Editor’s Note: This guest post is by a member of our Grieving Your Youngest group for loss mothers with living children, but no baby born after loss. Although Still Mothers’ focus is on families with no living children, we do see the need for resources for families with living children, but no baby born after loss. This post is for those families.
PLEASE NOTE: This post contains information about a living child. Please be advised, there may be triggering language for those who have no living children. Please consider your feelings before reading, if this is a hard topic for you.
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by Louise Botterill
One of the areas I have found I am most misunderstood is that although I have 3 healthy children, there should be more. Just one more. It’s all I ever wanted. And after being lucky enough to have 3 uncomplicated pregnancies and births I never could have predicted that I would be where I am now. I call it grateful and grieving. That fourth baby I wanted so much died. Twice. Leaving me now with 5 children not 4. Yet you see 3, not the 4 I was meant to have or the 5 I do have. And when you are faced with a situation like ours where another loss is likely, and you have to think of the effects that will have not only on yourself and your partner but also on your other children it’s likely that we will come to the realisation that we shouldn’t try again. For the greater good.
And so I grieve. For my son Michael and my daughter Lyra. But also for that fourth child I will never bring home. The life they should have had, the way they would have influenced our lives. The things they will never do, the person they will never be. Gone. All gone.
It’s a secondary grief. Not tangible like the loss of my son and daughter. Yet heavy and all consuming none the less. The grief of a future not only without my children who died but the one who never got a chance to live. The one who will forever remain a distant dream, with no memories of anything to cling to. Although the memories of the babies I lost are nothing more than second rate keepsakes, I’m grateful to have them. Ultrasound pictures, birth certificates, photographs, tiny outfits and blankets. This secondary grief has nothing, not even a memorial garden or tattoo, or a fundraising charity. A life denied before it even had a chance. Because it’s the right thing.
The only tangible things I have for this kind grief are the baby items in storage. The things that have been unpacked and hurriedly repacked twice now. Always in the hope that one day they would be used. And now those boxes have become a painful reminder of how things don’t always turn out the way you intended. I can’t get rid of the stuff yet I’m uncomfortable having it there, knowing I’ll never need it again.
It would appear to give into this grief takes away from the gratefulness of the children I have. But it doesn’t. The two coexist beautifully. Each amplifying the other. I am more grateful for what I have because of what I have lost. Yet what I grieve is made worse by seeing what I have. A paradoxical existence I will never be free of. And nor would I want to be. For living like this makes me passionate and loving, cautious and optimistic, empathetic and understanding. It has made me a million times the person I would have been before.
So next time someone says the words “at least you have your other children, maybe you should give up on your dream so you can concentrate on them” I will bite my tongue. I will envy their innocence and how simple the situation must seem to them. And I will put it down to the fact that they just don’t understand. Not that I wish anyone could understand the nature and complexity of grateful and grieving because you can’t until you are there.
Louise is 36 and lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and 3 living children. After becoming pregnant with her fourth child in 2009 she thought life was about as perfect as it was going to get. It came as a great shock to learn that Michael had died suddenly in utero without explanation. Telling her 3 living children that their baby brother wasn’t going to come home was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do. For 4 years they decided not to have any more children until life had other plans and she fell pregnant with a daughter in 2014. Although very excited the anxieties of pregnancy after loss were amplified with her 3 children constantly asking if this baby would die too. Sadly these anxieties were realised and her precious daughter Lyra also died in utero with no explanation. Louise and her family are now coming to terms with not having another baby as the risk of loss is too great and too devastating for them. She is passionate about supporting all families experiencing any kind of child loss but especially those juggling their own grief and that of their living children. She also wants the world to know that “rainbow” babies can die too, and that it’s ok to realise when enough is enough and that being brave enough to say no to trying again is ok too.
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Much love to you Louise ?????
Even though my only living child was born after my losses I can relate to this. I am no longer able to have children because it is just too dangerous and logically I know it was the right decision to make it so but emotionally I struggle every day. I am so grateful for my son but I mourn what was, what could have been, what should have been, what he deserves. I hope that some day I am in a place where I can “just bite my tongue” when someone says just be happy you at least got one…at this time it makes me angry…but some day, some day.