A Letter to Wren...

On December 3rd 2017 at 06:24, Wren was brought in to the world, and at that moment, OUR world stood still. Wren was stillborn.

Since then, our world has done all kinds of things. Sometimes it is moving, sometimes too fast, sometimes it is too slow and sometimes it stops. It doesn’t do what it is meant to do anymore.

There was no warning, no alarm bells, nothing to prepare us for the news when we arrived at hospital that day, almost 9cm dilated and damned ready for this baby to arrive, only to find that Wren was, in fact, gone.

Gone...

After some commotion and several opinions, the announcement was made to us in a darkened room that they could not find a heartbeat. For a split second, every inch of my being was stunned right before the next contraction came. How could that even be right? No heartbeat? I am in labour?

40 + 4 weeks of waiting for this precise moment to come. I’m ready to give birth to my baby. I don’t want to give her back.

But that wasn't my choice to make. My baby had to come and she was destined to go all at the same time.

Wren.

6lb 4oz of the most beautiful, precious baby girl I will ever see; jet black hair and long eyelashes. Wren was everything I had ever imagined my baby would be and 100 times more. As the days pass by, I long for those moments back that we spent with her. I wish we had taken more photographs and that I had held her for longer. Those hours were it. I won’t get to hold my baby again, to touch her soft skin and look at her little fingers and toes. The 40 photographs we took will have to last a lifetime. There won’t be any more.

I had no idea just how much I wanted Wren until that day. Now I know she is all I ever wanted.

Time.

In life, you learn to deal with losses, and as you get older, you find that time is the only thing that helps to heal the wounds. The pain of Wren’s passing has spread far wider than just to myself and to Wayne, our families have been wounded too in a way that I don’t even think time can heal. None of us will be the same again, but hopefully the pain will lessen. It sounds like a cliché to say that nothing can prepare you for this, but it really can’t.

It isn’t until you experience something yourself that you start realise just how many other people on this planet are going through the same thing. Baby loss. A complete life changer. I will strive to keep Wrens' memory alive. I hope that this blog will help me to process things, help to spread awareness, and maybe even help other families to find a voice to speak about their own stories. To know that so many others have felt or will feel this pain is heartbreaking...

As the weeks are passing me by, the world is still turning, and today—at least it seems to be moving at a manageable speed.