Caroline Mol: ‘When I have a hard time, I cry hard at her grave’

“I find the ‘is everything okay’ question a very uncomfortable one. Although I do understand where it comes from. After all, you see me walking with my big belly and a cute little man in the hand. The pregnancy is going well and James is a wonderful child. But everything okay? No, since the death of my daughter Donna, everything is never right again. I still miss her every moment of the day.

Pregnancy

Jan and I have been together for eight years. When I was fifteen, I once had a crush on him. Jan played in a Volendam version of Jesus Christ Superstar. The whole village then saw that musical and Jan was the big star. Very crazy, but I already knew then: one day I will go with you. While he was fifteen years older and occupied. Six years later I ran into him at the Volendammer fair and we had a nice chat. We were both in a relationship, I had even just bought a house with a boy. A while later we met again. Then it suddenly went fast and I moved in with Jan.

When my friends had children, I started to itch too. Jan was more of ‘if it comes, it must be so’, but he had no very clear desire to have children. James’ pregnancy was therefore quite a surprise for him. He never expected it to happen so quickly. Our son James was born on a Sunday, November 11, 2018. James was truly a Sunday child. Very easy, slept through the night and enjoyed everything. We took him to Thailand for three weeks in January. Went fine. During that vacation we found out that I was pregnant again. We were both overjoyed.

royal couple

Because of the restrictions in corona time, which means that no fun ultrasounds were made, and actually also because my mother-in-law liked it, the gender of our second remained a surprise. But because of my completely different pregnancy, the pregnancy all around, my appearance and hormonal moods, I felt everything that we were having a girl. My biggest wish. Not just for me, to play around with and shop later, I also fervently hoped for Jan. I have a good relationship with my father, I wished Jan the same. Donna was halfway through the birth canal when I cried impatiently: what is it? What is it? In the days after her arrival, we walked on clouds. Overjoyed with our royal couple.

“I felt in everything that we were having a girl. My greatest wish.”

A son and daughter, the ultimate happiness. Our wish for children was fulfilled. Donna was a little harder to get to sleep than James and a feisty lady. She knew exactly what she wanted: to have a good time. She was a happy, happy, smiley baby and had beautiful black hair, with a mat at the back of her neck. She looked just like me as a baby. Jan was completely madly in love and proud of his girl. He once said, “When she smiled at me, I got all shy.” It was corona time, so he was home more than usual and was able to enjoy her and our family to the fullest.

Like a bad bad movie

Two children under two and both in diapers, it’s busy, but I thought it was doable. I felt like the happiest woman in the world. Until that fatal Saturday, December 19, 2020. On Friday, there was nothing wrong with Donna. We praised her energetic character. My mother-in-law was visiting and when Donna sat on her lap, she even tried to stand up a bit. Donna was a bit clingy at night, but I thought it was because she hadn’t pooped in a while.

I thought she sounded weak and a bit stuffy and made a selfie with her late at night which I sent Jan: ‘Your girl is a bit sick.’ The next morning I bought prune juice to mix with some breast milk. I hoped it would help, but alas, she returned the milk and did not recover. I went to the hairdresser’s with James a few houses away. Jan stayed with Donna.

“In no time a helicopter landed around the corner and our house was full of paramedics, doctors and police.”

I was cold for fifteen minutes in the barber chair when Jan knocked panicked on the door: I had to come quickly, Donna was not doing well! Shortly before, he had called the doctor because he thought Donna had suddenly become so weak and weak. When he picked her up, he saw her sink. As if she breathed her last. Coincidentally, our doctor was nearby. His alarm bells went off when he saw her like this and just as I stepped in, he gave Donna a heart massage. In no time a helicopter landed around the corner and our house was full of paramedics, doctors and police. Very unreal, like watching a really bad, bad movie.

With screaming sirens

I took James to his room—he wasn’t supposed to be here—and called my parents to babysit. At that moment I realized that it was serious with Donna, but I had a lot of faith in the good outcome. There were 25 educated people around our girl, she was in capable hands. The entire ride to the AMC hospital I experienced in a daze. Donna was transported with sirens blaring, Jan and I followed the ambulance in the police car. I still held hope. Not Jan, who had seen how lifeless she had been in his arms. That she had actually already died at that point. But he didn’t dare tell me.

In the AMC my little doll was resuscitated on a very large table. Because of the processing, we had to be there, but it was pure horror. I was in complete shock. Meanwhile, doctors kept shouting: heart rate this, temperature that. It wasn’t until I heard ‘temperature 31.4’ that I knew it was over. I ran screaming into the hallway: my child was dead! I felt an intense sadness and the feeling that I had failed as a mother. What had I done wrong? Had my breastfeeding not been good? The prune juice?

