My name is Catherine. I live in Perth, Western Australia with my amazing husband, Merv. Originally from Ireland, I have lived in Australia for almost 10 years. I am mummy to the most beautiful boy in the world, Benjamin, who was born sleeping on 16th April 2017.
My husband and I started on our journey to add to our family of two almost 3 years ago. Like many people out there we expected that as soon as we started trying to get pregnant that it would happen rather quickly. After all I was fit, healthy and still relatively young. As the months passed there was no sign of a pregnancy but there were signs of my endometriosis coming back (8 years post laparoscopy number 1). As a precaution I organised to see an endometriosis and fertility specialist to ensure everything was working as it should be. Fast forward a few months, post laparoscopy number 2 and I was diagnosed with severe, extensive endometriosis – the baby making honeymoon was over.
As the doctor was not able to remove all of my endometriosis the safest path forward for me was IVF. Even typing those three letters makes me shudder. Despite the tough IVF journey we found out that we were pregnant in September 2016. The pregnancy was for the most part straight forward and very healthy. My little boy kicked his mummy like mad and was always very active. That was until the morning of Sunday 16th April 2017. I was 35 weeks and 2 days, had just gone on maternity leave from work and was on countdown to his arrival. I woke up that morning except my little boy did not.
When I was pregnant there were all sorts of worries that crossed my mind but my baby dying before he was even born was not one of them. I was on count down after all, all I needed to do was wait, right? You don’t hear about the babies that die, the ones that don’t make it. You just hear about the healthy, bouncing, pink little ones – it’s easy to get pregnant and babies never die. But it’s not always easy and sometimes babies die. I want to encourage people to speak up, tell their stories and talk about their babies. Stop the silence, the isolation and the loneliness and start sharing…
Benjamin's Light 