Its the most wonderful(ly sad) time of the year.
It would be Elliott birthday today, but instead he’s a daily memory, a daily battle fighting away the constant guilt as he creeps into the forefront of my memory, a daily reminder of loving someone so much it hurts (forever) and a painful reminder of human life and its fragility.
Every year I donate to SANDS charity instead of buying Christmas cards. This year in an attempt to raise the profile of this charity, and in an attempt to raise a few extra pounds for their mission. I thought I would share MY ‘speech’, the very same speech I gained a distinction for, the speech I wrote and read for my English GCSE (YES I’m 40 and doing GCSES).
I’m Kelly, I’m 40 years old and a mum to four beautiful children. I have 3 daughters and a son, on the surface this seems very ‘normal’! However, my journey to motherhood was not an easy one. It has been tainted with sorrow, sadness and suffering. For what you would not know from this brief opening is that I am also a mum to three angels. Louis, Corey and Elliot.
My first pregnancy was twins in 2005, and I was delighted! Sadly, they were born prematurely at 25 weeks, Louis died at a day old and was followed to the playground in the sky four days later by his younger brother, Corey.
My grief was suffocating!
I couldn’t understand what was happening or why? There was no support offered to me, so I masked my anguish by busying myself and I put into practice that very British, ’stiff upper lip’. Soon, the birth of my earth-bound children was a welcomed distraction and who to this day grace me with a glowing happiness that cannot be bought or replicated.
I have been blessed. But before I was blessed, I was broken into a million pieces only to be shattered into a million more when in 2012 my son Elliot was stillborn, born sleeping at full gestation. My life as I knew it had changed again, but this time the grief was so overwhelming, I was drowning in it.
The NHS are amazing, but they are so far stretched and so underfunded that a majority of the bereavement care comes from self-funding charities. Charities that are not particularly well heard of, and I believe this is because there is still a huge taboo attached to death, grief, and child loss in particular, not even scratching the surface of the long term effects this type of trauma can have on someone’s mental health.
When I gave birth to my twins, I was offered zero support, seven years later when Elliot was born sleeping not much had changed, I mean there were slight improvements in the number of pretty pamphlets I took home, but the things that really mattered, hadn’t changed. The midwife that looked after me had never EVER dealt with a stillbirth, assisted nor witnessed one. Only covered it for a day from the inside of a text book when she was studying for her degree. People need help and support to navigate this journey. I, like many others have become member’s of a club we didn’t want to be part of and have no idea where to go, who to seek and what to say.
I buried my grief but this burial of emotions would later be of great detriment and torment to my already broken heart. Grief is massive. Grief is huge. Grief is unpredictable and grief effects people in so many different ways. The repercussions reverberate for years after the event because what no one tells you, is that grief is forever. It forever torments your memories and lurks within you like an unwanted guest at a dinner party until it consumes you and you are ravaged by it. There is no cure, and the effects that grief can have on your mental health is phenomenally overlooked by health professionals.
I can only assume that they deal with loss so frequently that they have grown accustomed to the ‘circle of life’. Life and death are a true certainty and a daily occurrence and therefore I guess they look at this from a very logical and medical perspective. Omitting them from the tsunami of torment that engulfs the sufferers.
Grief is the catalyst that can be responsible for triggering other mental health problems like depression, addiction, anxiety, panic disorders, and post-traumatic stress, many of which I fell victim to.
There are arguably few experiences that can compare to the trauma in losing a child. With mental health rates increasing to an all-time high, suicide rates on the rise, ask yourself is it time to become part of the solution?
You may be wondering how this is relevant to you and how and why you should help?
We all have people we love, right?
And because YOU have loved, YOU will inevitably be effected by grief, because grief is the souvenir of such love. Proof that YOU have loved and paid the price. So, it may well be YOU that needs the support I speak of at some point.
The understanding that there is almost always a catalytic event that will lead to more profound and problematic mental health issues if just left to putrefy. Knowing this, understanding this, feeling this, is the first step to getting beneath the problems before they suffocate you, this is why more funding is required for the charities like SANDS, CRUSE, CHUMS and more locally like Penheligans Friends who support the bereaved through some of the most distressing and confusing times in their lives, often preventing the suffocation from the catalyst.
There are many ways you can help these charities to continue their good work, take a look on their websites to see all the amazing ideas and the fundraising packs they have to help support you in raising the well needed money to keep these self-funding charities afloat.
For example, the still birth and neonatal death society, also known as SANDS is the charity that I eventually reached out to. The money here does not just go to help their bereavement support facilities but also goes into the priceless research into child loss, in 2018 around 5000 babies were stillborn or died within the first 4 weeks of their lives. This shockingly makes up 75% of the deaths in children under 16 years old. For as many as 1:4 babies the cause of death is still not known!
My Elliot is 1:4.
The answers for this will only come from research, research that can only be done by the money that is raised for these charities.
Care and support for families when a baby dies is inconsistent and, in some areas, non-existent. More needs to be done to help smooth out this life altering journey from losing to birthing a baby, to going home without a baby, and learning to live as mother with no baby to mother.
I ask with a grateful heart that you take my story with you and maybe bake a cake, run a mile or a marathon in memory of someone who left you their souvenir, and together we can be the change that is required in changing the stigma attached to grief and in turn raise the money that is needed to support this change by clicking the link below and offering what you can.
Just That Girl Kelly 