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Bereavement

Find bereavement help and support from other Mumsnetters. See also your choices after baby loss.

My baby's funeral this week

214 replies

AnxiousKeziah · 21/04/2015 22:23

And am broken. Devastated. Isolated.
No one wants to know when no baby comes home. Everyone comes when a new life is in a house.
So alone with awful thoughts. My dh is broken, not able to support me at all and I am, just angry with the whole world; raging at the unfairness.

After 10yrs of ttc, infertility treatment - we have a funeral. He never came home. I feel I failed him. Am on maternity leave - had plans for perhaps going to baby groups and making connection, people to meet up with at parks/over coffee, maybe even a friend. Bought tiny baby clothes, nappies, lanisoh and looked up local sling library. Thought about names, what he would look like. Would he look like ds? Got ds baby things our of loft - what not given away. Age 40, my dreams of what for me was normal and what many people have easily, were to be realised.

No longer felt punished - not good enough to have more than one child. Went without holidays, ran an ancient car, no treats to fund medical bills. Life of ds put on hold to try to give him a sibling, to quench that desire in me I could not quash. As soon as had first scan that desire ceased. We were complete. Found out a second boy. That was just fine - any child was a blessing.

Then it all started going wrong - my fears were realised. Baby stillbiirth, too poorly plus had IUGR and on top it was too much for us all to bear.

And this week we bury him. Bury a child we never got to know. Never got to change a nappy for or dress. His brother never met him. We bury our homes and dreams.

I have wanted to yell and shout and scream at everyone who told me, we had a miscarriage and went on to have multiple number of children, or even had a death and had 3 beautiful daughters for eg. Firstly, my son is dead. Nothing can change it. Secondly this is the end of the road - there is no more money for expensive medical bills to try to conceive and maintain a oregnancy. More importantly I obviously have few healthy eggs left.

After 10yrs of longing we are burying our precious son.

And only one person had visited us in the weeks inbetween. How many if I had brought home a baby or had a baby in NICU? People offer support for babies, ignore losses. Feel so alone. Had a card today from a person expecting a baby same time as me; saying not coming to the funeral. No - she has everything I have lost. And so does everyone I see around me, with bumps, pushing prams, with grandparents. We have no family, no grandparents to push a pram here.

I am selfish. One person accused me if behaving as if my one dc was not enough; whilst they had chosen to have 3 healthy children. Why have more than 1 of what she said was true - one is enough.

He needs a sibling. I needed a baby to hold in my arms, to feed, to nurture.

Life decided I needed a funeral. A funeral bill not a childcare bill. A gaping whole in the ground and a gaping wound in my heart that can never heal.

OP posts:
3littlebadgers · 26/04/2015 16:49

Hello Keziah, I just thought I would check in on you as I have been thinking about you and little Dylan. I just read the thread from where I left off the other day and I am heart broken to see how deserted you feel. I know how lonely this road is because I am walking it with you (my darling daughter would have been 45 days old today) My husband too is grieving differently, from what I have heard me often do. Please don't stop posting because you feel judged, from what I have read there are so many people here desperate to support you and hold you hand. You need to get your thoughts out my darling. Sometimes my thoughts are so dark, when I tell people they look at me like I'm mad, but they can't know unless they have been there themselves, and so I tell them anyway. Let them judge me, as long as I am getting the thoughts out and reducing the pressure inside my chest, I don't care what they think. Please do the same. I PM'd you the other day with my number, if you can't post here, please use me to let off steam. Block your number if you feel a bit disturbed by phoning some random but I will listen to you without judgement because I am in the same boat too. Just don't give up.

Busyfeetsmum · 26/04/2015 19:58

Please know that you aren't alone.
You are experiencing the worst tragedy that can befall any human being, something that is so SO wrong in every possible way. But there are many people out there to whom this has happened, and I'm afraid that now it's happened to you, you'll start meeting them. For some reason, the loss of a child isn't discussed publicly and is a hidden secret for lots of people, but they're there, including on this thread.
Would you consider going to a meeting of your local branch of SANDS? Meeting others in your position might help...when you're ready.
Your hospital should be providing some bereavement counselling too. Please do ask your doctor as it's your right and it really could help.
You mention other people a lot, and their reactions. They will never understand, unless it happens to them, so it's not even worth trying to explain. With time, perhaps you could try to forget about them (easy to say, I know). Because this isn't about them, it's about your beautiful baby. They don't matter, but your baby does. Dylan is a real, wonderful, person who has changed your life forever, and he'll be with you forever.
I too lost my son, and I want to tell you so many things but I know that nothing will help you right now. You're in hell, and you can't see anything outside it. I'd do absolutely anything to undo this for you, and for everyone who has ever lost a child, but all I can do is to send you a virtual hug, and lots of my tears.
I'm thinking of you.

Oscarandelliesmum · 26/04/2015 20:05

I am so very sorry for the loss of precious Dylan. You will be in my thoughts tonight and tomorrow. Xx

AnxiousKeziah · 27/04/2015 08:37

3littlebadger - it is hard, isn't it, counting the days and weeks since our cruel loss instead of proudly telling the random strangers that stop you with a pram to coo and ask how old and one can answer in days and weeks.

busyfeet - so sorry for your loss.

