How can it be?

How can it be? A question I ask myself, over and over and over again. How can it be that we have survived 11 months without our beautiful boy? How can it be that we didn’t get to bring him home in the October like we expected to? How can it be that my body failed us, failed him? How can it be that we are parents, we have a son but he can’t be seen?

Just how can it be? 

This time last year…

It was 31st January 2017, a Tuesday night, about 6.30pm and I had just disappeared upstairs and done a pregnancy test without Dave knowing. I hadn’t been feeling quite myself for a week or so and a friend had suggested taking a test. I hadn’t thought anything of it, I’d done plenty in the past that had come to nothing and so expected the same. Then there it was. That life-altering moment. Those blue lines telling me we were pregnant. I called Dave and asked him to come upstairs, he chuntered something about ‘why did I have to’ when he was in the middle of making tea so I repeated myself and said it was important. I didn’t even know what to say to him as I stared in shock at this rainbow baby we’d been gifted.

2017…our best year yet?

How could that be when you’ve lost your son? When your baby has died? When your heart has been well and truly shattered into a million pieces?

But how about if we looked at it differently?

Dexter’s First Christmas 2017

Musings about our first Christmas experience without Dexter Bear…

It’s fair to say since losing Dexter, Christmas was the most horrendous and unimaginable event. I couldn’t even bear to consider it. How could we get through a time that was meant to be full of happy memories, joy and family? Everybody there celebrating Dexter’s First Christmas, just how we’d all imagined in all the memories we’d excitedly created; passing him round while Dave and I tried to eat a luke warm Christmas dinner, dressing him in his ‘My First Christmas’ outfit, reading him ”Twas the night before Christmas’ and making our own family traditions. To say we couldn’t wait was an understatement. This must be one of the happiest and most exciting times when you have children right?

Thank you…

Dear Lynsey,

This an open letter to you and to any other new-mum friends or pregnant friends that have a friend that has experienced the trauma and sadness of losing a child.

I remember the day you told me you were pregnant Lynsey, I was sat in my room and I was around 16 weeks pregnant, completely unaware of what Dave and I were going to suffer. It was still early days for you but you and I were both so excited, I was over the moon knowing that just 10 or so weeks after me you’d be on maternity leave and our babies would have been growing up as great friends and you and I would be able to support each other as we navigated our way through the early days of motherhood.

‘I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat’…

Monday 12th June 2017 was the start of the end of our pregnancy journey. It was the week we became parents. It was the week that our son died. It was the week our life changed forever. A week that is imprinted on our hearts and minds forever. 

What the ‘Wave Of Light’ means to us…

Sunday 15th October 2017 marked the end of ‘Baby Loss Awareness Week’ where at 7pm (local time all over the world) the ‘Wave Of Light’ is held. I find the evening such a beautifully poignant but also heartbreaking event.