I Thought I'd Never See Matilda Alive

- Matthew Barbour & Sarah Holmes

Every mother imagines what it will be like to hold her baby for the first time. Like most, I expected to be able to cradle my newborn in my arms. But sadly that wasn’t how it happened.

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted children. But I was 23 before I knew who I wanted to have them with. I’d been friends with Dan since we were teenagers and over the years we grew closer. By the time we started dating in 2006, I was working as an administrator for the NHS, and Dan was a builder. After seven years together, we moved to a house in Essex and married. Then, at the beginning of 2016, I fell pregnant with our first child.

I’ll never forget Dan’s reaction when I showed him the positive pregnancy test.His eyes filled with tears as he started kissing me. At the 20-week scan, we were delighted to discover we were expecting a little girl. We already had the perfect name in mind: Matilda. Of course, like any first-time mum I was scared of giving birth. But after a textbook pregnancy, I couldn’t imagine how anything could go wrong.

Yet when my due date came and went, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. Finally, a day before my 42-week mark, on 27 October, I went to the hospital for an induced labour. By the evening, I still hadn’t felt a single contraction, so I persuaded Dan to go home and get some rest before the labour started. But just a few hours after he left, as I settled into my own bed, I felt a strange gushing sensation. ‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘My waters have broken!’ Only when I pulled back the covers, I realised it wasn’t my waters. It was blood.