A time to be born and a time to die

Jacob never was, nor ever would have been, more favoured than our elder sons, but there was no doubt that his safe arrival in the world was looked upon by the whole family with a particular sense of achievement. After four unsuccessful pregnancies - two of which had inflicted more than six months of continual nausea on my wife - we were advised to adopt, although nobody seemed to know exactly what was going wrong and whether or not she would ever be able to carry a child to term. Our luck changed, and within three years we had adopted two extremely attractive baby boys and moved to a larger house. Then in September 1978, despite precautions, Linda again found that she was pregnant.

Linda's fifth pregnancy looked like following the same pattern as the others. She experienced severe nausea lasting throughout the day and this time she had also to cope with Benjamin, aged two and a half, and eight - month - old Daniel. But we were provided with a home help, Linda had a suture put on to the neck of her womb, and the pregnancy was carefully monitored at frequent intervals. When the sickness suddenly disappeared at 13 weeks we began to hope that this time things would be different. Eventually she was admitted to hospital for the last month of her pregnancy, and on June 2, 1979 Jacob was born without complication.

I have no conception of what my wife must have felt when eight weeks later she found Jacob's corpse in his cot a victim of what is now called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I only know that the sight of him lying face down, with all colour drained from his scalp, sent her running screaming from the house. It was almost midnight and we were both about to get undressed for bed. Jacob had woken at about 8.00 when he had been breastfed, changed and put to sleep again by 10.30. He must have died soon afterwards.

My reaction was of impotent rage, shouting "no" as I picked him up and saw that the area round his mouth and nose had turned horribly white and that there were two pale specks of blood in his nostrils. In a blind fury, I made a crude attempt at giving the kiss of life, then telephoned for an ambulance, barely able to tell them that a baby had stopped breathing.

Then help came. A neighbour had heard Linda's screams and shepherded her into his house. He then returned and was joined by another, a young doctor who took Jacob to the kitchen table and tried artificial respiration. But he soon stopped, put his hand on my shoulder, and murmured "David, it's no good. He’s been dead for about an hour," I suppose this was the trigger I needed: somebody to tell me that there was nothing more to be done. For the first time since I was a child I wept openly; it was for Linda and everything she bad been through in the last seven years.

The ambulance arrived quickly and an attendant ran into the house carrying an oxygen bottle, only to be informed that it would not be needed. I did not stay for the explanation or while the police and our family doctor was informed, but went first to our sons’ bedroom. They had been woken by Linda's screams and were frightened, but Ben had confused them with the cries of a baby goat kept nearby and was under the impression that it had got into our house. For the time being this seemed enough of an explanation: I reassured them both that it had now gone and left them in the charge of another neighbor, while I went to look for Linda. As I left the house I looked back and saw Jacob’s body still lying on the kitchen table, unregarded, like a sack of potatoes.

Linda was no longer crying, but in a state of utter bewilderment. She sat in our neighbour's house going through the events of that evening in her mind, searching for what she must have done to cause the catastrophe. She had slightly lost patience with Jacob's wakefulness by about 10.15 and eventually and put him to bed to let him cry himself to sleep over the next five minutes or so. This very much followed the normal pattern of sleeping during the day but frequently refusing to go to sleep in the evening until be had been left to himself for a while. For some reason we had not gone to check him once the crying stopped and had not looked in until we were ready for bed. Again and again she tried to recall whether there had been anything different about his cry, something that could have told us he was dying: a cry that might have subconsciously made us afraid of looking into his cot.

I tried to reassure Linda. but the last thing she wanted was reassurance - she wanted to blame herself. I brought her a cup of tea, phoned some friends to ask them to come and look after the boys, and then back to see if they were alright. For some time wandered backwards and forwards between surviving sons. my wife, and various friends a neighbours, not knowing what to do or say to and not hearing to sit down and think about events. Ben and Dan were now wide awake and knew something serious was amiss, but were not frightened and were happy to stay in bed and talk to the various adults who were with them in their bedroom.

