It’s Baby Loss Awareness Week this week and I’ve found it hard to get through and face it this year. It’s not true when they say time is a healer. I think you deal with grief better over time and find more coping mechanisms and that gets you through - but you don’t heal.
The smallest trigger, feeling tired, and the build up to ‘events’ like this can reopen all the hurt and pain just like it did right after Tabitha died.
I am quite happy to not push myself into anything this year. I want to protect my heart and as time has gone on with my grief I’ve realised that stepping back isn’t doing a disservice to Tabitha’s memory. We honour our babies every week in the ways that we can, we don’t have to go and above and beyond when it’s just too exhausting sometimes.
So I’m not doing a series of posts or fundraising this year, but I do want to talk about something... Conversation.
This week is about raising awareness of baby loss. If there’s no awareness then there’s no conversation about it and then there will be no funding, research, care, or support. This affects 1 in 4 of us. 1 in 4! I find this number hard to compute in 2022.
So I just wanted to write and add my voice to the conversation. I wanted to write about how you can hear the voice, listen and learn, or take action, because at the moment I’m scared for future voices.
I have a living child who was 3 when Tabitha was born and died. She’s 7 this week and has started asking more and more questions, and has become very vocal about how she has a sister who is ‘in the clouds.’ I have been present with her twice now when she has said this to adults who in turn respond to her story with silence. My heart breaks for her. She wants to talk about her sister, her loss, but is met with nothing.
If my daughter said that her grandparent or parent was in the clouds, I’m sure she would be given words of comfort and reassurance, but when she says her baby sister has died she’s not responded to.
As there is no word to describe the pain or loss it doesn’t mean we don’t have to talk about it. ‘Widow’ creates an immediate understanding and sorrow within us. ‘Orphan’ conjures up pain and we feel the loss, we can feel the tragedy. But there is no word for when a parent or family loses a baby. There’s no word that instantly sums up our pain and frustration and the tragedy of Tabitha’s death. There’s no collective feeling there, just a bit of a panic that we might cry if we talk about it if I’m honest.
I can relate to what happened to my daughter, it’s happened to me. I don’t want her to grow up thinking she can’t talk about something that has impacted our lives so much.
So I’m just hoping by writing this adds to the awareness. Starts conversation. Gives us a voice.
You don’t have to have lost a baby to be part of the conversation either. By hearing our voices and taking action we can all contribute this week. The numbers speak for themselves, if you haven’t been through it you will know someone who has (whether they talk about it or not). 1 in 4 has to change and talking about this has to change.
Be part of the conversation, raise the awareness, and if someone ever tells you that they lost a baby (or that their baby sister or brother lives in the clouds) then let’s just show the love, compassion and care that we would show them in any sad situation, we don’t have to be silent.
