Gently, Genna Delaney and her husband Lee placed the tiny basket bearing their longed-for infant son on the seat between them and the car pulled away.
The Tayport couple should have been heading home with baby Nathan to introduce him to his sister Juliet in time for her third birthday. Instead they were on their way to the cemetery to lay their stillborn baby to rest in a woven casket beneath a tiny teddy bear headstone overlooking the silvery Tay.
They could not have known on that torturous spring day in 2022 that within two years a similar fate would befall their third child just nine weeks into jewellery artist Genna’s pregnancy.
The heartbroken mum, now 43, could have allowed the double blow to crush her. Instead, she sought solace in her craft and is now on a mission to help other women who have suffered similar anguish.
The art of healing
Next month Genna will throw open the doors of her studio so they too can experience the art of healing as part of Open Studios North Fife, an event to showcase local talent from May 3 to 5. She is also sharing her experience of loss, love and recovery in a new book alongside nine other remarkable women, titled From The Heart.
Genna said: “I am not going to try again for a baby. I can’t put my body through it again. After the second loss, I couldn’t vocalise my emotion, I couldn’t cry. I was in a really bad place. Having my own sacred space in my studio and to just be able to create helped me to cope with the grief of both losses; it was meditative, for me it was art therapy. Now I want to share that with women who have suffered their own trauma.”
Genna revealed that she had flourished during her first pregnancy but after a long and arduous labour her daughter, now six, had to be delivered in an emergency caesarean section. When she became pregnant a second time, doctors at Dundee’s Ninewells Hospital planned another C-section.
Despite being plagued by illness throughout her 34-week pregnancy, she said that it was only after the stillbirth that doctors diagnosed her with antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), a condition that causes blood clots and affects the healthy growth of the placenta on which the baby depends.
Reliving her nightmare, the Duncan of Jordanstone honours graduate said she first became seriously concerned at her 20-week ultrasound scan, which was unusually painful and during which she claimed the sonographer said there were “issues with blood flow” and “a low placenta”. Genna claimed: “He said it was nothing to worry about and they would check me more regularly towards the end of the pregnancy.”
But as the pregnancy progressed, she continued to feel unwell. Her world fell apart during a routine appointment with a midwife at her local health centre.
‘I knew my life was going to change’
Recalling that fateful moment, Genna said: “She told me: ‘I am really sorry, but I am not feeling a heartbeat.’ It was a total bombshell. I knew instantly that my whole life was going to change.”
Genna was sent to Ninewells where a doctor confirmed the couple’s worst nightmare, but where she said staff were “very kind and caring”. Their baby boy was tragically delivered dead on March 23, 2022, at 34 weeks, two days before his big sister’s birthday.
“Juliet was just coming up to three, and she was my first thought,” Genna said. “She was what kept us going initially. But the grief was brutal. She kept touching my tummy saying, ‘baby brother’, she didn’t understand. I told her: ‘I am sorry darling, but your baby brother is not in there any more. He is up in the clouds with the angels.’
Breaking down, she said: “We had a lovely funeral for him. Because he was so tiny Lee and I chose a special wee coffin for babies like a Moses basket. We put him in the middle of us in the funeral car.”
Baby Nathan was laid to rest at Tayport’s new cemetery. Genna said: “It’s a lovely spot overlooking the Tay. We have a small gravestone for him with a teddy bear etched on it. But having a funeral for your own baby is the most brutal, surreal thing. It was horrible.
“The hospital was really supportive of the both of us. After the first loss, a midwife came to my house to make sure I was doing OK, and I had a bereavement officer to speak to and still do. But the complete opposite happened with the second baby.”
Genna explained it was the hospital’s initial support, her jewellery making, her own health regime and holistic methods that helped her to feel ready to try to become a mother again and that she felt healthy in the third pregnancy. But in February last year, at an early scan to help prevent a repeat tragedy, she was once again told that no heartbeat was detected.
“This time there was no bedside manner and there were no condolences,” she claimed. “We were in total shock.”
‘I want to help other women who are suffering’
While Genna believes her second loss was not related to APS, she claimed she had to wait two weeks for a procedure to remove the lifeless baby from her womb and was sent home without further support, using her own initiative to call the counsellor who had helped with Nathan’s loss.
She said: “This time it was seen as ‘just an early pregnancy’ – but I’d had a baby growing inside of me, it doesn’t matter how far on in your pregnancy you are, you still lost a baby, and you still need support. All the sadness and grief came flooding back.”
Genna added: “I want to help other women who are suffering and show that they too can get through this, because I was in such a bad place for a very long time, and now I am out of the darkness.”
NHS Tayside said it could not comment on individual cases, but said all stillbirths are reviewed through the national reporting process. It added: “Where any learning is identified, this is shared with the wider maternity teams and forms part of our continuous efforts to improve and develop maternity services in Tayside.
“NHS Tayside offers advice and support to women who have experienced a miscarriage at any point in their pregnancy. They can be referred to our bereavement counselling service, or for women with more complex needs, a referral may be made to the maternal and neonatal psychology service.
“We are also currently working to implement the new Miscarriage Framework as outlined by the Scottish Government, with a particular focus on psychological support for women following a miscarriage.”
Visit openstudiosfife.co.uk
Conversation