I am not sure at what stage the police arrived and presume they were notified by the ambulancemen. who were now getting ready to leave. The ambulancemen kindly agreed to take the body to the mortuary, although it was not their duty to do so. A young policeman asked me to come up to our bedroom to answer some questions, apologising that his duty called him to trouble me at such a time. He asked for details Jacob’s life - for an account of the events leading up to the discovery of his body, and when he had last been medically examined. Until this moment it had not occurred to me that there might be any legal implications or suspicions - no matter how slight - surrounding the death of our son. I remember thinking with relief that Linda had taken him to the clinic that afternoon, and then feeling guilty as if I were trying to concoct an alibi. I also became aware for the first time that both the sheets of Jacob’s cot and my shirt were stained with a watery mixture of blood and some other liquid that he had brought up after I had breathed into his lungs. Shortly afterwards a more senior policeman arrived and I was gently informed that there would be a post - mortem examination to determine the cause of death and that the Coroner's Officer would let me know whether or not an inquest would be required.

I found Linda, still in a state of shock, with our family doctor, going through the events of the evening: and asking futile questions that could not be answered. She was obsessed with the idea was an unworthy and inadequate mother. Of all the cot deaths that happen, this one, she felt, had been different, and must have been her fault. How could she have let such a precious baby die? How would we explain the disappearance of their brother to our young children? Once again I murmured my own reassurance, but really trying to suppress a similar sense of guilt in my own mind. I was now conscious that at the time I had not cared about Jacob,' only what his death had done to me and my family. I had not gone back to take my leave of him but had just left him lying on that table for the ambulance men to take him away.

Eventually there was no point in saying anything more, and by about 3.30 the doctor, our friends and neighbors had left us to try and sleep. We could not bear Ben and Daniel to stay in another room, and brought them into our own bed. Neither Linda nor I slept but just lay motionless with our thoughts, in the room where Jacob had died. I had the irrational feel that some malevolent spirit was lurking in the house that had choked him and was now waiting to prey on our other sons. Since then we have never been able to leave our children sleeping for very long without listening to their breathing or feeling the temperature of their faces. Eventually, at about 5.30 it was light enough to get up. We sat for a while repeating all the self - recriminations and self - reassurances of the previous night, until the time came when we could break the news to our own parents and relations, an later make arrangements for the funeral.

Early that morning I went through the ritual of packing up the baby's furniture, clothes and toys, and storing them in the loft, as I had done twice before after the late miscarriages. I did this while Daniel slept and Linda went out to roam the streets for a while with Ben. Otherwise I remember little of that day, except for the arrival of the health visitor who had been to our house many times, and had weighed Jacob at the clinic only eight hours before he died. She came to the door but could not speak, and just burst into tears. Clearly there was no place for me at this time; I therefore took the children out to try to talk to them about their brother.

Explaining to the children was bound to be difficult as they had both been so proud of their baby brother and had not yet had the chance to become disenchanted or jealous. Daniel, now 19 months old and not yet able to talk, had looked into Jacob’s cot that morning and expressed his surprise that it was empty but otherwise showed no symptoms of distress. Ben at three and a half, inevitably asked where Jacob was, and at first we lacked courage, and said he had gone away for a while. As soon as we had told this lie we regretted our cowardice, and set out to explain that Jacob had died because he had not been very strong and he was now with his grandfather in heaven. Ben took the news in a very matter of fact way, asking only how his grandfather was going to feed the baby. It was fairly gradually over the next few days that the confusion and doubts in his mind came to light, with questions such as "Who shot Jacob?" and statements to his friends that his baby brother was in a little box. Some time later, as we drove around the perimeter of Reading Prison, Ben confidently announced it as the place where Jacob now was.