I cannot cope with the thought of meeting with a Sands group. I was due next week for my section, it almost feels i am still oregnant as that date has not passed, as each morning I wake and forget i am not, still.When my body is screaming out I should be meeting with my NCT group and comparing 2nd babies. That I should be meeting new mums at a baby weigh in, not to get to know I but to nod at and smile, as we have the something in common - absolute exhaustion, feeding stresses, but pure joy too at the bundle in our arms.

OP posts:
KleinePoppet · 27/04/2015 12:55

Dear Keziah,
I have read this thread with tears in my eyes. I remember feeling exactly this way and it is black; there are no words for it. Our newborn baby girl died almost three years ago. I miss her every minute of every day. Yes, life continues, but I miss her so much.
I'm just so very sorry that your Dylan couldn't stay with you and your family. He would have had a wonderful life with you and your DH and with his older brother. Life can be terribly, terribly unfair and cruel.

From your posts, it sounds like it is far too soon for you to consider taking up the options of help that others have so kindly suggested. You may be able to do so in the future, but if you are feeling as I did in the time immediately after my daughter's death, then you are too busy trying to breathe in and out right now, too busy trying to grasp that there is still a world, without Dylan in it. And that, yes, it is possible to hurt this much. As a pp said - you're in hell and you can't see outside of it. That is so horribly true. And so I just send you my every sympathy and a huge hug. If you are in south London and would like a visitor, let me know.

With love to you and to 3littlebadgers, whose desperately sad loss is also so very recent. Xxxx

AnxiousKeziah · 27/04/2015 21:39

Thank you Kleine - wise words. So sorry to hear of your loss and pain. Thank you for saying he would have had a wonderful life, that is so what we wanted him to have. To have 2 boys would have been such a special thing. Yes I do miss him, so much that yes it hurts more than I would want to describe. ( sorry nowhere near London).

OP posts:
3littlebadgers · 28/04/2015 05:28

Keziah just to let you know I am still here and still thinking of you, you are not alone despite how lonely you feel. Flowers

AnxiousKeziah · 28/04/2015 09:03

How are you doing 3littlebadgers?

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3littlebadgers · 28/04/2015 12:54

Sometimes I'm ok, not ok as in the old way, before this all happened, but ok in a new way. I can function, I can make dinner and do the school run. I can even eat now without feeling as if I am cheeting on my baby for feeding myself and not her. I guess my body is taking over, it is wanting to survive despite what I want in my heart. When people, who have been through this, tell you to just breathe, it doesn't sound like a big thing to do, but I am sure you realise how hard it is just to do that. Sometimes my chest is so tight from the pain of losing her, the fear of each and every passing minute without her, time moving on from that short time when I got to hold her little body in my arms, that I feel as if I really can't breath. Than I think to myself, if I am not breathing how am I still here? Why can't I just join her? And then I realise I have been breathing all along.
I have pictures, photographs of family and friends on my fridge. There is a picture of me and my brother when we were small children. I looked at myself then, the innocent, happy go lucky little girl, in the picture and I thought to myself, 'one day you are going to lose your little girl. You are going to carry her inside you, excitedly waiting her arrival, you will go overdue, everyone waiting, asking when, and then you will hear that her heart has stopped. you will push her silently out into the world with your thighs pushed together in a desperate bid just to hold on to her, to not let her go. Then you will hold her in your arms, that beautiful baby you love so much, knowing full well that letting her go is exactly what you will have to do. You will, then, have to tell all of those excited people that, yes, you had her but she died and you don't know why. Exactly a week later you will bury your child on a cold and windy day with your baby's milk leaking from your breasts.' That poor little girl in the picture I wish I could have warned her. I wish I could have warned her that babies still move when they are dead. I wish I could have warned her that the tablets the hospital give to stop the milk often just delay the milk and not actually stop it, I wish I could have warned her not to subscribe to baby magazines or anything baby because they still keep coming through the door to break my heart just that little bit more. My inbox keeps telling me that my baby is 7 weeks old (actually she would have been 6 weeks and 5 days but she was overdue). But then, if I could have warned her, warned myself, for those 41 weeks that I was so happy and in love with my beautiful active little girl I would have been worried and sad. I wouldn't have been able to let myself love her as deeply as I did and she deserved the very best. She deserved a happy mummy with a happy and hopeful bump. She got to swish round in all of those happy feelings for the whole of her life, she knew nothing else, and so maybe it is a good thing I couldn't go back and warn myself. The reults may still have been the same anyway.
I just miss her, miss her so very much. I am scared that my tears won't ever stop and then equally scared that one day they will.
Thinking of you Keziah. Just keep breathing, as hard as it is my lovely Flowers

AnxiousKeziah · 30/04/2015 08:08

Breathing - agree all can often manage. Thank you for sharing 3badgers but so sorry that you too have gone through such a tragedy.

OP posts:
Dumdedumdedum · 01/05/2015 07:24

AnxiousKeziah, 3littlebadgers I am thinking of you. I wish I could help. I hope you are looking after yourselves. And keeping on breathing.
{Virtual Hugs}

ChillySundays · 06/05/2015 12:23

Just checking to say I am thinking of you all.

I don't know how to help and I know it's not much consolation that there are mumsnetters thinking about you.

But we are

AnxiousKeziah · 06/05/2015 18:17

Thank you.
Coming up to my due date which has intensified the feelings.
How different things could have been.

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PacificDogwood · 06/05/2015 22:35

Keziah, thinking of you and 3littlebadgers here too.
There'll be more painful 'firsts' to come, I am so sorry you have to be on this very painful journey.
Wishing you strength and light Thanks

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