Nitpicker

I am a professional nitpicker. I sift through documents, link them up to one another, count them, summarise them. Before my daughter died, I’d spent nearly five years analysing other people’s sad stories, their deaths, hospital admissions and operations, reducing them to numbers to be crunched. 

I treat them with more respect these days. Try to approach my computer with a bowed head and leave a little pause as a mark of respect before I attempt to weave these records into a palatable form. Because these documents, when viewed in their human context, tell some tragic stories. One of them is mine.

The strangest day of my life was comprehensively documented. Hospital records show my time of arrival in the accident and emergency department of the local hospital with back pain, the back pain that turned out to be premature labour. What should have been December instead one clear summer night in August.

The birth transcript from the next morning records the dates and times of my daughters' births. It looks like any other record, the hospital must spew out tens of these documents every day of the year. But the recorded birth weights cause something to catch in my throat.

There are a plethora of other documents, transfers to the NICU, treatments administered, the reactions of our daughters, our reactions. All meticulously noted down. Box files upon box files full of paperwork.

When I open my daughter's memory box, there seem to be two distinct categories amongst the contents. Little woollen hats, photographs of my hands stretched over her bruised little frame, photographs of her dead body cradled in the arms of my husband, her ashes. 

And formal documentation. Birth and death certificates, medical records, the paperwork that I must pass on should I ever have her ashes interred. 

Somewhere between these two imperfect, inadequate records sits my daughter's memory. All that is left of her is contained within that box. 

I have retained the slip of paper that informs the registrar that a death has occurred. Signed by the doctor who witnessed her death and decided what caused it. I quite like to think of that quiet, gentle man bringing the whole power of his considerable intellect to bear upon that question. That just for a few minutes, perhaps, she filled his mind as he disentangled the chain of events culminating in her death. A tiny, icy comfort. 

My husband and I had to take this small slip to the registry office. I remember driving there resentfully, sulkily, wishing that someone else could do this. Hardly believing that we were expected to. My introduction to the unrelenting world of parenthood a strange one but still one with an inescapable truth at its core, nobody else is going to do this for you, be your child living or dead. The buck stops here.

I sat in a chair over the desk from the registrar. I seemed to be able to view myself from the outside. I could see the registrar looking at a person who looked like me, who appeared to be holding things together but, in reality, I had been decanted somewhere to the right of myself, gibbering, trembling and translucent. I am certain that I was not the woman who sat in the chair and calmly handed over the slip of paper, the proof that her daughter had died.

Photo by Zach K

I remember that I wanted to sign for my dead daughter's birth certificate. But I couldn't bring myself to sign for her death certificate. My husband did that. He is listed as the informant on her death certificate. His qualifications for doing so listed as being her father and as being present at her death. Such dry little phrases concealing such a world of awfulness.

The registrar spelt one of the causes of her death incorrectly. I wanted to ask her to change it but I couldn't get the words out, they clotted in my mouth. Now the mis-spelling glares at me accusingly.

I left clutching those documents tightly in my hand, the only proof that I had not imagined her existence. Clinging to the sad, strange consolation that, should some great-great-grandchild go looking whilst researching their family tree, they would come across her.  

Seven months after my daughter had passed away, a receptionist in some far flung part of the hospital ‘phoned me. To ask if I would be bringing the twins in for their hearing tests. For a moment, the room swirled around me and I saw my thin, ghost girl alive somewhere. In a hospital filing system. Preserved there. Squashed between files like a pressed flower. And part of me didn't want to tell the woman on the other end of the phone that she was dead. Because I would have liked to maintain the pretence and she was my only co-conspirator.

When my son was born, nearly three years later, my husband and I went to register his birth.

"Only one?" asked the registrar, "Are you sure you aren't hiding a twin anywhere?"

She probably says this to every family that comes through her door. 

"No," I replied. "Just one."

But there is a hidden child in our family. She's been hiding for a long time now.

