‘Something we should have never had to experience’
Their baby died shortly after birth, and couple was left to grieve their loss on maternity ward
Stephanie and Chris Goulding couldn’t wait to be parents.
The nursery was complete. The baby’s clothes were washed and folded, toys were set up, the play mat was laid out.
The Mount Pearl couple’s friends joked that they were ready until their baby was two.
“We even had a high chair set up in the corner that she wasn’t going to need for six months,” Stephanie said.
In August 2022, their baby girl, Macy, was born, but things didn’t go as planned.
Stephanie was in labour for 2 ½ hours. After a failed forceps birth, she had an emergency C-section.
‘NO INFORMATION’
Macy didn’t cry. Chris caught a glimpse of her as doctors and nurses rushed out of the room.
He thought they left to try to make her cry.
“I’ve heard of a lot of cases where they had to poke the baby to get them to start crying or do whatever they had to do, and I figured that’s what they were doing,” Chris said.
The couple said the doctors never brought Macy back.
“We were left wondering what’s going on, where is Macy,” Chris said.
As doctors closed Stephanie’s incision, the couple said they “were given no information.”
TRAUMATIC BIRTH
Macy was born around 3:45 a.m. The Gouldings didn’t see or hold their daughter until 8 a.m.
They were given 10 minutes.
In the hours after the birth, they were kept out of the loop aside from one update: their daughter was sick.
“Sick is a very broad definition. I was just like, ‘What do you mean she’s sick? Does she have the flu?’” Chris said.
Doctors didn’t go into detail.
“They brought us into one of the rooms in the NICU to see her hooked up to everything,” Chris said.
‘SHE’S NOT LEAVING THE HOSPITAL’
Macy was the couple’s first child. Stephanie said they had no idea whether their experience was typical.
They didn’t realize the severity of the situation until a nurse asked if they wanted their daughter baptized.
“I remember thinking, why do we want to get her baptized right away? Like, that’s something that you don’t do until they’re a few months or a year old,” Stephanie said.
“Then I thought, oh my God, she’s not leaving the hospital.”
HEART STOPPED
Macy got stuck during delivery. When she was born, Macy’s heart stopped for 11 minutes. She was left without brain function.
Macy’s baptism went ahead at 10 a.m. It took 15 minutes. Then, the couple was sent back to the recovery room.
At noon, they were brought to a hospital room. Shortly after, nurses asked if they wanted to see their baby again. The couple said yes.
“She was born 10 hours ago. We had only spent less than a half hour with her, not knowing what was going on,” Chris said.
When they were brought to the NICU, the couple caught a glimpse of nurses doing chest compressions on their newborn baby.
They went over her options.
“We knew either way, she wasn’t coming out of the hospital, the machines were the only things that were keeping her alive, just the tubes and the machines were breathing for her. There was nothing that could have been done for her at that point,” Stephanie said.
The staff disconnected their daughter from the machines. The couple held her until she died at 2 p.m.
GRIEVING ON MATERNITY WARD
Stephanie and Chris said losing their child was just the beginning of the horrors they went through.
They understood the risks associated with pregnancy and birth. They weren’t upset with the medical staff.
They were upset because after losing their child, they were placed in the maternity ward while Stephanie recovered from her emergency Csection.
Their room was closest to the door where all the new parents, babies, and families entered.
The couple’s door had a butterfly on it to symbolize a loss. Chris said only the nurses recognized what it meant.
TOO MUCH
Chris said they wouldn’t leave the room. It was too much.
“I remember the door was opened a crack when one of the nurses came in and I happened to be looking in that direction. In came a grandparent who had a balloon, a teddy bear, a gift bag, a food order for one of the other new parents that had been there,” Stephanie said, crying.
“You see that grandparent walk past while our moms are there. We should have never in a million years ended up on the fifth floor.”
CHANGES NEEDED
The couple are upset they were placed in the maternity ward. Chris said they would have accepted anywhere else, and changes need to be made to keep any other parents who have a loss from having the same experience.
“They should have put us on the fourth floor. They should have put us on the fifth floor north wing, put us somewhere else so that the aftercare nurses for the maternity ward had access to us and they weren’t too far away from their other patients,” Chris said.
It was a long two days in hospital.
“We should have never been put on a floor where we could hear babies crying in the middle of the night, where new moms and babies were wheeled past our room with excited dads in tow. That’s something we should have never had to experience,” Stephanie said.
COUNSELLING LIMITED
After Stephanie was discharged from the hospital, the couple was sent home with pamphlets and offered grief counselling with a chaplain at the hospital.
The Gouldings met with the chaplain a couple of times, but it wasn’t meeting their needs.
“She wasn’t even a counsellor. She never went to school to be a counsellor. She was a church counsellor,” Chris said.
“We ended up giving that up,” Stephanie said.
After that, Stephanie went six weeks without help from a counsellor. She was referred to a perinatal psychiatrist at the Health Sciences Centre.
Stephanie waited eight weeks and received only one virtual session a month. The doctor was lovely, but it wasn’t enough.
“At this point, pregnancy and loss was all-consuming,” Stephanie said.
They pursued private counselling instead.
“Free is not always the best way, as we know, so I actually ended up then just cutting ties altogether,” Stephanie said.
“A once-a-month virtual session is not doing anything to help me. So Chris actually went through his own private insurance then.”
Stephanie said having to pursue private counselling upsets her because not everybody has that option.
“We were lucky enough, but not everybody can pay upfront and wait to be reimbursed when you’re talking about maybe sometimes $200 a session. Not everybody has access to that,” she said.
“There’s this big push for mental health but yet, if you want counseling for fertility, infertility, loss, if you don’t have insurance, good luck.”
BABY WALKER
Chris and Stephanie were terrified of having another baby, but welcomed their son, Walker, nine days before what would have been Macy’s first birthday.
Walker was born by Csection, and Stephanie said their pregnancy and birthing experience were great. Doctors went above and beyond, especially knowing their previous experiences.
Her days are now full of playgroups, music, and art classes.
Her son is involved in the Roots of Empathy program at the school Stephanie taught at last year, and they’re taking him to Maryland for a family vacation.
“It’s just full of love and happiness every second of the day,” Chris said.
ALWAYS REMEMBERED AND LOVED
The couple will always remember Macy.
“There’s not a day that goes by where we don’t wonder who would Macy look like. What would she be doing right now? Would they look alike? Would she be as chunky and chubby as this guy or would she be as chill as he is?” Stephanie said.
“There’s not a single day that goes by where she doesn’t come into our brain at least once. Even with him, I often wonder, would she be as silly as he is?”
She’s never far from their hearts.
“You’re always going to compare, and you’re going to wonder, but life with him is just amazing. He’s such a good baby,” Stephanie and Chris said.
“We are grateful every single second of the day.”