11 weeks after the stillbirth, we got Ayelet’s autopsy results. This was one of many decisions we had to make during those two days waiting for the stillbirth to begin. Should we try to find out what happened? Or maybe we should leave it?
We decided to have an autopsy:
We received the results of Ayelet’s autopsy.
She had a new, additional name now- fetus no. 10-50-057.
This was just the first line and already I started shedding tears. Again, they made up a nickname instead of using her actual name.
With every line, my crying intensified. I read:
‘Weight- 3450 gr. Length- 45 cm (head-heal), 31 cm (head-buttocks)’ – in my eyes, I saw how this baby, the one I held and said goodbye to, was being held by strange hands and was being measured with a tape which was used on so many other babies before her.
‘Foot length- 31 cm’- the foot, one of the sweetest parts a baby could possess, that I would never kiss. Until September 6th 2010, these two 31 cm long feet were constantly kicking me.
‘Head circumference- 36 cm’- the head I had resting in my arms, the same one I kissed. The head that had the face of my beautiful Ayelet.
‘Chest- 34 cm’. ‘Stomach- 32 cm’.
Then they looked at what they could see on the body itself. Do you know what they saw? That everything was intact. That’s a phrase that repeated itself so many times in this three page long report.
Intact. Everything’s intact. At some point this phrase was just hurtful. Because if everything is intact, then why was my baby taken away from me?
Internal check.
I’m reading the report and I imagine two strangers opening my baby’s body- having a look inside it just to discover that “everything’s intact”.
They checked everything- heart, brain, digestion system, urinary system, pancreas, even the appendix. In between these words I saw Ayelet’s baby body being mixed with Shahar’s 4-year-old body.
Big and small organs were being measured, checked.
How could they put it all back in? How would everything be returned to me?
The answer to this reflexive question was clear. And a storm of tears burst from my eyes, as if this was the first time I discovered that Ayelet died inside of me. As if only now I understood that I will never hold her and she will never be an active part of our family, she will always be just a memory.
You can download my full story here.