I never dared to hope I'd bring a baby home

8:31am Wednesday 24th September 2008

AFTER she lost four babies, Liz Beard did not even dare to hope that she would one day cradle her own child in her arms.

For her, the hospital maternity ward was not a place where new life began but a mausoleum where the only beginning was that of her first slow steps down the long dark corridor of bereavement.

That grim corridor seemed to have no end, no doors to escape through and no windows to let in the light.

Then on Sunday, May 11 – Liz’s birthday – she gave birth to her first child, Archie, by emergency caesarean section at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.

As she held her healthy baby boy in her arms for the first time she began to be overwhelmed by an emotion she had been afraid to feel before – hope.

Liz, aged 37, of Pinvin, near Pershore, said: “I didn’t dare to hope. I felt if I looked forward to anything then I wouldn’t get what I wanted at the end of it. Every step was scary. I wanted it so badly.

“It took about three weeks for it to actually sink in that I had finally got him. On the drive home from the hospital I cried all the way.

“The last time I left the hospital I had to leave my babies there. This time I was bringing one home. It was so emotional. I was so overwhelmed by it. I didn’t think this day would ever come. You just hope and dream that it will happen. You get used to the disappointment but you do want the happy ending.”

Liz featured in your Worcester News last November when she said the family would not even paint the nursery until their child was safely in their arms.

The agony of preparing for something which may never happen was too much for everyone.

The birth itself was also far from plain sailing for Liz – the baby was born nearly a month prematurely.

Liz also has diabetes and a blood condition, both of which increase the risk to the baby.

She had suspected pre-eclampsia, a form of high blood pressure which can make pregnant women go into labour too early and make them haemorrhage inside.

Shortly before the birth, Archie’s heart rate slowed and there were concerns that her baby had not turned in the womb.

She feared he would be stillborn like the others.

Even before this, Liz and husband Alf had to go through the delicate process of IVF at The Priory Hospital in Birmingham, where her egg was frozen then fertilised by her husband’s sperm before being placed in her womb.

But the birth of her son does not mean that Liz and her family will forget the four children they lost – quite the reverse.

She has already taken Archie to the grave of her stillborn children – twins Theo Anthony and Amara Rose who died on June 11, 2006, at Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

The twins, who died 22 weeks into the pregnancy due to a medical condition known as an incompetent cervix, are buried in a single coffin at St Nicholas’s Church, Pinvin, near Pershore. Her husband, 39- year-old Alf, told her at the service, “they were born together and they will go together”, before he lowered the coffin softly down.

She also had two miscarriages, one before the twins and one afterwards, much earlier in the pregnancy.

Liz said: “I want Archie to know he had an older brother and sister. They are still part of our family and always will be. Having a child does not make it easier, it just makes it more bearable. We have something more to concentrate on. My whole day is taken up with caring and with nurturing. It doesn’t make me forget.

I still have my grieving times now.”

Liz wants to remain part of a group called Not Out of Mind, which meets at the lower vestry of St Martin’s Church, London Road, Worcester, every month.

The group was a lifeline in a time of desperate need and put her in touch with men and women who also understood the agony of losing a child.

The grief will never entirely lift although she now has a foundation of hope on which to build.

She said: “It was a dark hole and I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. I had some very, very dark times. I wanted to give up. It was extremely tough.

“Without my husband and without his support I don’t think I would be here today. It had crossed my mind to take my own life although I don’t think I would ever have done it. I just wanted to curl up in a corner and go to sleep and never wake up.”

Now she says she wants to give hope to other women who have lost children and to encourage them not to give up and keep trying for a child.

Though she confesses it has been a dark and agonising journey, she says it is worth the heartache to be able to hold her baby in her arms at last.