Our beautiful baby boy Cooper Nicholas McKenna was born on Friday, 14th of October 2022 at 12.49pm via elected caesarean. Holding his tiny body (7lbs) and seeing his perfect little face for the first time after almost 42 weeks of a healthy pregnancy was both the happiest and proudest moment of our lives. 

The surgery went well, I had only lost 100ml of blood and our little bundle of joy instantly latched and enjoyed skin to skin cuddles with me in the recovery room. We spent the first day and night at Poole Maternity unit, getting to know each other, cuddling, kissing, feeding and changing him like any other new parent and enjoying every second of it. He passed his health checks with flying colours and the next day we were allowed to take him home. We spent Saturday and Sunday in our perfect little baby bubble that we had envisioned for such a long time. The midwife that had taken care of me during the majority of my pregnancy came to visit us Sunday afternoon to check on Cooper and my wound and was happy to see us both doing so well. We were filled with relief and pride, little did we know that he wouldn’t survive the night.

Sometime around 3.30am or 4am, he woke crying and needed another change and feed. My milk had just come in that evening, much to our son’s delight, so I gently ran my fingers over his soft cheeks while he was staring at me with his gorgeous dark blue eyes. I could feel him latch and hear him feed and I remember thinking how unbelievably lucky I was to be his mummy. When I felt his tummy rumble, I picked him up as I always did to burp him, but after a short while, a few short minutes perhaps, I noticed that he had become very quiet, unusually so, and a horrible feeling came over me. I laid him on our bed, panicking, took off his sleepsuit as it was too big on him to see his chest rise. That was when we realised that his hands and feet were already blue and that he had stopped breathing. We screamed, shocked, not understanding what was happening and rang 999, waiting in a queue for over five minutes until we even got through to someone - the longest five minutes of our lives. His daddy performed guided CPR while we were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. They told us to get dressed and took him to A&E at Poole Hospital, it all happened so fast and in such a daze, all I really picked up from their conversations was ‘cardiac arrest’ and it made me feel sick to my stomach. Perhaps it was my motherly instinct but as we followed in a second ambulance, anxious and desperate to see and hold him again, clinging onto every single shred of hope, I knew deep down that he wouldn’t survive. 

An army of doctors and nurses took care of him, while we waited in a little room, filled with nothing but a few chairs, a table and a box of tissues. I remember hearing a baby cry and jumping up, convincing myself it was Cooper, but I could see in the eyes of the police officers who were waiting with us, that it wasn’t likely to be him. I don’t know how much time had passed but eventually, three doctors came into the room to deliver the worst news of our lives. They had tried absolutely everything in their power to bring our son back, but his heart just wouldn’t start beating, and it had been so long (almost two hours of resuscitation), that there was no hope left. We had no choice but to stop his life support and so at 6.25am on Monday 17th of October, less than three days since his birth, our son Cooper passed away. I don’t think we fully comprehended that he was gone, until we walked into the surgery room and saw his tiny lifeless body on the big hospital bed. One of the nurses was still performing CPR as we walked in, tears streaming over her face, as another one gently laid their arms on her, pulling her away from him and saying it was over. A doctor removed the last cannulas and cables connecting Cooper to monitors, there was some blood on the sheets. We both kneeled down by his side, weeping, holding his hand so tightly and asking him to come back to us, to open his eyes, but he never did. A midwife offered to wrap him up in a clean blanket to keep him comfortable and placed him in one of the plastic cribs he slept in perfectly alive just a couple of days ago. I can’t remember how we got there but we ended up in the bereavement suite and stayed there for the rest of that day. I can only hope that my precious baby boy did not feel any pain and that his little soul slipped away peacefully, knowing how unbelievably loved he was.

What followed was a police investigation at our house, an interrogation of a panel of police, doctors and consultants and a last cuddle with our baby boy before they had to take him away for initial testing. The next days were filled with phone calls of coroners, bereavement midwives, police officers and funeral directors. His tiny body had been sent to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, for a full post-mortem and returned again into the care of the funeral home the week after his death, so we could say goodbye to him and leave him to rest without having to wait for the final report. We didn’t think we could possibly feel any worse, until we carried his tiny white casket into the chapel on his funeral day a few weeks later, it broke our hearts all over again. When Cooper died, so did a part of us. We are living a nightmare that we cannot wake up from and struggling to find any purpose in life. It’s hell.

His life was so short, too short, but he taught us that every moment is a gift. Nobody knows how much time we have with our loved ones, so hug them tight, tell them you love them, do not take anything for granted and do not stress or fight over things that really don’t matter. We were blessed with the most perfect baby boy, our little star, and we are beyond grateful to have had this time with Cooper, fully aware that some parents don’t even get to meet their little ones, let alone take them home. 

We would like to raise money for the Lullaby Trust, to support research into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), so that we can hopefully help save other babies like Cooper. We don’t understand why Cooper had to go, and probably never will, but if we could save another family from losing their baby and going through what we are going through, it would mean the world to us. 

Thank you for reading, 

Melanie and Sean (Mummy and Daddy to Cooper Nicholas McKenna, 14/10/2022 to 17/10/2022)