Dot Lindeboom (36 weeks and 1 day) presumably died of an infarction in the placenta. He was the second child of Saar Bressers (38, trainer-psychologist and actress) and Vincent Lindeboom (43, entrepreneur). They also have a daughter, Sam (2.5 years).
Saar: ‘Becoming, being and staying pregnant has never been a matter of course for us. The first year and a half that we tried to have a child, I had five miscarriages. Usually after six or seven weeks. In the hospital they could not find a cause, they advised us to keep trying. In January 2019, during a trip to South Africa, I found out that I was pregnant again. We waited until the 20-week ultrasound before we could breathe a sigh of relief and let the world know. At around 33 weeks, we had a check-up with the obstetrician, where she found that the heart rate was very low. At the emergency outpatient clinic of the OLVG West in Amsterdam I had a cardiotocography examination (ctg) and a heart film was made. The Doppler values were found to be high, which could indicate an exhausted placenta. Although the values were back to normal a week later, we had to come back weekly for a check-up, so the pregnancy was no longer uninhibited. Fortunately, after 39 weeks, Sam was born healthy via caesarean section – she was in a breech position.
When Sam was over a year old, I got pregnant again. At sixteen weeks we heard that it would be a boy and Vincent came up with the name Stip. This time I was aware that things could not go well. If I was worried or felt less activity, I had an ECG made just to be sure. At 34 weeks I felt less activity and went to the hospital after work for such a ctg. They said the heart rate was not quite optimal and left me on the device for a few hours. The next day the heart was fine again. Another growth ultrasound was made and the doppler values were good. A few days later, on Thursday, we met with the gynecologist to make an appointment for a caesarean section, because Stip was also in a breech position. Another ultrasound was made on which he moved and his heart was beating. Everything looked fine.
Log feeling
Saturday morning I woke up with a heavy feeling in my stomach. I didn’t feel the baby move, but with another ultrasound two days earlier, I told myself to have faith. It was also a busy day: the maternity nurse would come and a photographer friend came to take pictures of my pregnant belly. At the end of the day I told Vincent that I wanted to stop by the hospital and check it out. That night we had a birthday party and Vincent and Sam dropped me off at OLVG West so I could come later with the Uber. We had already had so many CTGs, it felt like a routine checkup.
At the emergency clinic I met the lady who had connected me to the device once before and she joked again: ‘Ha, there you are again.’ After she put the bands around my stomach, she looked for the heartbeat with the Doppler. She went to the side, to the top, to the bottom. She said she couldn’t find the heart and wanted to get the sonographer involved. The speed at which she was walking out of the room made me feel like it wasn’t right. A little later I was in another room attached to an ultrasound machine. As the sonographer moved the device over my abdomen, she made no response. I looked at the screen and saw nothing moving. At that moment I said myself: ‘There is no more heartbeat.’ To which she replied, “No, there is no more heartbeat.” I realized: my baby is dead. My child died in my womb.
They asked if I wanted to be alone for a while and I did. First I called Vincent, who said he would be there immediately. Then I called my mother. I said, ‘My baby is dead’, and all I could do was cry really hard. As I hung over the chair with my bare stomach crying, Vincent came in with Sam. What I remember most about it is that Sam was very shocked. She had never seen me sad before and now she saw me completely devastated. She got big eyes and didn’t want to come near me.
Then came the gynecologist, who showed a lot of understanding, but quickly started about the next step. I had to give birth, preferably as soon as possible, so they wanted to induce me the next day. I asked, “Wouldn’t I have a caesarean section?” ‘We are not going to do that’, the gynecologist said resolutely, ‘we will do a caesarean section if there are risks for the child, but there are no such risks now. And we know that a natural birth is better for the mother’s coping process.’ I found it very hard that I had to give birth again.
Deafeningly quiet
On Monday morning the contractions followed in quick succession and it turned out that I was 5 centimeters dilated. They punctured my waters, after which the contractions became increasingly intense. After a quarter of an hour of pressing his bottom came first, and after another contraction his head. I heard a dull thud on the bed. It was deafeningly quiet. When I had the baby in my arms moments later, I saw that the nurses had tears in their eyes. Dot looked beautiful, he was perfect and completely finished. I was proud that I had given birth to my stillborn child myself, that I could at least do it for him. After pictures were taken, Stip was placed in a bowl of ice cold water. It sounds sinister, but when a dead baby gets warm, it turns purple with red tabs. In cold water it recovers completely. Three hours after the delivery, Stip was allowed to go home and I was wheeled from the maternity ward to a taxi with a bowl of water on my lap. There was a towel over the box, because it wouldn’t be nice for people to see a dead baby floating in it.
Examination of the placenta showed that there was a large infarction at the place where the umbilical cord entered the placenta, which means that Stip probably developed an oxygen deficiency. I find it very difficult that death has entered me and that I have not noticed it. I’m still very much on the what-if question. What if I had done a check that Saturday morning? It feels so vain that I was doing a photo shoot when I should have gone to the hospital. The most important task I had as a mother, I have not accomplished, because I have not been able to protect my son. We were almost there. For a moment we let the attention relax, and just before the finish we were hooked.
The trouble with a stillborn child is that it is abstract for many people. They know me with a big belly, but they have not seen Stip. When you have a dead child, no one asks for a photo, while I prefer to show everyone their photo. It feels inappropriate, so I’m not doing it. But I am the proud mother of a beautiful son.’