Donna immediately went under a scan and they discovered a tear in her diaphragm. A birth defect that affects 1 in 5,000 babies every year. Her lungs, intestines, and stomach had shifted, and her heart was long gone where they had resuscitated. She hadn’t had a chance to survive this.

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Search for help

The heartbreaking image of my little girl in the big hospital bed is still unbearable now. I take special EMDR trauma therapy to get that off my retina. Jan and I have psychological help every four weeks. Losing a child is not normal, you have to seek help for that. Jan is not a talker, but luckily he does talk in therapy. It is special that we do this together. We both experience it differently, we both have our own process, but we find each other in our love. As intense and painful as it all is, I want to go through it all now. Otherwise I’ll collapse in about ten years, because I’ve never grieved well enough.

“I wanted people to see how beautiful Donna was.”

In any case, I will take any support we get. I did that from the first second. Because I wanted to keep Donna with me until the funeral, we had her professionally embalmed on the advice of the funeral director. As a result, she did not have to use a cooling plate and she remained beautiful in color. She has never left my arms. At night she lay in the co-sleeper next to our bed, during the day I sat with her on the couch. Anyone who came by to offer condolences and wanted to could still hold her and look at her. That felt good. I wanted people to see how beautiful she was. But after five days it was ready. I was up. I couldn’t even put her in her coffin anymore.

Survival Mode

During the first week of mourning, I survived on soothing medication. I wanted all the ‘pammen’ in the heaviest dose. At the funeral I was completely stoned. The mass in the church on December 24 was beautiful, but at the same time it is incomprehensible that you are taking your child there. That night was Christmas Eve. We ate a fish dish with the whole family, tradition in Volendam, but Jan and I sat there like zombies. The next day I immediately took Donna’s playpen and baby things to the attic. The cleanup was horrendous, but being confronted with an empty box every day is even more painful. Even looking at pictures of her beautiful face I couldn’t handle.

Jan and I fled the house. We were invited everywhere to eat and talk. Or people brought a pan of food to the door. I gladly took it, nothing came out of my hands. I didn’t care anymore, but I had to keep going. For James. He was my life preserver. I have said a hundred times: ‘You will lose your first child, then you really have no reason to get out of bed.’ For James I had to get up and nurse him, dress him, play with him. And swallow my tears. He couldn’t understand anything else. Nice that visitors came, but why was everyone crying anyway?

“I’ve said a hundred times: ‘You will lose your first child, then you really have no reason to get out of bed.'”

You function, but in survival mode. You lose your future in one fell swoop. All your dreams and ideals, gone. Now we are almost a year later, but that unreal feeling is still there. Shortly after Donna’s death, Jan said to me: ‘We are going to make another baby.’ I loved that so much of him. He had never expressed his feelings so strongly before. At the same time, it was very difficult to be pregnant again after three and a half months. Donna’s first day of death will fall in the middle of my maternity week. How would the outside world react to that? Like the standard greeting on the street, I struggle with congratulations.

Donna

I prefer to avoid the supermarket, because of reactions from others. I’m afraid they think we’ve forgotten Donna or they think it’s crazy that we’re ready for another kid. But on the other hand: what is normal at all if you lose a baby and what does someone else think of it? We are definitely not looking for a replacement for Donna. Donna was unique and will always be our oldest daughter, even now that I am pregnant with another girl. This child will grow up knowing she has a deceased sister.

“Donna will always be our oldest daughter.”

We keep the memory of our girl alive. Also for James. He knows that Donna is now an angel and he likes to come along… to throw stones at her grave, but otherwise he has few active memories of her. He was too young for that. But maybe he’ll say something about it later, when he has a sister again.

Emotional roller coaster

Being pregnant is wonderful and scary at the same time. I am medically checked on all sides, but that does not reassure me completely. I also had an ultrasound with Donna at 28 weeks, but nobody discovered a tear in her diaphragm. Anyway, I’ve lost my carelessness. Every time James coughs, I panic, as he is a healthy, strong lad. I think that with the new baby I will only be a little more reassured when she is one year old and no longer so vulnerable.

Emotionally it has been a rollercoaster and a bizarre year. Holidays have a black border. Celebrating her first birthday on September 13, 2021, without Donna; it couldn’t be done. On the days when I’m having a hard time, I walk to Donna’s grave, which is a few hundred meters from our house. I can cry there. That usually cheers up. But besides that, I’m also genuinely happy that I’m pregnant again. It is not self-evident that you are just given another child and that it goes well. I think it’s a great miracle and I strongly believe that Donna sent that.”

You can read more information about congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CHD), the tear in the diaphragm from which Donna died.

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