James Hibbard’s Story
I thought it was time to share my story of grief following the death of my daughter Pip Hibbard in December 2020. My wife Laura and me had been very lucky to have our first child Bertie in 2018. When Covid lockdown came around, with a bit more free time on our hands we were over the moon to find out that we were pregnant with our second child.
The pregnancy had gone well and we had gone into hospital for a 28 week scan when the doctor discovered that our daughter Pip had a heart beat of 47 bpm. My wife has an autoimmune disorder called Sjogren’s syndrome, there are many complications to this, and we were aware that some can affect babies during pregnancy, however often this happens with your first born. After initial laughing and joking about our daughter being an athlete (just like her parents) the seriousness of the events kicked in when the consultant was talking about delivery. Luckily our consultant spotted that although Pip had a really low heart beat she wasn’t showing any signs of distress so we were transferred to Birmingham Women's Hospital Fetal Medicine Centre for ongoing weekly monitoring and care.
Pip fought really hard for another 6 weeks baffling our consultants showing no signs of distress or heart failure. At 34 weeks Pip's movements slowed down so the decision was made, our little girl would make an appearance on 10th December via C-section. We knew Pip would have a tough start to life as she needed to have a pacemaker fitted once delivered. The large medical team from Birmingham Women's and Children's hospitals were assembled and the delivery, transfer and pacemaker operation went better than we could ever have imagined. We thought at this point we were out of the woods whilst acknowledging that Pip still had a long road to full health. However, nothing could prepare us for the next 12 hours. After fighting with all of her might for so long Pip passed due to complications with her blood pressure she was 23 hrs old.
The next few hours and weeks were a blur of emotion not really knowing what to do. The team at the Childrens hospital were great and having dealt with this many times were compassionate and able to lead us through the process. They gave us a Lily Mae memory box and helped us through some of those early stages of grief and loss. Initially I found it really strange that they wanted to take pictures for us of beautiful Pip, and to make memories with her, however now these are things that we look back on, although difficult, we hold them with love and compassion.
During those early weeks we were back in semi lockdown conditions but we met with Amy and Ryan on walks to discuss our feelings and to try and come to terms with our loss. from that initial memory box we have taken advantage of all of the Lily Mae has to offer due to their caring and compassionate manor that they work with. We have used their monthly meet ups as a way to talk with others in our situation, fundraising events to give back to the charity and also the rainbow baby groups, a real support network once we had conceived again. As Bertie has started to grow up he has also started to take part in some of the sibling support groups, this is really helping him understand his loss from a young age.
Pip will always be in our hearts and those of her brother Bertie and little sister Margot.
