After almost two years of hearing how people, “can’t even imagine” my life and what it is to be a bereaved parent I’m finding myself in a position where people are imparting their knowledge or experience on me because they at some point had a child (who lived). I understand that this is a common experience amongst new parents. The problem is that we aren’t new parents. No one was available to offer advice in the newborn period after Lenny…
I’m so aware that there are people in this community who desperately want to be in my position but I also feel I owe it to those who have been PAL, are currently, or may be PAL in the future to be honest about this. In the past 18 months I’ve left two babies in a hospital mortuary, held two funerals, attended two post mortems, spoken at one funeral and contributed to an investigation. I’ve set up and run a…
It is 3rd July here in the UK – National Bereaved Parents Day and July is National Bereaved Parents Month. The idea of this day and month is to raise awareness that very sadly children die and leave behind grief stricken parents. This is to recognise parents bereaved through pregnancy, infant and child death at any age and through any cause. We have been bereaved parents for just over 18 months now, we became bereaved parents just 27 minutes after…
To the dads on Father’s Day, For the dads who have experienced infertility, or the loss of a baby or child at any gestation, age or in any circumstance, or a combination of the above. This is for you. I am sorry that your fatherhood doesn’t look like it should and that today is not the celebration that it should be. I know that no matter how long it has been, no matter how many living children you have, and…
28th December 2022 little Bhai’s due date. Though to prevent risks of meconium aspiration I would likely have been induced 2 weeks earlier- around Lenny’s first birthday. Bittersweet. We knew his arrival wouldn’t make Lenny’s death easier or the grief easier but we also knew he would bring us so much joy. Pregnancy after loss was scary. Really scary. I’m no wimp I’ve done the world’s highest bungee and abseil, Europe’s highest skydive, some gnarly mountain biking at bike parks…
Christmas 2021 – my due date was the 16th December so we knew we would be bringing a baby home before Christmas. We planned to have Christmas just us with our new baby for the first time. The reality was we arrived as two broken people at my parents’ house just a week after watching our newborn baby die. We walked in dazed pretty empty handed apart from Lenny’s memory box. They were trying to piece together some sort of…
One. Probably the cutest age. I remember your cousin Bobby turning one, we made him a custom built balance bike – totally age inappropriate but amazing. One whole year ago I gave birth to you. We arrived at the hospital a couple of days after your due date in labour. All was going well. The atmosphere was jovial and the monitors showed you were doing well and so was I. Then things turned on a knife edge. We met you…
This is why we are cycling from Auckland to Queenstown and making a film to raise awareness of baby loss. 832. It isn’t the number of miles we will do, it isn’t the number of hours Roy will wear the same pair of pants before he changes them and it isn’t even the number of times puppy Mac wags his tail in the space of a minute. 832 is the estimated number of babies who will die shortly before, during,…
I wrote some of this blog when I was in hospital with Bhai, I edited it again a few days after and then updated it recently at the bottom. It is about our request that Bhai’s body be donated for medical science. The layout of the room was the same, the hospital “snack box” was the same and we were back making the same decisions that no parent should ever have to make for their child. Again. Twice in 8…
A job title I wouldn’t have known existed a year ago. It doesn’t even make sense. A job title that is in itself an oxymoron- death and birth in one job title. Birth and death coexisting together? Happening at the same time? I long for the days I thought that only happened in a bygone era. Of course it doesn’t make sense. Babies dying. Healthy, full term babies dying makes quite literally no sense. Yet it happens. On average 13…