No one feels another's grief

No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.
(Franz Schubert)

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One thing I have been conscious of since Monty was born is that I haven't had (or made) room for other peoples' grief. My primary concern throughout my bereavement journey has been my own health and the welfare of my husband and daughter. However, I recognise that many others have been affected by my son's death: our immediate family (the grand-parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and great-grandparents who were looking forward to his arrival), friends and colleagues.

At the very beginning, I could only focus on my own emotions and take account of my husband's and daughter's reactions. I couldn't process anyone else's experience of my son's stillbirth. Perhaps that was wrong of me? It seems selfish in retrospect but I just didn't have the emotional capacity to deal with external factors, I just had to concentrate on myself and my little family unit. So, I didn't solicit inputs to the funeral service, I just wrote it with my husband with the help of a bottle of wine (although my mother wrote a 'letter from the grandparents' that we later included). I was aware that other people needed a grieving process and so we organised the Festival of Light but there was no way that I could have organised or invited people to attend a funeral and wake. Maybe I should have done more to recognise others' need to grieve and pay their respects?

A few weeks after Monty was born, after the funeral had taken place but before the Festival of Light, my Dad phoned me. He wanted to talk about Monty but didn't want to make me upset. (I think I said that nothing he could say would make me more upset than I already felt!) He said he was struggling to understand what had happened and kept thinking that life shouldn't turn out this way - he ought to have four grandchildren and it wasn't natural that one had died before he was born. I didn't know what to say, except that I was struggling with similar emotions.

Then, my boss came to see me and she said that several of my colleagues had taken the news of Monty's stillbirth badly and sometimes became overcome with tears at their desks. I didn't really know how to deal with that!

Even now, 16 months later, I find it hard to understand how other people feel about Monty. I know that our family are extremely sad for his loss and wish that things had turned out differently but I can't imagine how they feel day to day about him not being here. Perhaps I should try to do more to engage with wider family and friends when I talk about my son and to empathise with their experience of grief in relation to his loss? It is hard, though, because I am still so involved in my own emotions.

Stillbirth remains a taboo subject for many people and not everyone feels comfortable talking about a dead baby. No-one feels another's grief but I want to break down some of the barriers associated with baby loss and bereavement stress and to try to help others in dealing with the emotional conflict that it creates.

Every single year, we're a different person

A friend asked me recently, how I feel now that more than a year has passed since Monty was born.

We have children of similar ages - her elder daughter is two months older than my daughter and her younger daughter was born three months after my son. We have both recently experienced grief: she lost her mother a couple of years ago; I lost my son in November 2012. We have been on our own bereavement journeys.

I am different now. Neither the person I was when my son was stillborn, nor the person I was before he died. I can't explain how - just different. Grief has aged me and changed my perspective on life.

Getting past the first year has been a huge task. So many 'firsts' to acknowledge and deal with. I know there will be more to come but now they will be fewer and farther between.

I have felt as if some of my emotional burden has been lifted since we passed Monty's anniversary. I wound myself up to his 'birthday' and held myself together but, the next day, I crumbled. It was a good job I had booked the day off work and arranged to see my bereavement counsellor because I was a mess.

I am definitely feeling better. I am more confident (although my self-confidence and self-esteem are markedly lower than they were before) and I have started to take on more in my hobbies and at work. This week, I have increased my working hours and I'm concurrently working on four projects. That was unthinkable a year ago, when I was just contemplating my return to the office. However, things are not back to 'normal'. I used to be a social and extroverted person but I am less so now. I find it difficult to meet new people and at work I'm not ready to return to line management - I just can't take on the responsibility of other people.

My focus and priorities have changed. It's all about me, my husband and daughter, my son's memory and our hopes for another baby. My family.

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All of us every single year, we're a different person.
I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
(Steven Spielberg)

Brave, Open & Hopeful

I have 'graduated' from bereavement counselling: completed the programme; been signed off; released from the system, set free!

It has been a long journey. I wasn't planning to seek counselling but a friend told me I should go. She said that six months after Monty's death, I seemed angry. I didn't think I was but, looking back, I can see that I probably looked very angry with the world. I had just returned to work and wasn't coping very well with the annual performance review, setting forward objectives or thinking about 'where did I want to be in 5 years' time?'. In reality, I think I was extremely frustrated.

So, I promised I would attend a couple of sessions. I actually went many times over six months. I could have easily turned away for so many reasons but I kept my promise to my friend and actually found the process very helpful.

In the first session, I completed a depression scoring test. Guess what? I was mildly depressed! (No surprise there...) I set some aims: to deal with my anxiety and fear about a future pregnancy and to deal with my anger and frustration. I also expressed three desires: to have another baby; to achieve a work-life balance that would allow me to make the best of my time as a mummy and as an employee; and for something positive to come from my loss.

My last counselling session was in the early New Year. We looked at some emotion cards and I had to choose three that expressed how I felt when I started counselling and three that expressed how I feel now. There was a difference. (Phew!) At the end of the process, I said I felt brave, open and hopeful. Brave for having taken the plunge and sought counselling when I didn't want to. Open for having talked honestly about my experience and my feelings with a stranger. Hopeful for the future.

My life is different now in so many ways to what I thought it would be like. I never expected to be a bereaved parent but I believe I have learnt a huge amount through losing my son. I have made and lost friendships, I have found inner strength and I have developed new perspectives. I have navigated my way through a difficult first year without Monty and feel better equipped to face the second.

