginning that if there was a way to get answers and information we wanted it. I don’t know if I ever said this out loud. But I was fairly sure in my head before we even left the hospital that we would try for another baby. I needed to know that if there was anything wrong, that caused George to die, we needed to know about it.
Miranda Markham 56:07
So many, many weeks later, this is now sometime in mid August, they finally got the results of the postmortem. It was actually the same day that we were allowed to go pick up George’s ashes at the crematorium, which seems like an odd thing to do on the same day. But I remember we drove back to the crematorium, picked up George, and then drove to the hospital to do his post mortem review. I remember Graham and I parking the car. And I said to him, what should we do with George? And he looked at me, he’s like, we can’t leave him in the car. That’s just bad parenting. I was like how can you make jokes? How? So that’s how George ended up in my handbag, at his own postmortem. Honestly, it’s so terrible. But it’s also amusing, in a way.
Miranda Markham 57:07
So I carried him in my case, it was in a little box. And he sat in my handbag, so we brought him back to the hospital where he was born. He sat in the room with us with the obstetrician and Sarah, the bereavement midwife. We went through his whole post mortem and in great detail, they were very generous with their time. Ultimately, they told us that his cause of death was growth restriction as a result of my placenta, which was very small. So under fifth percentile.
Winter 57:40
Oh!
Miranda Markham 57:40
So basically, it just failed to support him. I think that it’s odd to say that we feel grateful for that result. But I think it’s because we now know that loss families never get an answer, and it’s inconclusive. So for us to now know that this is the thing that happened, there is no reason to assume that it would ever happen again. But if it did, there are things that we can do to prevent it.
Miranda Markham 58:12
So what they would do for a subsequent pregnancy is more regular growth scans starting from 20 weeks. What baffles me is that we can literally see a baby growing inside of someone, but we can’t measure the size of the placenta. Apparently you can’t. I don’t know why. But what they can do is make sure that the baby is growing properly, and the right sort of rate of growth. Also I can be induced early. So basically what we know is that if history were to repeat itself, we know that the placenta was good enough until 39 weeks. So basically, I would get to full term, so 37 weeks, and they would induce me early.
Miranda Markham 58:54
I think for us that was a real comfort, because it sounds like this is not likely to happen again. But even if it did, history will repeat itself. So we and then of course alongside that, I mean, we absolutely grilled them on everything we wanted to know in terms of what if this had happened, would this have made a difference? I was particularly adamant about the missed appointments and had the 36 weeks appointment had happened would this have indicated that there was a problem. The response that I continue to get was that it may or may not have made a difference. It’s impossible to know, that’s a really hard thing to live with. Because I think in my mind, it definitely would have made a difference.
Miranda Markham 59:42
Even having spoken to third party Obstetricians in the aftermath of George’s death, a lot of them have said that based on what they see and all of my information, everything was done exactly as it should have been. Regardless of what hospital I was at in London. It likely would have been the same outcome. That’s also hard to hear. But it’s also a bit of a reassurance. I think there was a time where I held a lot of anger towards the NHS and to the hospital for letting me down and that they had failed. I think just to set the record straight, there was no negligence. I’m not claiming that they did anything negligent or wrong. I think they had to make changes given an unprecedented situation. It’s impossible to know if those changes contributed to George’s death. Personally, I believe that they did, but we will never know.
Winter 1:00:36
How big was George when he was born?
Miranda Markham 1:00:39
He was small, he was 5.9 pounds, so just under six pounds. It is interesting because I had a private scan at 36 weeks.
Winter 1:00:50
Oh, okay.
Miranda Markham 1:00:50
No, sorry, maybe slightly earlier, 34 weeks, because I was worried. With everything happening. I just thought it’d be good to go get a bit of reassurance and make sure he’s growing okay. At that stage everything was fine. He looked really good. They projected his birth weight would be seven and a half pounds.
Winter 1:01:07
Oh.
Miranda Markham 1:01:09
So, you can clearly see that’s quite a shortfall. Obviously, at some point between 34 weeks and 39 weeks, his growth just plateaued, basically. Because it wasn’t being checked regularly, no one would have noticed. And because at 38 weeks, as far as they were concerned, he still fit within the range of what was normal. I’ll be it perhaps a bit small. It was nothing. It would have not raised any alarm bells for anyone. So, that’s frustrating. Because I think in my mind, had they been measuring me more regularly, they would have seen that graph had suddenly leveled off instead of increasing upwards. But as it was, I was only measured twice the entire pregnancy.
Winter 1:01:54
Right. Yeah, that would be frustrating. Miranda, thank you so much for sharing George’s birth story. I had one last question that I want to ask you. How did you guys choose the name George?
Miranda Markham 1:02:06
Right. I came up with it I think when we were on our trip in Mauritius. I’d love to have the story that it was this family name and it has all this meaning. But ultimately, we wanted a boy’s name that was easy to pronounce, easy to spell. Could also translate reasonably well to other languages. My sister in law, husband is Spanish, my husband loves speaking French. So George is a name that kind of can work in all those languages. We also like that George is the patron saint of England; he’d be born in England, which is nice. It just sort of felt right.
Miranda Markham 1:02:49
His middle name Robert does have family significance. Robert is the name of my husband’s grandfather, who was a much beloved patriarch of the family. He lived to be 97 years old, and was an excellent member of the family. ‘m so grateful that I got to spend some time with him before he passed and got to get to know him. So we wanted to honor him and his legacy with the firstborn grandson of the family.
Winter 1:03:23
That is wonderful. Thank you so much. That was very good to get to know George A little bit better.
Miranda Markham 1:03:30
I’m very happy to talk about him. So thank you for asking me all those questions and giving me an opportunity to talk about George.
Winter 1:03:38
Of course.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai