Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal 2009: 'Our children owe Bliss their lives'

Caroline Greenwood knew her child’s chances of survival were pitifully low. When she had gone into labour in September 2002, barely 22 weeks into her pregnancy, doctors told her that there was little they could do to save the life of the baby boy she and husband Will so desperately wanted. “Even though I knew that, even though I understood that, at under 24 weeks, he wouldn’t survive long after his premature birth, when Freddie was born I just kept begging the doctors: ‘Save my little boy, I’ll do anything if you save him’,” she recalls. There was, however, as Caroline knew in her heart, nothing doctors could do other than gently wrap the little boy in blankets and allow him to spend his short life in his parents’ arms.

Seven years on, Caroline is the mother of three happy and healthy children. But those moments remain a raw and painful memory for her and her husband, Will, who won 55 caps as an England rugby international before retiring to become a commentator on the game in 2006. Today, when she is asked how many children she has, her reply is always: “I have three at home.” For the family, Freddie will forever be one of four beloved children.

“My love for Freddie is as deep and unbreakable as my love for my other three children,” she says. “The fact that he isn’t physically with me will never diminish the love I feel for him. I know I will find him again one day and that we will be reunited. I just have to wait.”

In his short life, Freddie George Arthur Greenwood nonetheless achieved an amazing legacy. Although his death was a bitter tragedy for his parents, his accomplishment has been not only to help doctors save the lives of his three subsequent siblings, Archie, five, Matilda, three, and Rocco, four months, but also to prompt his parents to raise almost £500,000 for research into treatment for preventing premature labour.

The Greenwoods are now firm supporters of Bliss, one charity at the forefront of such research. Founded 30 years ago, the special-care baby charity provides vital support and care to premature and sick babies in Britain. It offers guidance and advice at a critical time in families’ lives as well as funding ground-breaking research. In addition, it campaigns for babies to receive the best possible level of care regardless of when and where they are born.

Premature births are twice as common as cases of breast cancer, and more than double those of prostate cancer – yet they remain one of the most poorly resourced treatment areas of the NHS. One in nine babies – some 82,000 a year – are born prematurely and Britain has the highest mortality rate in western Europe.

For the Greenwoods, the news that Caroline was pregnant within weeks of the couple deciding to have their first child was joyful. They had met in 1996 and decided to start a family before marrying. “We felt the time was right to have our first child, that the marriage could wait,” Caroline says. Her pregnancy went well and, in early September 2002, she clearly recalls thinking how blessed she was. “I was with the man I knew I wanted to spend my life with, I had a fabulous job as a business manager, and now I was going to have a baby. I was on top of the world. But at the back of my mind there was this nagging doubt: everything was too rosy. Something was going to go wrong.”

Twenty-one weeks into her pregnancy, Caroline felt so unwell that she left her Leicester office early. With Will in Leeds, where his club, Harlequins, was playing, she caught a train to Norfolk to spend the night with her mother. The next day, after a doctor had said there was nothing wrong, she decided to go to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London for a second opinion.

Doctors discovered that the membrane around the baby had ruptured: only if she could carry the pregnancy until, at the very earliest, 24 weeks was there any hope of survival. Since her waters had already broken, Caroline couldn’t leave hospital.

For the next few days, she was consumed with one thought: she must keep her baby safe, she must not give birth for at least three weeks. “We knew the odds were against us but we clung to the slightest hope,” she says. Caroline kept a diary in which she begged God to save her child. “I promised anything, anything at all, so that my baby would live.”

It was not to be. On September 19, at exactly 22 weeks pregnant, she gave birth to Freddie who weighed 1lb 2oz. Looking back, Caroline and her husband are glad no effort was made to prolong Freddie’s life. It would have made his short life one filled with pain and distress. “Even though we were weeping, it meant that throughout our precious son’s short life, he was in the arms of parents. We told him how loved and wanted he was. How he would live in our hearts. Just as he would have lived in our lives. That his life, just 45 minutes long, had enriched our lives immeasurably and for ever.”

Freddie was given a blessing and the hospital invited Caroline to visit him in the morgue each day while his funeral was arranged. “Those visits were precious. My grief was so uncontrollable that I know I was irrationally angry and upset with everyone. But all I could think of was Freddie. My love and grief were all-consuming.

“One day when I went to the morgue he was naked, which upset me terribly. The staff, trying to be kind, had taken off his clothes, assuming I wanted to keep them. I was devastated. There were so very few things I had been able to do to show Freddie my love. Being dressed by his mummy was one of those things. I wanted him to know how tenderly I had put on his little booties, his tiny clothes. Another day, there was some problem about having the morgue opened. I banged on the door like a mad woman. I thought: ‘If I can’t hold my baby, I am going to die.’”

In the days after Freddie’s death Caroline lay in bed, barely able to eat and unable to sleep. “Afterwards, Will told me that he felt terribly shut out during that time. I know I behaved selfishly, but I was in such anguish. There were times I just wanted to die to be with my baby. I kept the curtains closed for a month. When I finally got up, I would wear only black. My mum went to the chemist for tablets that would stop my milk and I remember shouting at her: ‘I want the milk. It’s the only part of Freddie I have left.’ I know she understood it was my heartbreak talking.”

Caroline wrote her son a 25-page letter telling him how deeply he was loved and reassuring him that, however long it took, he and she would be reunited. “We buried the letter and toys with him but we kept one, a little rabbit, which the nurses had given him.”

The day of Freddie’s funeral was achingly painful. “I travelled in the hearse with his tiny white coffin,” she recalls. “It had to sit on a special pad to keep him cold, which meant I couldn’t hold his casket. So I sat for hours with my hand on it – until it was numb and white. I never wanted to let go.

“To watch one’s husband carry the tiny casket of his only child up the aisle to his cremation is a terrible sight. My heart broke for Freddie and for Will.”

There were more painful milestones to pass. When Caroline returned to hospital for her post-natal examination, the doctor she saw neglected to read her notes. “Where is baby?” he boomed. “Are you breast-feeding him?” It was insensitive and made her grieving all the more difficult, she says.

It took time before Caroline could begin to think of having another child but, when she did, again she became pregnant quickly. At the back of her mind, however, was the nagging ache that the same thing could happen. Doctors had been unable to tell her if she had what is known as an incompetent cervix, and the only sure way of diagnosing the condition was an invasive examination that could put the baby’s life at risk.

At her first antenatal appointment, she was told airily: “You are fine. Forget you are pregnant until you get to 20 weeks. We can’t assume you have an incompetent cervix. You could just have been unlucky. Basically, until you are sitting in front of me having lost four babies, we won’t do any invasive procedures.” He was right, of course, but his words seemed brutal.

Caroline had been impressed by Professor Mark Johnson, who had overseen Freddie’s birth, and she asked to become his patient. Because of her history, he asked to see her weekly and when, at just 20 weeks, her cervix became almost fully dilated, he decided to stitch it closed. It was a controversial decision, but one that saved her baby’s life. Caroline went into labour and was taken to intensive care. But, with the help of drugs and the stitch, her labour was stopped. This time, she made it to 36 weeks before Archie was born.

“With each of my subsequent pregnancies, Professor Johnson has been able to stop me from going into labour early and saved the lives of all three of my children – with a little help from Freddie, because it was learning what he did from Freddie’s birth that led us to risk the invasive procedure of putting in a stitch. There was a risk it could have caused a miscarriage but it was worth it. Freddie now has two healthy brothers and a little sister.”

The Greenwoods continue to mark Freddie’s birthday quietly, at home. And he is very much part of his siblings’ lives. “The older two know all about him and when Rocco is older, so will he. All three of them have, as babies, played with Freddie’s little rabbit which was given to him in hospital. It means they have a link with him.

“I couldn’t love one of my children more than the others. And I couldn’t love Freddie any less, no matter how short his life was. To me, Freddie will always be my treasured first-born.”