AMONG FRIENDS

Couple donates in honour of stillborn son

“My Nana always delivered a boy gift and a girl gift to the hospital at Christmas and I helped with them. I was thinking about that when I realized I wanted to do something similar for a little boy who was close in age to Axton.” Kayla Meade

If all had gone well, Axton Edward Daniel Grosvold would be sitting up and reaching his little hands out to touch the ornaments on the Christmas tree this holiday season but like 3,000 Canadian babies a year, he was stillborn.

Instead, his young parents, Kayla Meade and Elijah Grosvold of Alma are filling a Christmas stocking for another little boy who was born a month later and is going back and forth to the IWK Children’s Hospital with health issues.

Axton’s parents are still recovering from the shock and sadness of stillbirth with Meade recalling her pregnancy was normal and healthy, almost to the end. It was a few weeks before her due date when she began experiencing what she initially thought were Braxton-Hicks contractions but the pain rapidly became intense.

“At 9:30 a.m. I was videochatting with my sister, showing her how Axton was kicking, and by 11:30 a.m. Elijah’s parents had rushed me to the Aberdeen Hospital. I was seen immediately and everything changed.”

She remembers the first nurse could not find a fetal heartbeat, nor could the second nurse. An ultrasound also failed to detect a heartbeat.

“I knew he’d stopped moving, but I just couldn’t believe there was no heartbeat. He’d been so active such a short time ago.”

Grosvold, who is a casual employee in the housekeeping department at the hospital, also remembers being told the baby’s heart was no longer beating.

“It was a shock, a terrible shock but I knew what I was being told. I understood what it meant.”

Meade suffered a placental abruption and the umbilical cord was wrapped around her baby’s neck. Labour was induced but Meade quietly, desperately allowed herself to hope.

“I know better but I still thought somehow he was going to be born and his heart would be beating and it would all be a horrible mistake. Or he’d arrive and the doctor and nurses would be able to start his heart again. But he was

delivered into heaven instead of to us.”

In spite of their shock and grief, both Meade and Grosvold remember being treated kindly by hospital staff. Following delivery, they and family members were given two hours with Axton to say their goodbyes.

“The nurses gave us a beautiful little homemade quilt from the palliative care unit and we wrapped him in it for the undertaker. The quilt came back to us and we sleep with it every night.”

They were also given a treasured memory box as they were leaving the hospital.

“I left the first moment I could. They’d moved me to another room which helped a bit but I didn’t want to be around other mothers and their babies, I just couldn’t be,” said Meade.

But going home without a baby was not easy, either.

“My mother offered to pack everything away before I got home but I didn’t want that. I wanted to look at his things, to touch them and hold them. I’m still doing that. I don’t know when we will pack it all away. We’re not ready yet, anyway.”

They posted an obituary for their son, partly to prevent people from asking wellmeaning questions about the anticipated new arrival. Grosvold, who works wherever he is sent at the hospital, has yet to return to the maternity unit.

“My supervisor and our assistant manager told me they would not send me there because of what happened. Some day I’ll go back but the women I work with have been very good.”

Axton, Meade points out, was to be the first grandchild on both sides of the family and the first boy in decades on her side so he would have been loved by many.

“There were so many people waiting for his arrival and we had to tell them all what happened.”

Christmas used to be her favourite time of year but she was anxious about the upcoming holidays until she proposed to Grosvold that they fill a stocking for another child.

“My Nana always delivered a boy gift and a girl gift to the hospital at Christmas and I helped with them. I was thinking about that when I realized I wanted to do something similar for a little boy who was close in age to Axton.”

With some trepidation she posted on the Facebook page Pictou County Rant and Rave, explaining about her and Elijah’s son and what they wanted to do. She was hoping someone could direct her to a child who could use a few extra gifts.

“I expected a few mean comments because that is normal on Facebook but people were incredibly kind with their condolences and suggestions. I was contacted by the grandmother of a little boy born about a month after Axton and when we talked I knew this was the child we’d give our gifts to.”

For the first time since before Axton’s birth, Meade was able to peer down baby and toy aisles.

“Thinking about another little baby is making Christmas easier.”

Grosvold, who gives Meade full credit for the stocking idea, sees it as a way of honouring their son.

“We don’t have that much but we can fill a stocking for another baby. That’s where we’ll find a little bit of Christmas joy this year,” said Meade.