3 things I’ve learnt through the cord accident- Des

It felt like our world came crashing down.

We lost our daughter in July 2022 to a cord accident. I remember sitting on the floor of our nursery and staring at the empty cot that I had been just about to unpack the mattress for. I sobbed when going through her wardrobe to pick out clothes to cremate her in. Waiting 24h in the delivery suite to deliver her, knowing that she would be sleeping, while babies cried in the other suites around me, was excruciating. I think I not only mourned the loss of my daughter but also the loss of the life and us that I knew.

We would never be the same again. Pregnancy would never be the same again - I wouldn’t feel the unbridled joy of feeling my baby kick again without the terror that another accident might occur. Peaceful nights where baby slept would mean anxiety and sweat over whether baby was still doing fine. But we wanted to make sure that any changes to our lives were positive. We weren’t in denial - we just didn’t want the memory of our daughter to be marred by negative emotions like anger or bitterness, because she was everything good and perfect to us and more. I don’t have enough words for this.

But if theres something I’d like to tell someone going through this, it's these 3 things:

1. Give your grief a name and welcome it with open arms.

In the days following our loss, I took time to craft messages to close friends describing what had happened (to the extent that I was able to bear). Some messages took weeks to complete. I wanted people to know that it wasn’t a miscarriage, that my baby was healthy. That I would have been able to carry her to term and she had a larger than life personality that the world wasn’t ready for. We are stronger than we think we can be. I cried so much. I cried all the time. I cried until I couldn’t breathe, until I had no more tears. At one point I thought I was crying, but apparently I was just staring into space.

I not only had to grapple with my grief but with post partum. I was leaking breastmilk. I couldn’t bear to look at my body in the mirror as it was a constant reminder. So I gave myself space to not look at the mirror today, but maybe Id’ try again the next day.

2. Lean on each other.

What pulled me through and got me to where I am today was my love for my husband. I would pick myself up and do the simple things that took an inordinate amount of effort - eating, showering, just living - because i knew that if I did not do it, he would be worried sick. We would talk about our grief in the simplest terms, "I don’t know why, but I felt really sad today." "I saw a baby girl and had to go to the toilet to cry." "I sat in the car and cried for an hour." We would comfort each other but always be mindful that we were experiencing grief differently simply because we had different roles and experiences. A mother carries her baby for 9 months; a father can only carry the hope of carrying his baby after 9 months.

3. Remember them.

It was easier in the immediate term to just bury the memory with our child, like many people were telling us to do. "Close up the nursery", "Take apart and keep the cot", "Don’t keep photos of your baby". But I knew that it would hurt in the long term if we did that, especially as our baby girl was our pride and joy.

Instead we constantly looked for signs of our angel babies in the beauty of the world around us. Beautiful sunset - angels are painting the sky. Rainy day - angels are having a water play day.

I cried so much whenever I saw something beautiful. Until one day I didn’t cry anymore and I found comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone instead. It was harder for my husband. But one day my husband came home and told me with a sad smile that a baby girl smiled at him that day, and that he felt our daughter's presence, almost as though she'd asked the baby to help give her daddy a little smile.