Grieve completely alone, even next to each other

I wish people understood that you can be two who lose a baby and still grieve completely alone, even next to each other.

My husband and I handled it in entirely different ways. He needed to move forward on his terms and couldn’t talk through what happened in that room during the birth. I needed to stay in it, to say her name, to write Nellie’s and my story, while preparing myself for another child.

Neither of us was wrong, but for a long time it felt like we were in two different losses. No one prepared us for that, and no one helped us find our way back to each other, or navigate it as a family with our four-year-old son.

I still don’t fully know what happened in the delivery room. I remember fragments, things I said, things I felt, words I think I heard from the staff, but not the whole picture. Some of the most important moments of my life are moments I can’t fully remember or understand.

Neither of us was wrong, but for a long time it felt like we were in two different losses.

I wish I’d had a record of it: what was said, what was done, what I went through. When your body and mind are in shock, you can’t take it all in, but later you need to know. Not knowing has been part of the lifelong grief.

I also wish there had been support for me when I returned to work. My lifeline at home was a close tribe in the neighbourhood with their own lived experiences. At work, there was absolutely nothing.