How many children do you have?
Matrescence and baby loss
Content warning: this piece discusses baby loss. You can find support on issues relating to baby loss at
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How many children do you have?
This, for me, will always make me skip a beat and pause longer than I should. You see, it is an easy answer, I have 2 children and like all mothers, I am incredibly proud of them. However, I pause because I only ever get to hold one pair of hands as one of my children will always be 4 days old. My son's preventable death happened 18 months before my daughter arrived, giving me two experiences of matrescence in under two years.
You still have a matrescence after your child dies. You still bleed, ache and cry. You still lose a sense of yourself. Your milk still comes in. You still have intrusive thoughts and sleepless nights but without a living child, none of that is counteracted. When my daughter was born, people assumed I was fixed, that she was compensation and I could start ‘getting on’ with my life.
What they failed to realise is that I was getting on with learning how to parent both a living and a dead child. I was learning how to be without him but with her.
Baby loss is one of the last taboos, although there is an awareness week and we are encouraged to share our experiences, the reality is that far too many women experience loss alone. The impact of loss can be isolating, far reaching and ever changing.
My love for my son changed when she arrived because she showed me what was taken from us. She was both an overwhelming joy and a constant reminder of how things should have been 18 months ago. Before she arrived, to others, I was just a friend, someone sat with a mother, the auntie, the godmother. When I was pregnant with my daughter, even with a huge RIP sticker on the front of my maternity notes, I was still asked by every professional if it was my first child. When I explain that my son died due to failings in my care, people often avert their eyes, change the subject, whisper a soft sorry. The truth is, even medical professionals did not see me as a parent. She made me visible.
With a living child in my arms, the comparisons came thick and fast. My daughter looked just like him but unlike when we brought my son home in a cold cot, she moved and wriggled and held my finger.
In the early days, she would fall asleep on my chest and I would be gently reminded of reaching over the incubator to kiss my son's head over and over. My breasts would fill for her next feed, and I would see the wasted milk that flowed in the shower after he was gone.
In the early hours, when my eyelids were heavy, leaning against her cot checking her breath, I was back in NICU, watching his every move. I have to accept that my love is present but also tied to precious moments in time. Being a mother to my children means I don’t get to give my children equal space, one of my children had his voice taken from him so it is down to me and my husband to weave him into the fabric of our lives.
I have thought about how we will do this, how we will make sure that she knows about her big brother but not feel the weight of his loss. I worry that I won’t always get this right, that she may feel he can do no wrong, that he is forever perfect, and dare I say, that she might not even have been here had he survived.
But I hope, in talking about him and his death, she can be a little less afraid, a little more curious and a little braver about asking people about the ones they have lost.
In time, I hope she will understand that any mother that goes on to have a child after loss has dug down to the deepest guts, held her breath for 9 months, accepted that the unbearable could happen again.
She does this because she wants that little being so much, loves them so fiercely that even when the curtains are drawn and these is only a chink of hope left, it is worth it. Like I said, I am just as proud as the next mother but I still pause when you ask me how many children I have. I pause, not because I am afraid of what I will say, but how others will react.
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Gosh what an emotional and brave post Chloe ❤️. I think it's so important to talk about those we have lost, and to keep them close and include them, because it's so beautiful to honour them and remember them. I find that people don't know what to say when we are grieving but actually getting the chance to talk about who we've lost can be really comforting. Sending you love xx