What grief gives

October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month worldwide and on the 15th, many mothers will light a candle. Those who’ve read my book For a Girl know that I gave my first baby, a girl I named Ruth, to strangers. For me, it’s been a long and complicated journey to grief, even to understanding I’m a mother who lost a child. By far the biggest surprise on that journey has been the aid I’ve been afforded by other mothers whose children are gone who did not judge me harshly. On the contrary, they made space for me. 

I first met Debra Bath and her husband Calvin Smith when I was writing about maternity care. Debra had developed pre-eclampsia late in her first pregnancy and it wasn’t detected by the midwives and doctors responsible for her care. Her baby Lillienne’s resulting distress was discovered too late. Lillienne suffered hypoxia and died eleven days later. Lillienne’s story became the first chapter of my book about maternity care, The Birth Wars.

Debra and I became friends. After Lillienne’s passing, she and Calvin lost a second child, Finn, because of a rare congenital anomaly. I don’t know how Debra remained tender-hearted in the face of this much pain, but she did. It was my first lesson in how to be a mother to a child gone. On what would have been Lillienne’s tenth birthday five years ago, I went to the cemetery with Debra, Calvin, their son Felix and family and friends to share a birthday cake. It remains with me. I knew it for the privilege it was.

I know Holly Ryan because her husband Josh is my dear friend Louise’s eldest son. Holly’s first baby was called Bluey from early pregnancy because she and Josh wanted a name other than ‘it’. One week it was a lentil, Holly would tell Josh, quoting from a book that helped parents know the size of the fetus, the next a pea, and then a blueberry. He became Bluey from then on. 

I can still remember the hot January early morning call from Louise to say Holly had had a tough time lately. There was the gestational diabetes which had been hard to control and then, over the Christmas break, she’d developed cholestasis, the mostly manageable pregnancy condition that makes mothers itch. The risk with cholestasis is that occasionally, unfathomably, a baby dies. Later that morning Holly and Josh found out that Bluey’s heart had stopped beating. The next day, they had to make the excruciating journey through labour and then give birth to their perfect, still son. 

In the first months after Bluey’s passing, Holly and I met up occasionally to talk. I was in awe of her courage, the way like Debra she faced her terrible loss with such openness and remained tender. She didn’t harden in the face of her pain. She did the opposite, ran towards it. On my own daughter’s birthday this year, Holly turned up with cakes. She asked did I have a picture? No one had ever asked me that. 

The writer Elizabeth Stone said the decision to have a child is enormous. It is, she said, ‘…to decide forever to have your heart go around outside your body.’ If you have lost a child, whatever your circumstances, you’ll know what grief is, to have your heart broken all over the world. You’ll know what it takes away from you. If you’re lucky enough, you might also know what grief gives. It gives you a bigger and more tender heart, the capacity to understand pain. I think it’s what film-maker Jane Campion who lost baby Jasper meant when she said you become part of a club no one would want to join and you don’t even mind because the love you feel for them is so big. I’d never wish my journey on anyone else. And yet. 

xxx

To mark international pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day and to honour babies gone including their first son Bluey, Holly and Josh Ryan have organised a cocktail function on 17 October at Brisbane’s Lightspace in Fortitude Valley. All proceeds will go to a Stillbirth Association project that saves children’s lives. Bookings/ donations https://bluehearts.com.au