Babyloss Awareness Month

October is Babyloss Awareness Month with the Babyloss Awareness Week being held between the 9th and 15th of October finishing with the Wave of Light on the 15th of October.

It is something we have always talked about since Rhianna died, something that I think is vitally important, but at the same time something I hate to get involved in.

I find the whole concept of Babyloss Awareness Month really hard. It brings up so many emotions and ordinarily I love October as a month, I love the start of the autumn, winter days, Halloween and the start of the run up to Christmas. I love October as it is the beginning of our birthdays, and that is something I get super excited about. But it also means that we miss Rhianna more than we normally do, as birthdays and celebrations mean we are fully aware of one present being missing, one halloween costume not being brought, christmas presents missing and everything else.

It makes this time of the year hard.

There is no question about it.

So as much as I think and feel and know that Babyloss Awareness month and week is so so important, some years I step away, I could be more involved but I am not, for my own mental health more than anything else.

This year with the added bonus of going into a national lockdown on Rhiannas birthday, with her dad having to work for the first time ever on her birthday I had decided on my own not to do too much about babyloss awareness month and week this year.

I had quietly decided not to talk about it a lot, and to look after myself as this year I have felt a bit of a failure in doing things for Rhianna, the one day we have for her that we have always made for her was taken away this year. And to be honest that still hurts. So I was going to quietly share a few things and not really do a lot more.

Then yesterday happened, we woke to the news of a family loosing their child and socially media responded and not always in a nice way.

And you know what for me it highlighted how necessary Babyloss Awareness Month and Week is needed.

Babyloss is still seen as such a taboo subject.

People are uncomfortable about us mums and dads talking and sharing about our children that have died.

And yes it may be uncomfortable to read, it may be awkward for you to see.

But this is our lives.

We shouldn’t be judged how we choose to grieve for our children, whether that is loudly, quietly or somewhere in between.

We shouldn’t be judged and decided that mentally we aren’t ok when we talk about them.

When we are sad about them we should be able to cope with it, talk about it, mention it, share memories, moments and whatever else we need to do without having someone judge us.

We shouldn’t be made to be silent about our babies.

Babyloss affects 1 in 4 of us, and do you know when I found out about most of the people in my life who had been affected by babyloss, when we lost Rhianna. As so many people affected keep silent.

And thats not ok.

Why should we keep silent, unless we want to then you know thats our decision.

Grief is so personal.

Not even Mr L and I grieve the same for Rhianna. But we both grieve for her, and it doesn’t matter what way we do it, we still do it.

We don’t judge each other and nor should anyone else.

We have got a long way to go with babyloss and how it is perceived talked about and understood and that to me is why we need to have an awareness month and a week.

We need to break down these taboos, we need to make it ok to let our feelings out, to talk about our babies. To feel safe to talk about our babies not to be judged and to remember them however we feel is right for us.

We need the world to let us be their parents in anyway we seem fit, is that too much to ask?