Not in vain

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

~ Emily Dickinson

The thing is, and I have said this before, the way I find my story such a bitter pill to swallow and in some way different to some of the others I have read is that Hope's death was preventable. Not to say it makes it any worse of course, the death of any baby in any way is pure and utter tragedy, but this really should not have happened to us. She wasn't too little. Too frail. Too sick. Too early or too compromised. She was absolutely healthy and perfectly formed. It shouldn't have happened. She shouldn't have died. I was failed. Hope was failed. And we lost a life because the caregivers I put my faith in for nine months failed to do their jobs properly. Hope's. And mine was turned completely upside down. My heart was broken. It still is.

For the best part of two years now, we have sat on our hands. We have ummed and ahhed about what path to take and what to do about exactly what happened to us. People have gently nudged us in the way of a law suit, but so far we have resisted. We just didn't think we had it in us to drag ourselves through the court system, all in the name of trying to get some justice for what happened. There will never be justice. There is no way this situation can be made right.
But with a finding from an independent obstetrician late last year that came back in our favour, as I was in the home stretch of Angus' difficult pregnancy, we have decided to proceed with legal action.

It hasn't been a pleasant process so far and I feel a certain amount of dread in the pit of my stomach for all that still lies ahead. I question myself daily, if not more often, as to whether we are doing the right thing.

This isn't about money for us, and if it was, we'd be sorely disappointed because with the way our laws are here, we can't claim for much. Just damages for any permanent psychological damage we have sustained, and only if that is more than 11 per cent. We have to wait to see what the shrink assessing us thinks. 11 per cent. Honestly. I feel 110 per cent damaged. Even the bits I didn't know about myself are broken.

The amount of money we could possibly stand to get will be pitiful, really. Any amount would be I guess. No amount could ease our suffering or be a measure of how much we've lost. Lets just say we won't be paying off our mortgage, retiring and moving to the Bahamas with it. Far from it, actually. And this will be a long process. A painful process. But after much consideration, it is a process we thought we really should go through with. Because afterall, we've been through worse.

We don't want what happened to us to happen to another family. Another baby.
We need our hospital to take Hope's death seriously. Very seriously. Far more seriously than they have done to date.
We want to see change. We want to be able to make some meaning of her utterly senseless death. Our beautiful big, eight pound baby girl who was so ready for this world. So, so ready.
We want to know that her beautiful but brief life and tragic death were not completely in vain.