The following morning I had a telephone call from the Coroner's Officer at Reading with the results of the post - mortem. He invited one or both of us to come and see him, or alternatively he offered to visit us in plain clothes if we preferred. I went alone, but wished afterwards that Linda had also chosen to come, for it was helpful to talk to someone without medical training, who nevertheless had considerable experience in dealing with cot deaths. He explained that in some cases of cot death there was possible evidence of choking or suffocation, but the post - mortem on Jacob had found no identifiable cause of death. There was no need for an inquest, and I could go ahead and register the death; the certificate would merely record Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He also put us in touch with the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths and gave us their leaflet for bereaved parents. I cannot recall my visit to register the death without also involuntarily thinking of the earlier proud occasion the day after he had been born. But this time Ben came with me and sat very quiet as I gave the necessary details. The registrar was a young woman who seemed to be embarrassed by her task, so I wished I could think of something to say to make things easier for her, but nothing seemed appropriate. On the way home I called into a chemist for some photographs of Jacob which we had ordered the previous week. They were not ready, and the assistant apologised brightly saying that he had been snowed under with everybody's snaps from Torremolinos. He looked puzzled as he noticed there were tears in the corners of my eyes.

Linda's feelings of responsibility for Jacob's death remained for a long time, but this did not trouble me. However in the days before the funeral I became increasingly conscious of having failed my son after he died. I had forgotten him as an individual whom I had grown to love, and had only been concerned with myself and my surviving family. I had not taken my leave of him in a fitting manner, and I ought to see him once more before he was cremated. I tried to discuss my feelings with several friends and relations, hoping that someone would give me the moral courage to go and see my son's body and perhaps offer to come with me. However, nobody seemed to understand, and more than once we were reminded that there had been a post - mortem and that the experience would be extremely upsetting. For two days I vacillated, becoming more and more obsessed with the last image I had of Jacob lying on the kitchen table, before deciding that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I did not see the body again. Linda then decided that she too would go. As we were about to leave we received an unexpected visit from a former neighbour, who knew nothing of Jacob's death but who had herself suffered a cot death many years before. She came and provided the moral support we needed.

The Coroner's Officer had earlier told me how he was able to pull swollen bodies out of the Thames or pick up pieces of human debris from a railway line with no qualms, yet he had never become completely reconciled to the sight of a dead baby. An infant corpse represents a paradox which cannot easily be rationalised, and there is a very narrow line between a picture of sweetness and innocence and one which has its own sickly horror. I cannot think of an image more horrific than the sight of Jacob’s discoloured face as I lifted him out of his cot, and I feared that there would be a similar sight in his coffin. We need not have worried. The undertakers had masked all signs of the post - mortem and applied a false colour to the skin so that the body we saw and felt was not at all horrifying: yet neither was it the son we had known. Nevertheless the visit helped to exorcise my own sense of guilt and the knowledge that the coffin no longer contained our baby as we had known him helped us both at the cremation on the following day.

My most vivid memory from the funeral was the odd realisation that a dead baby only requires one pall - bearer. We had asked for the arrangements to be kept as simple as possible and there were only a few flowers that we had brought from our garden. I no longer remember exactly what was said by the officiating clergyman although at the time I thought it to be both seemly and kind. Afterwards the small group returned to our home where the children were waiting with a cousin who had prepared sandwiches. Ben in particular seemed to have a sense of the occasion as he handed out sandwiches and biscuits, although we had not expected him to understand.

In the weeks immediately after Jacob’s death several people told us that we would eventually forget. Four years later I can say with confidence that this is not true, One does not forget such an experience to do so would seem to negate all the love that we had for Jacob and the happiness he gave to us but eventually we were able to live with the memory. Talking about the experience and our feelings was perhaps the single most effective therapy and this was recognised by the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths who introduced us to a number of similarly bereaved parents. We have not retained regular contact with anyone we met at this time but we will always be grateful for what they did for us. Even now Linda and I feel compelled to tell comparatively new acquaintances about our son as a way of reassuring ourselves that he was part of the family and his life was important. This article is no doubt a symptom of the same compulsion.

Linda has since had another pregnancy with all the associated sickness. - which spontaneously aborted soon after Christmas 1981 at 22 weeks. This time she was both physically and emotionally prepared for the - experience, and we both witnessed the delivery calmly and held the dead foetus. We are now absolutely determined that we do not want a further pregnancy but neither of us can bring ourselves to take the irrevocable step of being sterilised.

(Published under the title ‘We can never forget Jacob’ She, May 1983, 84 - 85.)
David Stoker