Baby Loss Awareness Week 2018
Packing away your dreams
Grief
How do you grieve for a child whose gender will always be unknown? Whose face you never got to see?
How to honour the memory of the child your body failed to protect, when people would rather you didn’t mention them?
How do you square the uncomfortable truth when you look into the eyes of your rainbow child and feel that fierce rush of love, and know that he wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t miscarried your first baby?
Grief isn’t linear.
Two years on, I still struggle to accept the loss. I’ve been told to move on. That a miscarriage isn’t as bad as losing a child who was born. That it is worse to lose a child you’ve held in your arms, than it is to lose a child you’ve never held.
You cannot dial down grief.
From the moment you see the two lines on the test, you become a mother. Boy or girl?, you wonder. Will they have your eye colour or their father’s mischievous smile? You daydream about walks in the park on blustery Autumn days and the thrill of seeing Christmas as a child again, full of tinsel and magic.
Then, in one stomach lurching moment, it’s ripped away from you. The life you were nurturing, cherishing. It’s gone.
“I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat”, the words you pray you will never hear.
I tortured myself with questions. Had I been asleep when our poor baby silently slipped away? Did they feel pain? What sort of mother was I? How could I not have known? Why us?
I will always wonder who you would have been.
Support
The Wave of Light
The Wave of Light is an opportunity to join in with bereaved parents, families and friends around the globe to commemorate all babies who sadly died to soon. It takes place at 7pm local time on Monday 15th October 2018.
To join, simply light a candle and leave it burning for at least an hour. This can be done individually or in a group, at home or in a communal space. Wherever you do this, you will be joining a global ‘Wave of Light’ in memory of all the babies who lit up our lives for such a short time.