Did you have to complete any paperwork relating to the death of your child? Did it bring you any comfort or cause you further pain? Or did an absence of paperwork cause you hurt? Did you find any kind souls amidst all the bureaucracy? Or any callous ones? Have you had the disconcerting experience of someone in the 'system' contacting you assuming that your child was still alive? 

Comments

[Wiley]

I really want some paperwork. Our daughter was actually stillborn six weeks after she died (we worked to put it off as long as possible for the sake of her twin brother). I'm in the States (Texas) and she really seemed like pretty much an after thought to them. The closest thing to official paperwork I have is a certificate of cremation and her name is not what it would have been if anyone had asked us or if we had filled out the paperwork. All the hospital had asked was her first name and so they coupled that with my last name (instead of my husband's like our surviving sons). No one ever asked what her middle name was, Diane. In fact, they didn't tell us when she was "born", it was only when I asked about her after we heard her brother scream that I was told that her "time of birth" was a minute before his. I'm still confused as to what to call that, was she really born if she had already died?

I still can't believe the question about hiding a twin under there. I did have comments from nurses who didn't know us asking how our surviving twin's twin was doing assuming that she was already home and he was in the NICU when they didn't see her.

[Paula]

Wow been there done that.

I have a story regarding paperwork of my own but I will save that for another time.

I have to tell you about my husband's story. I was still in the hospital recovering, shocked and numb thanks to Xanax and Ambien. I didn't hear this story till about a week later.
My husband met with the funeral director to fill out the paperwork for cremation. I can only imagine how hard this must have been (another reason that I am so glad I met this man, for he took care of it all). Apparently the young man was new and unfamiliar with the system. Rick (my husband), tells me that it took the man 6 times to get it right. He kept making typos, writing down dates wrong, names and so forth. I know this hurt Rick but he said that after he sent him back to make a correction for the third in regards to the spelling of Danger?? (our son's middle name), he got the giggles. I guess it suddenly hit him this whole practical joke on us was just so unfunny that it was funny. Having to sit there and say again and again you got my dead babies name wrong, was just not funny but in the horror of it all my husband just had to laugh.
I think he stayed pretty okay for awhile after that. Until we got the box containing Braedon's ashes and on there the man had actually got it right.
Braedon Danger DOD July 13, 2011 (that had to be the worst correctly typed thing that we have ever read).

Paper, it amazes me how something so light can completly knock you over.

[Alison]

I had to fill out my daughter's death certificate at the front desk in my OB's office because the Doctor and hospital "lost" it. It was completely insensitive of my caregivers, but I remember not caring. With tears running down my face, I did my best printing, as it was all that was left to do for my child and I wanted to do it well. When I gave it to the secretary she commented on my nice printing and my husband and I left the office.

[J.]

Before we left the next morning, we had to fill out a "registration of stillbirth" form. I recall sitting there in that hospital bed, staring at it. This is it. The big, flashing neon sign that says, "No, this was not all just a bad dream." On that tray table used for bland meals, magazines, and the TV remote control, I painstakingly printed out the full name of my daughter, realizing as I did so, it would probably be the first and last time that I ever put her onto a legal document. There would be no school enrollment forms, no passports, no baptismal records.

Anyone looking on could see me quietly and determinedly etching her name into that form--oh my God, we'll never see this name again, except on a grave marker--while inside I was howling, raving--just one jumbled thought after another: it's not too late to scribble it out write another name no one would know oh but we told everyone what her name would be from the beginning and my husband says she should keep the name we always picked for her all along but no teacher is ever going to call me to talk about her I never get to see that name on a diploma if I just picked some name out of the blue like right now and kept her name for some other baby, would she still be ours, would I regret it, could I live with myself like why are they making me fill this out right now haven't we been through enough hell and isn't this salt in the wound I suppose they send a crappy copy of this to the house oh here's your copy of the proof that your baby died...

