angel baby – Mothering A Rainbow

Seven years since I last held you.
Seven years since I saw those tiny little hands.
Seven years since I had to say Goodbye.

Seven years of missing you.
Seven years of hurting.
Seven years of what ifs.
Seven years of why me.

I can’t imagine our lives with a 7 year old. I guess that’s what hurts the most; that we never got to have a life with him in it. A day with him was never enough but a day was all we got.

Jason’s birthday came and went in a flash. It was a normal Tuesday, school/work and hardly any time to think about the day itself. People asked me how I was, I was fine I suppose. The days that followed seemed harder. I’m a huge believer that the build up is always worse, the days that led to Jason’s birthday haunt me. I should have known, I could have done more, I should have been able to stop this from happening. So yeah, the actual day felt like any other. We had a cake and told Ellie it was Jason’s birthday cake which she was thrilled about and then the usual routine kept us busy.

The days that followed were hard on Ellie, I’ve never sheltered her from Jason’s death – of course she doesn’t know the full extent of what happened but she does know he’s dead and it’s a tough thing for a 5 year old to comprehend. Her teacher brought her new baby in to school to meet everyone and usually Ellie would have been all over her but she looked at the baby and just said it reminded her of baby Jason. She has talked to her new teacher and her amazing TA about him and why she got upset that day. She asked me if he could just come and play with her, just for his birthday. It breaks my heart to know she grieves in her own way for a sibling she never got to see.

They’ve also been learning the Easter story at school which has confused her a little. Why shouldn’t her big brother be able to come back to life if a man who lived thousands of years ago was able to do it. Why can’t we put his body in a cave and wait for the angel to revive him. Why was Jesus special enough to be allowed to live again and not Jason? These are just some of the questions we’ve had to try and answer for her. I’m not a Christian, I never was and I love that she’s so inquisitive when it comes to religion but jeez they were tough! I don’t believe in God – if there is some almighty being then making me live without my child is pretty crappy of them don’t you think?

Thankfully, Ellie has been more settled again this weekend. Jason’s birthday is a memory and in the eyes of a child she’s done with it all. She does still have moments where she talks about him and I will always encourage her to do so, he is her big brother, he is my son and he will always be apart of our family.

One definition of Hope: to want something to happen or to be true, and usually have a good reason to think that it might

19th August in the baby loss community is A Day of Hope. A day to remember all those babies and children who died. A day where people are encouraged to break the silence around baby loss. Whether that is a miscarriage, a stillbirth, neonatal or infant loss, they all matter.

Hope is a strange emotion after loss, for me I found it hard to hope for anything that couldn’t be guaranteed. I didn’t want to feel excited about things if they weren’t going to happen. The hope of meeting your baby during pregnancy is the best feeling in the world but once my eyes were opened to the fact that babies can and do die, having hope wasn’t something I found easy to do. I hoped for my Son, I was so excited to meet the little person growing inside me and although I did meet him, it certainly wasn’t in the way I was expecting and all my hopes were shattered.

Today, I hope that someone is given the courage to talk about their loss, their baby or child. I hope that someone reading this knows that their children matter.

I am not afraid to openly talk about my son who was born, lived and died on the same day nor am I afraid to talk about my loss. Jason’s story is still one of my favourite stories to tell, the ending isn’t happy but, as most of us know, not all stories have a happy ending. I will say his name and share his story for as long as I live. I will break down those barriers that stop parents and others talking about the loss of their own babies.