'You were a dream baby', Hattie Deards writes of her son, Theo. Photo / Getty
Three Christmases ago, Hattie Deards lost her 3-month-old baby, Theo, to cot death.
Here, she shares her enduring love in a raw, open letter to her late son.
Dear Theo,
It was cold on December 30, 2012 - a Sunday. It was a milestone day. You had hit 12 weeks old, you were officially into the "good zone". I was starting to feel more normal, the exhaustion of the early weeks subsiding. I could see the path of life with three small children ahead of me, and it was looking sunny, not daunting. You had made that possible; you were a dream baby. Relaxed, ailment-free, content and companionable.
We spent the day at the park so that your brother and sister, Ned and Esther, could have a run around. On the way home in the car I held your hand, and you stared adoringly at me from your car seat, your chubby face framed by the hood of your sheepskin snowsuit. You kept staring at me and holding my hand and, as we parked the car outside the house, you fell asleep with a smile on your face.
I carried you into the house, took you out of your car seat and put you in your cot upstairs to continue sleeping. I started hanging up the washing while Ned and Esther were playing with new Christmas toys, and your dad nipped out to get some batteries.
I don't know if my mind has added an eerie dimension to the afternoon, but I remember feeling uneasy about something. I climbed upstairs to get you. Everything felt still. The house was dark and quite cold. I turned on the bedroom light, walked over to your cot and found you face down on the mattress, dead.
Instantly, I was standing on the edge of a very high cliff, black churning sea below. I could feel myself about to fall. I pulled you out of your cot and your head hung down, your face a green-grey pallor. I screamed so loudly that the noise still echoes in my brain, and ran out of the room holding you in front of me.
As I started to run down the stairs, your dad was coming up with a look of terror on his face. I threw your lifeless body into his arms, screaming that you weren't breathing, screaming, screaming, gagging, doubled over, seeing the silent faces of your brother and sister at the bottom of the stairs, expressionless, terrified.
I rang an ambulance, I choked, I wretched, I opened the front door and ran into the arms of my neighbours, screaming, can't breathe, can't see. I ran upstairs to our bedroom.
Daddy was doing CPR on you, as your brother silently watched as you were pumped and pummelled for any sign of life.
The house filled with people, paramedics, heavy boots running up the stairs, your grandparents, neighbours. Ned and Esther were taken next door and given cake, flashing ambulance lights filling the road, our quiet street filled with people and noise.
Up, down, up, down - we climbed up and down the stairs to see if the paramedics had been able to start your heart. Silence was burning a hole, nothing was happening. Fifty-five minutes it took to restart your heart, and when they had, they took you in an ambulance with your dad to West Middlesex Hospital. Fifty-five minutes without a heart beat. I did not need to be told that the damage to a human brain after that is irreparable.
It's over - it serves me right for having been happy. This is what comes of sticking smug photos of your children on the fridge. This is what happens when you go and have three children and you're not a dynamo mother - you are unable to cope, and one dies.
Two policemen appeared in the kitchen. They asked me if I wanted to get to the hospital quickly. I got my coat, I went next door to see Ned and Esther. They were sitting next to the neighbour's elderly mother, eating chocolate cake and watching The X Factor. They looked at me, and Esther said: "Mummy!" The screaming inside my head was louder than ever. They are so pure, their minds are so good, they have had a good life. But their brother will die, and with this, part of them will die, and their mummy and daddy will never be the same again.
I get into the police car, the lights and siren go on, and I am driven fast to the back entrance of the hospital. The entourage escort me into a huge open-plan room filled with machinery, and straight to you, the tiny body of my 3-month-old son. Your clothes have been cut off, your train-print Babygro and vest lying under you. You're covered in wires and tubes and plasters and bleeping machines.
I throw myself at you, putting my hands under your back, bringing your body up to my face, your head lolling backwards, me breathing in your scent, burying my nose and lips in your neck, squeezing your face into mine. I grab your clothes and shove them down my top, squashing them into my bra. Familiar, favourite clothes, only washed yesterday, smelling of home, smelling of you.
A doctor tells me that your heart stopped again once they had you in the hospital, but they restarted it with electrical pulses, and you are being kept alive with a life-support machine. Your dad and I go to sit in a "family room" while we wait to speak to consultants. We sit down, then stand up, sit down, pace around. We can't do anything. Daddy curls up on a tiny sofa and pulls a coat over his head. He is shutting down, his body and mind don't know what to do. He can barely open his eyes. We say nothing. We hold each other, kiss each other.
You were transferred again, this time to Great Ormond Street Hospital, for more detailed brain scans. That night, we were given a room in a building opposite the hospital. A nurse gave us tranquilisers, but to no avail. Hours passed in agony, thrashing around, walking the corridors and watching the darkness of Queens Square from the window, feeling my breasts fill up with milk and with no baby to feed.
In the morning, New Year's Eve, we arrived at your bedside to find an old man with a walking stick and wild hair grimly studying the computer printouts of your brain activity. We never fought to keep you alive on the machines. Your brain was dead, your skin was turning yellow from organ failure, we needed you to be free.
But I was terrified when the time came. We went into a private room, and I took my top and bra off so I could feel your skin against mine. Together, the doctor and I peeled off the plasters and removed the wires and tubes. You lay in my arms, your head on my chest. For a minute or so, you breathed alone, your daddy and I gripping you so tightly, our tears creating pools that gathered in your ears. You made a quiet gurgling sound and it was over.
And yet, almost three years later, it isn't really over. You have a new little brother now, Eli, born 10 months after your death, and in him lives a piece of you. We think about you, and talk about you, all the time.
You have changed me, my darling boy. Your life was warm and without fear. I held and sustained you from conception through to death and I love you. It's impossible to say how much we miss you, our son, our brother.
Love, Mummy