All posts tagged: childloss

What to say when a baby dies…

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Knowing what to say when a baby dies can feel really challenging because people don’t want to get it wrong and they don’t want to cause further upset. Every grieving parent is different so there isn’t an accurate guide on what to do or say when a baby dies. One of the biggest comments can be “I don’t know what to say” – in my experience, be honest and say that, better than saying nothing at all. As a bereaved mother some of the things that helped me are: let parents talk about their baby. If they are talking about their baby, please let them and please do also talk about and mention their baby. Don’t ignore a baby’s existence because that hurts. let parents cry – they need to cry, it helps to release some of the pain. And sometimes they will have no choice, they will have no control over it. Please don’t tell them to shush. please don’t try to make parents feel better – you can’t, their baby is dead. There …

Surviving Babyloss

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In the first few days and early weeks after my son died, I wished to feel normal again. I longed, not just for the pain to ease, but just to feel like myself again. It felt like I lived in a bubble, everyone around me was living their normal lives but I was in a very lonely, isolated bubble of vulnerability and pain. I have never felt pain like it – physical pain, mental pain that affected how much I could do, how much I could cope with, how much I could enjoy, how much I could focus on. I felt like I could break at any moment – each day was about forcing myself to get out of bed, to do something rather than just wallow; to do something rather than just desperately want my baby back. There was an aching in my arms for the baby I  couldn’t hold and a physical pain in my heart as it ached for what I had lost. In those early weeks I wasn’t sure how much …

Babyloss – you will survive

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Surviving babyloss

babyloss – arranging a funeral

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There is no preparation for this. Arranging any funeral is difficult but arranging a funeral for your child is unspeakably difficult and I think most of us do it in a blind numbness that keeps us sane. The thought of a funeral was crippling for me – I went through the motions but I resented having to do it. Jamie had died during surgery and the hospital offered to arrange his funeral, which I am grateful for. A lovely woman at the RVI – whose name and title I just don’t know – talked to us about what we wanted. We explained that as we are not religious, we wanted a cremation and simple service, with as little religious input as possible. She found us a funeral director who would respect our wishes and who was wonderful – they organised the date, time and the crematorium  as well as his coffin and we went away to plan music and let people know. We spent an evening deciding on music – I cried a lot and …

babyloss – the early minutes and hours

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Our baby son died at 10.30pm – we asked the team to stop. Jamie had been bleeding and struggling for hours, he was not going to live. Minutes before we had sat in a small room with his surgeon, who had Jamie’s blood on his clothes and his shoes, and his nurse and we had told them we needed to let Jamie go rather then get him onto life support so we could say our goodbyes. My heart felt like it was being ripped from my chest and the desperation and panic I felt consumed me. But we sat and waited to be told that he was gone. We were not expecting any miracles, we knew he was going to die. His nurse cried when she came to tell us, his anaesthetist struggled to hold back his tears as he came to reassure us that Jamie had not felt a thing, that he was not aware. And his surgeon said words he was probably not meant to say, he said he was sorry the surgery …