Living with grief

Only the people that have been through what we have been through will truly understand what it means to live with grief after the loss of a child. Even people that lose a really close loved one like a parent or spouse can’t really understand because although the pain is just as unbearable, it is not the same. A person who has lost their spouse is a widow and a person who has lost their parent is an orphan but there is no word for when a parent loses a child. When people come to see you after you’ve lost a spouse or a parent, they don’t ask if you’re going to have another one or say “everything happens for a reason” because that would be a monstrous thing to say to someone who has just lost a loved one. But yet, when someone loses a child those are the kinds of things that are said and it is very lonely living in this big old world, full of people that don’t understand your pain.

 People just automatically assume that because I am participating in society that I am fine now or that I am over it, as if they presume that somebody who is grieving must stay home and stay hidden until they are okay to come out, like a bear that’s been hibernating for the winter. You don’t want to be that person who can’t be around babies or pregnant women and even though you never would wish what you have been through on anyone else, secretly deep down you’re asking “Why did they get to keep their baby but I didn’t?” 

There is so much going on in the world, especially around women being able to ask for help when they are struggling with their kids and rightly so, having a child can be tiring, it can be hard and it can be lonely too. But at least they’re not dead right? It is actually shocking the amount of times someone has said to someone whose baby died “Are you sure you even want kids when you can see how naughty mine are?” or “I wish I had your life, I never get a minute to myself” …. The only advice I can give to those people is … READ THE ROOM! You have every right to complain about how hard being a parent is, absolutely … just not to me.

It is also shocking the amount of times I have been told that “you are different now” or “you’re not the same person you used to be” and I just don’t understand how other people can expect you to be. When your child’s heart stops beating you will never go back to being the person you were before, you never get over it and it is enough to tip people over the edge and rightly fucking so. It has happened to me twice! Either I have been so incredibly unlucky that the love of my life has the same recessive gene as me that means combined we make children with a rare genetic disorder or each time I have lost a child it has been for completely different reasons and we were just unlucky. Either way it is some pretty shit luck. 

I couldn’t say which experience was worse out of the two because they were completely different. Rudy was classed as a ‘late miscarraige’ because she died when I was 18 weeks pregnant. This meant that although she had a funeral and we have her ashes, she doesn’t have a birth certificate and I was only allowed two weeks off work. We went to an ultrasound completely unaware that she had already died. The whole experience was traumatic but the utter shock and disbelief is the most traumatic part of it all for us. Everybody waits to get to 12 weeks pregnant and then it is safe, so we completely did not expect it, especially as we had just seen her alive 2 weeks before. With Aurora, we were told she was going to pass away and we chose to let her pass away on her own so we waited and had time to prepare. 

You can’t ever prepare for your child to die, I thought I could but the truth is you can’t. I remained positive throughout the pregnancy, not that she would survive because I knew it was impossible, but I remained positive that I could survive it. Right now, 6 months on I have survived but I wouldn’t say I am surviving, I am just existing. It isn’t any sort of life but I know that it is going to get better. A lot of people are uneducated and think that when a baby dies, somehow it just magically disappears and the woman recovers quickly… you know because the baby is dead … it’s not like they had a baby right? It is exactly the same experience, you experience labour, you have contractions, you have to dilate to deliver your baby, you need all the same pain relief. Only … when the baby is born … it’s not alive. How can people ever expect us to ‘be over it’ or ‘okay now’ when we have held our child’s lifeless body in our arms? We got to see their perfect faces, kiss their gorgeous lips and hold their tiny fingers. We got to fall in love with them even more than we did when they were inside of us but yet we couldn’t take them home. We had to leave them alone, in a hospital filled with strangers which goes against all of your natural instincts as a mother. Your body is filled with hormones and milk, screaming at you that you just had a baby and you need to nurse it but you can’t. 

This was not the first time that I had felt that my body had betrayed me. The first time was not being able to keep my children alive and safe, the second time was my body not realising that they had died. I had never felt depression before but those days after leaving the hospital, I experienced it. I just kept saying to my husband “I am not going to do anything silly but I feel like I just want to die”. My therapist said that wanting to die is the strongest feeling of pain and it is ok to admit that. And I do admit it, every day without my daughters feels like a death sentence. My body continues to betray me even now, six months later. I put all of these things in place to work towards and focus on, changing my career, changing my life, taking all these massive steps whilst doing things I have always wanted to do. I am not smoking, I am eating healthy, I am exercising, I am fundraising, I am going to college, I am seeing friends and I am seeing a therapist. I am doing everything that I am supposed to be doing to cope with living with grief, but my body is still betraying me. 

Sore eye muscles from crying and stress
Too much acid being produced in my stomach from stress
Migraine with aura that felt like I was having a stroke … from stress

But yet I don’t feel stressed, I just feel really fucking sad