Mother of 3

I am a Mum.

To the outside world I have 1 daughter.

To people who know me I have 2 children.

Not many people know I should have 3 children in my arms not just in my heart.

I have been struggling with this for quite some time now.

I talk about Jasons death to anyone who will listen and I write about it a lot to help raise awareness and hope it can comfort other parents in some way knowing they are not alone. I know I am lucky to have Ellie, safe and here in my arms and I love being their Mummy but there is a baby who isnt spoken of, mainly because I focused on growing Ellie and making her arrive safely. Recently I have found myself grieving for the baby I dont talk about and part of this grief comes from Tommy’s new campaign; #Togetherforchange. This new campaign calls for more people to be open about their loss/losses and to challenge the stigma that is associated with all types of baby loss. As a mother whose baby died after birth I find this campaign is more relatable to those who have suffered miscarriages or stillbirth but I also know that Tommys goal is to get ALL people talking openly about all types of baby loss.

Together For Change Video

As I said above a lot of the stories linked to this campaign are miscarriage or stillbirth stories and it got me thinking about my own little baby who didnt make it. My tiny little bean who should be 20 months old and probably as mischievous as their twin sister. At 8 weeks we had an early scan due to be high risk and monitored more closely after my perfect pregnancy with Jason still resulted in his death. I was so anxious waiting for that early scan, expecting the worst because thats all I knew. It felt like hours waiting for that scan, we hadnt told anyone about the pregnancy as we knew it wasnt guaranteed but decided if everything was okay we would tell our parents. Even then I knew being pregnant again was going to be difficult, I wanted Jason more than ever, I wanted to be pregnant with him, to change the outcome and have him with us.

That was the day we found out we were expecting twins! I had always joked I would end up pregnant with twins but we were quickly told while one baby was growing well, the other had stopped growing at 7 weeks 5 days and there was no heartbeat. Its not until now that I think back to that tiny bean but at the time I just wanted the other baby to be okay and told myself they died to help the other survive, it gave our babya higher chance of living and taking them home. I do still believe that if Ellies twin had carried on growing my chances of them both surviving would have been slim.

I watch Ellie growing up and wonder what she would have been like if her twin had survived, if she had a living sibling to play with and then I feel guilty that once again my body stole any change of a living sibling from her.

We had  what is known as Vanishing Twin Syndrome. This basically means that the remaining twin continues to grow as it should but the fetal tissue from the non-surviving twin is partially or fully reabsorbed.

We werent given any explanation at the time, I didn’t know whether this baby would be miscarried, I didnt know whether I was going to bleed or what was going to happen and in fact nothing happened, at our 12 week scan the tiny bean had disappeared and there was just an empty sac, we may not have ever known about Ellies twin if it hadnt have been for that early scan.

As a loss mum I will always wonder what my life would have been like if all 3 of my children had lived. I find as I talk and write about my babies I want to include that little bean more and more but stop myself as its not common knowledge about our little bean and I dont think I could take the questions from people thinking I am pregnant, so that is where this post comes from, not completely random or looking for attention just trying to share the fact that I am the mother of 3 children but only ever get to hold one of them in my arms ❤

If anyone feels like they need to sharw their story or seek support then please head over to the Tommy’s  Support group on Facebook which is so supportive.