Our Family Lost A Baby

I have really toyed with this post, as I really don’t want it to come across as a post where I am having a moan about Babyloss Awareness as I really am not. I believe in everything that Babyloss Awareness Week stands for, I fully believe that the stigma of Babyloss needs to be gone, that we should be supporting the bereaved better, that the services should be better and that we should understand how to talk about Babyloss better.

We should be more prepared, when we mention our children we shouldn’t stop people in their tracks.

When they say sorry for our children dying we shouldn’t be stumped with what to say back.

We shouldn’t care about the response we get back – but somewhere along the line society has made us care.

We should be standing by both parents not just the one that carried the child, both lost their baby, their dreams, their perfect life.

We should be helping when future children, if we are lucky enough to have them, come by helping with our anxieties, fears and worries.

All of this should be talked about more.

All of this should have better support, resources, and help.

All of this is important.

And none of that should change, and this week and awareness does so much for the babyloss community. I don’t want it to seem I am knocking any of that.

I am not.

But there is something else I experience every single babyloss awareness year.

Something that I experience more and more as the years go by.

When the babyloss awareness week finishes, in the moments after the Wave of Light, when the world unites for our babies, there is this feeling of just utter pain, despair and I am not even sure those are the right words.

There’s a dull.

There are quiet messages between mum’s all having lost their babies checking we are all right.

Messages of support being given.

Messages of understanding being sent.

You see none of us need to be reminded our babies have died.

Every millisecond of every one of our moments on this earth knows we are missing our baby.

We never need to be reminded of this.

But you know what however much babyloss awareness, and the wave of light highlight the important things for the babyloss community, they also highlight our babies dead.

And when those candles have burnt, and you feel the love of everyone burning their candles for the babies gone too soon, you feel it through the pictures.

It’s amazing.

It really is.

But when they have all burnt out the emotions you personally have, the ones you probably try to keep deep down at a level you can control just become too much.

Most wave of light days I cry.

Not because I miss Rhianna more that day, more because this day just highlights all the babies lost.

And my baby is one of them.

And you know what that’s just utter shit.

All of it.

And I have found it takes time to recover from it.

As it takes time to get over her birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas. It takes time to get back in control of those emotions.

And it doesn’t get better in time, it doesn’t get easier, it doesn’t really get harder, but it is always there.

So why I support everything Babyloss Awareness stands for, and everything it aims to do, I find it utterly draining.

And I have to take time out after to recover.

I need to.

For me, for Rhianna, for the boys, for our family.