I never set eyes on it again until we were getting ready to move overseas, six years after we lost C. Knowing we would be far away from the most tangible evidence of her existence--her grave--I ordered a certified photocopy of the actual form we left at the hospital that day. As soon as I saw my handwriting, it brought everything back for a split second. The writing, it's mine but at the same time, it looks so different...like I can see trauma in the strokes of the pen.

At the bottom, our two signatures. Raw, slanted, desperate. It was at that moment, a sunny summer morning in 2003 that we both looked up at each other, took our memento box and belongings, squared our shoulders, and walked out into the hospital corridor, knowing that these were our first steps into a new future, one that we never envisioned for ourselves and we had no idea how we'd survive it.

[Jeanette]

I have a cardboard folder full of paperwork, we had to go through some horrendous investigation the day Florence was born and died. She was born at home, and admitted to A&E where she died six hours later. This meant that we had to endure the procedures one would if a child died unexpectedly at any other stage of life.
We had detectives and specialist peadiatricians talk with us and examine our home to see the place of birth.
They were embarrassed and assured us that in our case it was simply a "routine" procedure, but it was hard not to feel like a criminal.
We had no choice but to have a post mortem, and then the inquest.
So, yes we have a folder full of paperwork, details of the weight of each of her organs, of how her lungs were mirror images of each other...
I can't open that folder, it's in a draw as I type at my feet, but I can't open it.

Catherine, like you I've pondered a future great grandchild finding Florence's paperwork, discovering her and us in some distant future, it gives me a strange comfort to know that's possible.

[Brianna]

"...looking at a person who looked like me, who appeared to be holding things together but, in reality, I had been decanted somewhere to the right of myself, gibbering, trembling and translucent."

I wish I could write like this because the imagery it conjures up is just perfect. This is exactly how I've felt countless times. Beautiful, as always, Catherine.

[Alyson]

I hate that we don't have a birth or death certificate for our daughter, who was stillborn at 37 weeks. I guess they just don't issue them in a case like that, but for me, it's difficult - like she never existed at all. I want something official in some records office somewhere to show that she was there.

Thank you for this post, so much of what you said resonates with me.

[Erica]

Months after we'd left the hospital where Teddy was born and died, we sat down with our family physician and went over our medical records. I think N was hoping she'd say that they'd missed something or should have tried something they didn't, that he really wanted a fight. But I had the feeling they tried everything that they thought had a chance of helping us, that what the records showed was that medical science simply wasn't capable of saving my son.

I don't know if that's a comfort or not. Maybe some day it will be. Maybe some day medical science will be so good at helping babies breathe regardless of their lung development, that people will look back at our medical records and be grateful for modern medicine.

[-V.]

Ah, yes, the paper work. We've had altogether too much of that. Still wading through it over 2 years later, as it was a surgical error that led to F's death. Doing our taxes that year stands out to me, though. We brought our papers in to a tax office, as we didn't feel like figuring out on our own how to claim for F. We'd received some child tax benefits as F died when he was 7 months old, so we knew we'd have to register him as a dependent. Turns out we should have just figured it out on our own. The taxman had just asked us if we had any dependents and I had just answered, yes one but he's... and was about to explain when the phone rang. It was almost comical, the timing. But then we were told that as our son had lived and died in the same year, he did not exist according to the Revenue agency. That was incredibly painful to hear. It turned out not to be the case, as we later sorted out for ourselves. As much as I hate all the paperwork, the horrible things it tells me that a mother shouldn't have to read about her child, I would hate more to be without it as it is the proof that F lived and was. I'm sorry for those who don't have it but wish they did.

[Rebecca]

Beautifully written, Catherine. Wiley - I'm so sorry you don't have the paperwork for your lost daughter. I wish that you had it but you will never forget her. And Alyson, I wish you had the certificates as well. I'm so sorry for both of your losses.

I sometimes cling to the documentation too much but it's what I need in this moment. I read through some portion of what we have almost every day still. It's only been just under 4 weeks since Avery died. We have 3 pages of writing from our doula, remembering the labor and intense moments after Avery's birth. We have my hospital release papers, telling the cold, clinical details of Avery's birth, death and the slap-in-the-face bacterial blood infection I developed the day after. Then there's the birth and death certificates, the cards, the emails, the FMLA forms from work, the STD forms, and the facebook posts and messages.