I hope to help others by sharing my experience.

It was the worst of times...

This time last year, I was newly bereaved. I was depressed. Not on medication but I felt like a zombie - just going through the motions of life.

Having lost my second baby, I felt as though the ground had fallen away under my feet. I thought I had let everyone down by not providing the longed-for child. I was convinced it would turn out to be my fault and had no idea how I would live with myself.

I felt I was letting my daughter down because I was unable to give her the attention she needed. She was two-and-a-half years old and confused. Why were her parents both at home? Why was mummy crying? Why were grandparents coming to stay? Where was the baby?

I thought I was the world's worst mother. Not only had my son died inside me, without me knowing (where was my 'instinct'? why didn't I notice something was wrong?) but I felt unable to function as a mother for my daughter. I didn't want to play or sing or laugh - I just wanted to curl up on the sofa and hold her close. I managed to take her to nursery, to gymnastics, to singing group but I couldn't join in with any of these activities. We had started potty-training but I had to put it on hold because I just couldn't cope.

One year on, I am feeling a lot better: I am looking forward to Christmas and have planned some family holidays for next year. I can smile, laugh, join in and have fun. There are still days when I wonder about my parenting ability but now they are fewer and farther between. I am no longer depressed, although symptoms of my bereavement stress remain. I'm nearing the end of my bereavement counselling and feel as if some of the weight of my loss has been lifted.

Guest post: Should have been...

This is a guest post written by my husband:

It should have been our son Monty's first birthday today.

We should have been watching his big sister "help" him open his presents, wondering with a smile how much worse it was going to be at Christmas, just a couple of weeks away.

We should have been wondering, one year in, if we were going to stick with two children, or try for the third one we'd always held as a possibility.

Instead, it's a year since we released Chinese lanterns into the sky to say goodbye to our stillborn baby. He came six weeks early, perfectly formed but small, too small. A common viral infection, picked up at the wrong time, damaged the placenta enough so that it couldn't support him as he grew. We had no idea anything was wrong until he had already died. The virus usually has no symptoms in healthy adults, certainly not anything distinct from the normal symptoms of early pregnancy, and is carried by a large proportion of the population. There was nothing anyone could have done.

We didn't find any of this out until three doubt- and guilt-filled months later. In this respect we are luckier, for want of a better term, than many parents of stillborn children, who never find out why their babies died or, worse, find out that they were in some way responsible. We also didn't have to spend months at a hospital bedside watching our tiny child struggle and fail to survive. In the awful club of bereaved parents, we're by no means the worst off.

I have learnt more about grief than I ever hoped to. I have learnt the uselessness of the one question everybody asks: "Is there anything I can do?". This is unanswerable - the only thing a grieving parent wants is not to be one, and nobody can deliver that. Far better to ask something that does not transfer a burden of having to think of an answer beyond yes or no: "would you like to come out for a drink / coffee / over for dinner?".

I have learnt that grief has physical symptoms as well as the more expected mental ones. We have both had the worst year, in terms of health, of our adult lives, and were told to expect as much.

We talk about Monty frequently, even with our daughter when she wants to, which is quite often. The raw wound has now become scar tissue - it no longer automatically hurts to probe it, but occasionally some circumstance or thought can slip through. On my cycle route to work I have a choice - I can ride past the hospital where his post mortem was carried out, or past his funeral home. A few months ago, I saw the converted estate car that is used for baby funerals pulling out. I gasped out loud in sadness and sympathy. Seventeen babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth every day in this country. The Maple Suite at Southmead Hospital, where Monty was born, is more or less continually in use.

I have learnt what my wife and daughter really mean to me: everything. Losing Monty put out the light at the centre of our family for a time. The three of us have worked hard together, and it is coming back. I cannot imagine dealing with a situation like this without these two amazing ladies by my side. Monty will always be a part of us, and we will never forget him. If we have another child, it will be our third.

The Deafening Silence

A short film about stillbirth through the eyes of the mother has been made by Abigail's Footsteps.

My experience wasn't quite like this but it was similar.

If things had gone to plan, tomorrow would be Monty's first birthday.

Schrodinger's baby

Trying to conceive feels like being in limbo: always 'maybe-pregnant' but never certain until a period comes or two lines appear in a window on a little white stick.

I am highly aware of my cycle even though I'm not counting days, taking my temperature or peeing on ovulation sticks. I am careful about what I eat and drink. I take folic acid to carefully nourish the tiny embryo that might implant and grow. I know when my period is due and each month I hold my breath and cross my fingers that it won't come.

But it does. And it catches me out.

I had vowed not to go back on the Pill after my daughter was born but, following Monty's stillbirth, it was recommended by the family-planning nurse as a way of giving myself the emotional space to grieve. However, since I stopped taking it, in the Summer, my 'cycle' has been irregular. Three times now, my period has been late enough that I've dared to believe that I might be pregnant... but I'm not.

I feel like the butt of some cruel biological joke: I lost my much-wanted second baby at 34 weeks' pregnant and now I don't even know if/when I'm ovulating!

My mind is filled with trepidatious hope - "maybe this month?" - alongside fear and anxiety about how I would react if I were to fall pregnant. It's all I can do to try not to let this take over my life.