Baby loss awareness week is 9th-15th October each year. This year our message as a charity is that baby loss awareness is as much about love as it is about loss – we can all relate to loving children, loving children shouldn’t be a taboo and therefore baby loss should not be a taboo. Our events Baby loss awareness workshops: We did 3 free of charge baby loss awareness talks – two of these were face to face and one…
“Ye, good thanks……..” WHAT is going on!, I’m so far from alright I can’t even begin to describe… but out of my mouth pops this utter drivel. My mind is saying something totally different, but I cant help make the situation easier for others by telling a complete lie. The question is worded in a way that assumes the answer is yes, so even when I have felt the worst a human can feel, I have said, “ok thanks.” Something…
When Lenny died everything changed. When Bhai died everything changed again. The loss of our two sons has been profound and devastating but when your child dies it isn’t “just” their loss that you grieve or that changes. This isn’t something we have mentioned much because the loss of our sons has been so catastrophic it has eclipsed everything else but most people would find these life changes alone to be stressful and difficult. In my discussions with bereaved parents…
After almost two years of hearing how people, “can’t even imagine” my life and what it is to be a bereaved parent I’m finding myself in a position where people are imparting their knowledge or experience on me because they at some point had a child (who lived). I understand that this is a common experience amongst new parents. The problem is that we aren’t new parents. No one was available to offer advice in the newborn period after Lenny…
I’m so aware that there are people in this community who desperately want to be in my position but I also feel I owe it to those who have been PAL, are currently, or may be PAL in the future to be honest about this. In the past 18 months I’ve left two babies in a hospital mortuary, held two funerals, attended two post mortems, spoken at one funeral and contributed to an investigation. I’ve set up and run a…
It is 3rd July here in the UK – National Bereaved Parents Day and July is National Bereaved Parents Month. The idea of this day and month is to raise awareness that very sadly children die and leave behind grief stricken parents. This is to recognise parents bereaved through pregnancy, infant and child death at any age and through any cause. We have been bereaved parents for just over 18 months now, we became bereaved parents just 27 minutes after…
To the dads on Father’s Day, For the dads who have experienced infertility, or the loss of a baby or child at any gestation, age or in any circumstance, or a combination of the above. This is for you. I am sorry that your fatherhood doesn’t look like it should and that today is not the celebration that it should be. I know that no matter how long it has been, no matter how many living children you have, and…
We cycled from Auckland to Queenstown over two months, 2250Km via some amazing, beautiful locations, we made the route up as we went along based on recommendations from locals. We averaged 55km a day and elevation gain of 660m/day which overall means we Everested more than 3 times, this means cycling up Everest 3 times in total over the whole trip, total elevation gain- 27000m. For reference, our plane on the journey home was travelling at 12,000m altitude so we…
28th December 2022 little Bhai’s due date. Though to prevent risks of meconium aspiration I would likely have been induced 2 weeks earlier- around Lenny’s first birthday. Bittersweet. We knew his arrival wouldn’t make Lenny’s death easier or the grief easier but we also knew he would bring us so much joy. Pregnancy after loss was scary. Really scary. I’m no wimp I’ve done the world’s highest bungee and abseil, Europe’s highest skydive, some gnarly mountain biking at bike parks…
Christmas 2021 – my due date was the 16th December so we knew we would be bringing a baby home before Christmas. We planned to have Christmas just us with our new baby for the first time. The reality was we arrived as two broken people at my parents’ house just a week after watching our newborn baby die. We walked in dazed pretty empty handed apart from Lenny’s memory box. They were trying to piece together some sort of…