Filling out the birth certificate and death certificate was hard but the people around us tried to make it as easy as they could. The birth certificate was at the hospital with a kind lady who knew from the doctors what had happened. Josh and I filled it out together and gave our daughter, Avery the middle name, 'Serenity' at the last minute. It was from a prayer that we'd been holding on to since Avery's birth and death. We still don't know why she died so it is important prayer for us right now.

We signed the death certificate at the funeral home The hospital kindly made the arrangements for Avery's cremation with the funeral home. We went to the funeral home twice. Once to fill out the death certificate and once to pick up Avery's ashes. The funeral director was fighting back the tears both times. She told us she hopes that she never sees us there again.

Everyone at the hospital (BIDMC) who knew Avery's story was extremely compassionate while I was there so when a technician came to my room to take an x-ray and routinely asked me if there was any chance I was pregnant, I was shocked and upset. He had no idea what I had just been through and it made me even more appreciative of the care all the other doctors and nurses had taken. But it still hurt.

Catherine, again, thank you for this post. This place is very important for me right now,

[Monique]

Wow. "Such dry little phrases concealing such a world of awfulness." This phrase was perfect, sad and true. Beautiful piece of writing, Catherine. xoxo

[eliza]

There was some paperwork.

The hospital never bothered to figure out his name, he was listed as Baby Boy S on everything. He had a name, and like a pp, his last name was not mine, but my husband's. The hospital never filled out a birth certificate, despite the fact that he was a live birth and lived for at least 20 minutes. I suppose they legally should have, but they didn't, and why argue? There was a certificate of birth - the sort of non-official document a hospital gives you for the baby book?- in the memory box but no one filled it out (assholes).

Sidenote: It only occurs to me now, over two years later, that the fact that we have neither an exact time of birth or time of death (I was alone in triage when he was born and we were holding him when he died and don't know when it happened officially), may be part of the reason it was never completed.

It wasn't until months later, when my mother asked if she could go through the box that we realized they'd given us his footprints on the back of that card. I nearly threw it away just after; thank goodness for my mom. The chaplain who attended us made us a certificate - she'd gotten his first and middle names, but also assumed my last name was Gabriel's last name, so that's wrong too.

I went with my husband and mother to the funeral home. We had to sign a lot of paperwork for release of the body and disposition of the body and and the funeral home provided the death certificate (though we stated we did not want a copy and I don't know that it was ever legally filed, as none of the ancestry searches turn up my son). The funeral home liaison was very kind and patient with my bursting into uncontrollable sobs every three minutes.

He took down the name - his full, long ridiculous name Gabriel Ross Mylastname Myhusbandslastname - very carefully, writing it down on a separate sheet of paper three times to ensure it was right before filling out the legal document. He verified each time - no hyphen, right? Right.

And the label on the box of ashes we picked up is the only thing had Gabe's full name spelled correctly. We saved that box and that label with his memory box, even after transferring the ashes. I'm very grateful to him for the care he took with us.

[Jill (Fireflyforever)]

We went to the registry office sulkingly too - four days after Emma died, unable to believe that there wasn't a better way. That we had to make an appointment so we could be ushered in when there was least chance of co-inciding with parents joyfully registering living babies (as we had twice before). It was only later, when I was part of an American loss forum, that I became aware that I was actually very fortunate to have some documentation that made her legal and "official". So many mothers on there didn't have any formal recognition of their babies and that struck me as unbearable. I have a certificate of stillbirth and the registrar offered to put it in a "birth certificate" folder so all four of my children have their earliest documentation in matching folders. It was something so tiny at the time but something I am enormously grateful now.

[anonymous]

All I had for one of my children was two crumpled, torn sheets of paper - a pathology report and a record of disposal. Seven week fetus miscarried at thirteen weeks. Didn't count as a child. I remember calling out, asking to please keep the body so I could bury my child, silence being the only response.

