My birthday was less than two months after Lenny died. I absolutely dreaded it. Another cruel ‘milestone’ that I was supposed to celebrate with my son. Also, Lenny died on his birthday, how could I celebrate my birthday or anyone else’s ever again? A good friend advised: “you can’t just ignore it, it will still happen and you will still feel shit.’ So we planned something very low key and unbirthdayish just to ensure that I wasn’t alone on the…
Little Bhai gave us hope at a time when then world was the darkest place imaginable. Bhai is the name we gave to our second son – it means brother in Hindi. Let me explain – around 3/4 months after our darling boy Lenny died, we got a positive pregnancy test result. We knew that another child could never ever replace Lenny and that was never a thought. But our wish to be parents to a living child didn’t die…
Lenny’s death has recently been officially classified as a neonatal death. Before this, it wasn’t entirely clear whether Lenny died in the last seconds of labour which would be classed as an intrapartum stillbirth or a neonatal death. As parents you always want to know exactly what happened to your child but these small details don’t make a difference because the fact of the matter remains that we never held him in our arms whilst he was alive. In those…
When Lenny died we were in shock. We went to the hospital full of excitement (well Roy was, I was in the van thinking we better get there quick this baby is coming and it turns out I was right). The rest of the labour was quick and straightforward until right at the end when his heartrate decelerated. The doctors knew he needed to be born and were ready to offer a little bit of help. No one thought he…
I read a Guardian article which made me cross, well not the article but the topic. It is about something termed, ‘prolonged grief,’ the article is here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/16/prolonged-grief-disorder-diagnosis-us. The DSM is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual which categorises mental health disorders in the US, it is very influential in the UK, anyway now the disorder, ‘prolonged grief’ has been added. The article does discuss some general scepticism about the DSM (rightly in my opinion). I have some additional concerns to add…
When I was pregnant with Lenny, I remember the concern I had about reaching the magical 12 week mark where the risks of miscarriage decrease hugely. I felt nervous approaching my 20 week scan as sadly I do know people who have had later second trimester losses so I knew we weren’t yet out of the woods. However, entering the third trimester I began to grow in confidence and even more so as I had a scan at 38 weeks…
Bright lights, neatly packed rows and so many people walking around being so normal. There is nothing more ‘normal’ or ‘run of the mill’ than nipping to the shop to pick up a few things. But when you are feeling anything but normal it is the most abnormal of experiences. There should be warning signs for grieving people that supermarkets are absolutely not safe places to be. We had been in this shop so many times but the last time…
We sat opposite the two most sensible people we know after one of the meals they had kindly cooked us. They have two great dogs – cocker spaniels – who we were fussing. We started talking dogs (our favourite topics of conversation are pretty much bikes, dogs and food). They mentioned their family members had just had a litter of puppies – a direct line to their dog. This was really early in our grief, just days after Lenny’s funeral….