Woman who lost twins at Christmas never thought she’d enjoy it again… but little Oscar has changed that

FOR years Christmas was a time to be endured for Cecilia Tymkewycz-Fife and her husband Andy.

Ten years ago, the couple lost one of the twins Cecilia was carrying shortly before Christmas. The other twin died soon after, leaving Cecilia, who had become pregnant by IVF after five years of operations and fertility treatments, desolate.

“I never thought I would enjoy Christmas again,” said Cecilia, 50. But things have changed since she had a son, Oscar, now seven.

“Oscar has been a wee lifesaver,” said Cecilia.

“He’s stopped Christmas being sad. Oscar just loves Christmas. He wants to be Santa Claus when he grows up.”

This year Cecilia has even more to celebrate – a befriender at the still-birth and neonatal charity, SANDS Lothians, she has helped to win a £64,000 lottery grant to maintain and expand the service.

But however much she has to celebrate now, she never forgets there will always be two boys missing in her life – and what the weight of raw grief feels like for those newly bereaved.

Cecilia was 33 when she met her future husband Andy, now 54 and a sports centre manager in the Edinburgh suburb of Craiglockhart where the couple stay, but starting a family didn’t come easily and at 40 she had her first IVF treatment.

“At seven weeks, I had my first scan which confirmed there were two heartbeats. I was ecstatic, beyond happy,” said Cecilia.

She was buzzing with excitement by the time it came for her first “proper” scan at 13 weeks on December 19. “The midwife didn’t show me the monitor straight away. She leaned over, squeezed my hand and said, ‘I’m sorry, one of the babies has died’. It was quite blunt and matter of fact.

“Christmas was a bit of a blur but I got through it.”

But in January, she began bleeding and was rushed to hospital where a scan confirmed more terrible news. “It was a different midwife but she leaned over, took my hand and said, ‘I’m sorry, your baby is dead’, the same phrase.”

She was given medication to begin labour and the couple went home. “My husband phoned all the relatives and friends and I cried for a whole day, thinking I have two dead babies inside me.”

Back in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Cecilia went through a nine-hour labour, all the while hearing other mothers delivering babies in the rooms around her.

“That was probably the most traumatic part of the whole thing, hearing the labours, then the babies crying next door,” Cecilia recalled. “I kept saying, ‘Turn the radio up’.”

After the babies were delivered, it all happened quickly. “I said hello and goodbye in quite a short time. I remember the doctor had a clipboard with lots of questions and we agreed to the hospital arranging the funeral.

“With hindsight we probably wouldn’t have done that. We didn’t have a funeral, we didn’t have any photographs, we didn’t think to ask and no one offered. We don’t have a memory box or a blanket the babies were wrapped in.

“I had a bath and got dressed. I was still wobbly on my feet. Then we left, just walked out with nothing. That was one of the most difficult bits, walking across the car park with no baby.

“I didn’t find out until the post-mortem about 12 weeks later that they were both boys and that they both had the same condition, Patau syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality, like Down’s or Edward’s syndrome.

“Very few babies who have it survive. I was in deep shock for a long time.

“As I had been less than 24 weeks pregnant, I wasn’t entitled to maternity leave so I had to go back to work quite quickly. I was in no fit state to do my job in a police control room. I spent a lot of my time in the toilets crying.

“I wasn’t sleeping, I felt really isolated.”

At that point, Cecilia went to a SANDS Lothians support meeting. “It was the best thing I ever did, just knowing that other people had held a dead baby in their arms and survived. I was in a really dark place and it was a lifeline.”

Over the next two-and-a-half years Cecilia went through several more rounds of IVF. “Around the date the surviving baby would have been due in June, I did a cycle that failed,” she said. “I remember sitting in the clinic bawling my eyes out.”

After two miscarriages, she decided to call it a day. “I’d had enough. I had eight frozen embryos left. I couldn’t destroy them so I thought I would have one more cycle. The clinic said they would thaw three, I said thaw them all. The best two were picked.

“I really thought it wasn’t going to work. I had a plan B involving a camper van and going off to look at monkeys in some far-flung foreign country.”

Two weeks later, a blood test confirmed she was pregnant. “I was sick as a dog all though the pregnancy, my blood pressure dropped and I fainted at work.”

But the birth, a planned C-section, proved a turning point. Cecilia said: “I’d had a good night’s sleep, I gave birth at 11 o’clock in the morning, Barry Manilow was playing in the background and I was singing along.”

And baby Oscar, who turned seven earlier this month, was a “joy”.

A year later Cecilia began work as a volunteer at SANDS Lothians and, when a job came up a year and a half ago, she jumped at it. Now she applies for grants for the charity – the £64,000 from the Big Lottery Fund is just her latest success – and co-ordinates volunteer befrienders.

She sees people on a one-to-one basis, as well as referring people for free baby bereavement counselling and co-ordinating support groups. “We provide a bespoke service, whatever suits people best, a group, one-to-one or over the phone or even on Facebook.

“You learn a lot about the fragility of life. You lose so much with the loss of your baby, you can lose your personality, your friends, your sense of humour, your relationship. We help people piece their lives back together.

“It sounds crazy, when I am talking to people all the time about death – and the death of a baby which is a really difficult subject, often with people crying and breaking down – but I love my job.

“People walk through that door for the first time, you chat and it’s like you have taken a weight from them, they go out lighter. That gives me satisfaction.”

n Contact SANDS Lothians on 0131 622 6262 or visit sands-lothians.org.uk