It took me more than two years to track down those pieces of paper.

It still didn't fix not being able to lay my child to rest.

I'm not sure where the papers are anymore, and they've sort of lost their importance. Nobody mentions that baby anyway. I'm the only one who ever called the child a name.

[B]

No real paperwork. Just the leaflets from the hospital and the cards. Better than nothing, but not enough.

Beautiful post Catherine. xxx

[KO]

Today is the seven week "anniversary". We would have gone to town hall to get her Birth Certificate this morning, but my husband has to work....and he doesn't think he can go into work after such an event. We will, perhaps, get one for her on his next day off. I'm still on maternity leave, I can do it any day.

[Catherine W]

Wiley - I'm so sorry that the hospital handled the birth of your daughter so awkwardly and that her name was wrong on the cremation certificate. The 'where's the other twin?' comments still get me every time and crop up so unexpectedly. The most recent occasion was opening my surviving daughter's bank account, as she has a time of birth on her birth certificate, which I think must only be recorded for multiple births here in the UK. The teller asked why it was on the certificate and then the whole sorry story came out when she asked who I had left my other twin with.

Paula - I love Braedon's middle name. Your poor husband, having to correct that young man so many times. At least he got it right in the end but, as you say, it is the worst correctly typed thing that anyone should ever have to read.

Alison - it amazes me how insensitive some care providers can be, I'm sorry they placed you in that position. And the care you took over your printing, there is so much love there.

J - Your comment brought it all rushing back. That strange incongruity between the blandness of the surroundings and the awfulness and shock of what had taken place. I can understand that impulse to write another name, in the hopes that would save her.

Jeanette - I thought of you and your family and what you went through in the aftermath of Florence's death when I was writing this post. I'm sure that, no matter how sensitively the professionals involved tried to handle the situation, it must have incredibly painful to live through. I wouldn't be able to open that drawer either.

Alyson - As you say, the issuing of a birth and death certificate does seem to confirm their existence and I am so sorry that you didn't get them for your daughter. It seems so horribly unfair that she should not have them.

Erica - the records showed us the same thing, I think I find it comforting, most of the time. At other times, I'm just sad that she was born in such a state that nothing could be done.

V - I'm sorry that you find yourself still wading through the paperwork all this time after your F's death in such unbearable circumstances. And yes, as much as I hate all these bits of paper, I'm glad to have them.

Rebecca - I know that I clung to the documentation too. I still do like to look over it from time to time even now. I'm so sorry for the loss of your daughter, Avery Serenity. I'm glad that the hospital staff were compassionate and supportive in the main and so sorry that x-ray technician hit you with such a question. How awfully that must have hurt.

Eliza - I'm sorry that the hospital were so callous. I'm so glad that you did not throw that card away and that the funeral liaison took such care over Gabriel's name. Your description of the hyphen double checking brought tears to my eyes.

Jill - oh that birth certificate folder made something catch in my throat. I know it was important to me to have something 'the same' for all of my children too.

anonymous - I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry that they ignored you and that you were unable to lay your child to rest. I'm glad you found those pieces of paper but I can see why they have subsequently lost their importance. You can mention your child here, you can call him or her by their name here.

B - I know it's not enough, nothing could be xo

KO - I am so deeply sorry for the loss of your daughter. I know that I could not have managed to go to the registry office without my husband and that I could not have gone to work afterwards either. You, your husband and your daughter are in my thoughts, seven weeks is so recent, raw and painful.

[Crystal]

I carried my son for 4 months (16 weeks, 5 days), labored for 12 hours and walked out of the hospital the same day he was born with nothing. The only paperwork I have to know that he was real, is his pathology report, hospital bills and cremation certificate. Because I didn't deliver in the maternity suite (just a regular room on the maternity floor)... he wasn't even included as a loss in the hospital's statistics. To them, he never existed. That hurts.