(TYPING CLICKS)
(DING!)
Mothers vaccinated during pregnancy
help protect their baby in the first three months.
You know you get those little baby's first year books,
and you fill out, you know,
their height and weight and all that.
But this book is mostly unfinished.
(TUTS)
Riley would have been 3 now...
and running around and...
probably enjoying our new backyard
and playing with his sisters.
It's weird seeing photos of me with him,
just on a completely different path in my life and, you know,
never experienced tragedy, and...
I just wish I could go back to that.
Riley was really the perfect newborn baby — he just fed a lot and slept a lot, and he didn't really cry.
He was very settled and happy,...
and he was just perfect.
Well, Riley first started getting sick when he was about 3 weeks old.
He had what I thought was a cold,
um, a bit of a runny nose and sneezing a little bit.
And then when he was 4 weeks old, he started coughing.
(COUGHS)
(GASPS, COUGHS)
Then that night, Riley didn't really wanna breastfeed.
He slept through the night,
which was really weird for a newborn baby who, you know,
I was so used to him waking up every couple of hours.
So we made the decision the next morning to take him to the hospital,
and they swab tested him, and it turned out to be whooping cough.
Catherine wasn't aware she needed another
booster vaccine for her third pregnancy.
(HICCUPS)
We were admitted that night, and I kept trying to breastfeed,
but he just wouldn't latch on.
It was getting hard for him to breathe, I think.
So they put him on oxygen,
and I expressed milk, and they fed him with a nasal gastric tube.
I was very confident —
you know, I thought we'd be out of there in no time.
But he progressively just seemed to get worse and worse.
So you think the cough being the main issue, but it's the toxins
from the Bordetella pertussis
bacteria that does all this damage with whooping cough.
When we were told that he needed to be moved into
the Intensive Care Unit,
I remember seeing a drawer that said 'Baptism gowns,'
and I saw brochures —
you know, 'How to plan your child's funeral' and things like that.
That's when I started to feel really, really worried.
So, the decision was made for him to be placed in an induced coma,
and they put him on a ventilator.
They told us that they needed to...
take out his blood and spin it,
and then put his blood back in to help with his white blood cell count.
But that didn't work.
So that about day three or four of him being in hospital.
So I was sent home, told to get a few hours' sleep
and rest and come back,
because, you know, tomorrow would be the day that Riley
fights for his life, basically.
But it was only a couple of hours later that
Greg called me and called me back into the hospital and said,
'You've gotta come back.' You know, my heart just sunk.
I just knew that things were looking really, really bad.
(TINKLY PIANO MUSIC)
So, we had him baptised by the hospital priest.
And I remember standing next to him, and he held my finger.
And I just thought,
'Maybe there is some hope.
Maybe there's still, you know, life in there,
'and maybe things would be OK. Maybe the doctors are wrong.'
And then we're called into the family room not long after that
and were given a pretty frank,...
um, discussion with his doctor,
who was pretty honest with us
and told us that he didn't think Riley was gonna make it.
And... (SIGHS)
I don't know. I just remember shaking and feeling sick.
And I started begging.
I started saying ridiculous things, like,
'Can't you just do a heart transplant?'
'Can't you just do a lung transplant?'
I was trying to think of ideas,
cos I just didn't wanna think that this was it, that this was over.
We decided to...
have him taken off the machines and placed in our arms.
And we held him and...
and sung lullabies to him.
And I just remember looking at the heart monitor,
and you'd watch for, like, the beeps,
and they were getting slower and slower.
And then he was gone.
And we just left with this little tiny body in our arms.
(INTENSE MUSIC)
READS: I'll never forgot your sweet baby scent.
I will never forget gazing into your luminous eyes when feeding you.
I will never forget our time spent together at the beach,
in the park or at the river.
I'll never forget the little rolls at the back of your neck
or the soft downy hair on your head that I loved to nuzzle in to.
I never expected to arrive at that hospital with you in my arms
and leave empty-handed.
I never expected to watch your tiny body fail
or to hold you in my arms as you passed away.
My body still aches to hold you close,
and while I know that will never happen again,
you will always be with me in my heart, in all of our hearts.
32 days was not enough time with you,
but I feel so blessed to have loved you and been your mother. Love, Mum.
Sorry.
The sad thing is I have been forgetting some of those memories.
(SNIFFLES)
(TINKLY MUSIC)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
We received an incredible amount of support
post losing Riley — we had some wonderful messages.
But we probably also saw
the dark side of it as well in that
there are people that, for whatever reason,
genuinely believe their message and felt the need to attack us,
because they felt threatened
that their movement potentially was, you know, in danger.
So, I mean, we had people contacting us, saying, 'Oh,' you know,
'your baby died because you chose to vaccinate him' —
I mean, people that didn't know our circumstances.
Riley wasn't even old enough to be vaccinated himself.
You know, 'It's survival of the fittest,
and your child just wasn't ready to live on this planet —
'that's why,' you know, 'nature's taken its course.'
And the thing that probably struck me was
if your movement needs to go and attack
a family that's just lost a child, well,
it's not a very good movement to be a part of to begin with,
if that's the only way you can get to keep your message going, I guess.
We have an opportunity here to try and help other families
to not go through what we're going through,
so it's about getting that message from a trusted healthcare provider,
Because they're the ones that are going to give you
the correct message.
You know, they're the ones that are dealing with science and fact.