At this point, and this is going to sound really mad, but while my husband and I still had a tiny bit of wherewithal between us around the tears we shed we decided we would try to prepare as much as possible for what was to come. We started to think about Frankie’s funeral and find out what we would have to do to organise it, and how we were going to tell everyone about what had happened and what was to come.
We met with the funeral directors AV Band in Worcester who were wonderful, and they explained things to us in a sympathetic and caring way so that we knew what we had to do when Frankie was born. My husband started working on a tribute website for Frankie – www.frankie.russellventura.co.uk, and we worked on an announcement to put out on this blog and our facebook pages together. My parents had told the immediate family before we said anything online, and my husband told his Mum, Dad and best friends so they would know before anything went out on Facebook.
Then on the evening of November 26th, after all the immediate family had been told, we let everyone else know on this blog and facebook – and nothing could have prepared me for all the love, compassion, comments and messages that my husband and I received once we had told everyone. I was so humbled and so overwhelmed, and completely lost for words at the outpouring of support that we had. We’ve tried to include some of these on the tributes page on Frankie’s website, but there was no way we could include them all so we had to include just a snapshot of them.
I didn’t sleep at all for two nights. I was scared and nervous about being induced and giving birth to Frankie, and I also went from wanting to see him and hold him one minute to not wanting to see him the next, but I knew that if I didn’t hold him, dress him and be with him as much as I could after he was born I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Then at 9.30am on November 27th, I arrived at the Worcestershire Royal Hospital. We had a chat with the lovely Rev’d David Southall in his office, where I broke down in tears yet again, and David walked with us to the delivery suite at 10.00am.
I walked into the suite scared, lost and bereft.