Interview with Hannah: Carrying my son

You reached out to us at a very difficult time for you and your family. What brought us to your attention and why did you want to get in touch?

At twenty-two weeks pregnant, we received a life-limiting diagnosis for our son and our lives turned upside down. Both myself and my husband would class ourselves as ​‘pro-life’, seeing value in all lives and believing that life begins at conception. However, the abortion debate suddenly became way more real to us than we ever expected. We were offered the opportunity to end our pregnancy and I’ll admit that I personally wrestled with the decision. But we came to the decision together that we would honour God and honour our son by continuing to carry him for as long as he needed.

Throughout the journey my heart was very much stirred as a follower of Christ. In the Christian faith we say we’re pro-life, but what does that look like in practice? We can’t expect women, and their families, to make the choice of honouring God and their baby and yet not support, journey with, and equip them to live that out. There is a real lack of support following the decision of choosing life for your baby. It’s as if we’re expected to choose life, and that’s it – for the path to be smooth and positive. But that’s just not the case, at least it wasn’t for me. I had to choose life for my baby, and at the darkest times choose life for myself, every day. BUT had no one helping me to figure out how to practically, emotionally and spiritually do that. My desire is to see Both Lives become integral in changing that for other women and families who face similar experiences.

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How do you think your pregnancy journey carrying your baby could have been better supported within the healthcare system?

The journey of carrying him, knowing his life would end after birth, was extremely difficult. In fact, I often referred to it as torturous and likened it to carrying a ticking time bomb in my tummy. I spent hours upon hours scouring the internet for resources or services that could help me, but I didn’t seem to fit into any of their categories. Our son’s death hadn’t occurred yet, but we knew it was coming, yet I struggled finding support for our anticipatory grief. I felt so alone and so alien in the world around me. Our particular situation seemed so niche, when really it isn’t, which means that heartbreakingly there are many more women and families who feel the same way.

It must be said that we received fantastic care from the hospital and its staff and will never forget their kindness and warmth towards us. There are just a few points to note;

1. Following our diagnosis, I was ​“fast-tracked” through maternal psychiatry, as my mental health was very poor, but the referral only came through recently when I am now no longer under maternity care. I’m sure we all know that waiting list times and the limited services within the healthcare system need urgent addressing.

2. Baby loss, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death, is not as rare as you’d think. We were able to birth our son in a special bereavement suite within the hospital and spend his first couple of days of life in there. However, there was a family using the room the morning before we arrived and the morning after we left, which just highlights how needed that space is. More than one of these rooms should be available in each maternity department, as it gives families that little bubble to create memories with their precious baby, as well as quietness and the gift of time.

3. Finally, it may seem like a minute detail, but I hated having hospital letters or appointment schedules addressed only to me. It not only made me feel more alien, but additionally it made me feel overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility, when in reality our baby is 50% me and 50% my husband. I’m blessed to have a fantastically supportive husband, and I appreciate that partner dynamics will be unique to each couple, but it would have meant the world to me for someone to say, ​“do you want your husband’s name on all the documents too?” By doing that, the medical world would have been honouring the support we do have in each other, when very little external support was provided to us elsewhere.

What care would you like to see for mummies, babies and families who face this journey in the future?

I’m a dreamer and I dream big, so my vision would be to see a peer support service set up by each health trust, for those who have received a life-limiting diagnosis for their baby. When we eventually did meet families who had walked similar roads to us, we felt hopeful for the first time and much more supported. I would love to be the person I needed to a fellow grieving mummy someday. 

I would also love to see specific workers supplied through charity organisations and the trusts who would support women and partners antenatally. We’ve met lots of wonderful people who deal with bereavement once it’s happened, but we needed someone to help us cope with our impending bereavement. And of course, there needs to be greater provision of psychological support, such as counselling. I was fortunate to have availed of funded counselling sessions through an England-based charity, but Northern Ireland desperately needs its own baby-loss counselling services.

How can churches be a part of that care?

Churches need to recognise that they are already part of the baby loss community. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women experience pregnancy loss and every week in Northern Ireland two babies are stillborn and a further two babies will die shortly after birth, just like our son. So statistically, baby loss is already in your congregation, so it desperately needs to be engaged with. Maybe that makes churches feel awkward or they don’t know how to respond to it. My advice, as a Christian woman who’s lost a child, is to ask. Ask local baby loss charities or organisations and ask women and families directly. Maybe that looks like providing a venue for peer support services, or creating a small group which is open to all Christian women affected by baby loss. Maybe it’s holding specialised pastoral care training and sourcing solid Christian literature, for both bereaved parents and bereaved siblings, just like our daughter.

I wish I wasn’t an expert in this topic, but I trust in God’s plans and purposes, and so I would love to be involved in the conversations around how we make sure our churches are partnering with its members, who are bereaved in this way. But please, journey with your bereaved families and do not isolate them further. Our own church have been wonderful; they’ve been there for us before, during and after our loss and it’s been such a blessing.

How would you like your son to be remembered?

It’s really important to me that he isn’t talked about in the past tense. My son is alive, in fact, he’s more alive than I am right now because he’s in paradise with his Creator and Saviour, who carried his mummy as she carried him. He is very much still a part of our family; we just say that he lives in a much better postcode! He’ll always be our second child, our first son, and our daughter’s little brother. He spent six days with us after his birth. Our journey with him has so many remarkable workings of God interwoven throughout it that I could probably write a book. But if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe that my boy is alive and safe in the arms of Jesus, I don’t know how I would cope with his absence from our earthly lives. It’s not about him being remembered, but rather about him being acknowledged. 

Our son isn’t a ​“was”, he is an ​“is”.

*Hannah’s name has been changed for the purposes of sharing her story.