Finding comfort in books
Grieving mum’s plan to honour her baby’s legacy and help others
NOBODY is busier or has more to do than a toddler at bedtime. The delay tactics are infuriatingly impressive. My two-year-old demands “one more” story, even before I turn the last page of what should be his last book. Meanwhile, my eyes are hanging out of my head, I’ve barely eaten since breakfast and I’m pretty desperate to clock off from the longest and worst paid job in history.
“One more,” he’ll say.
“OK, one more,” I’ll badly negotiate.
I’m pretty firm with boundaries, but not at bedtime.
I have a lot more patience at bedtime than any other time, dinner can definitely wait.
This is why.
A few days after my second baby Pia was born, so was another beautiful girl, named Elsie Jules.
Elsie’s mother, Kate Warhurst, was instantly, insanely in love.
Their first few days together were beautiful, magical, but not nearly enough. Elsie would never get to leave the hospital.
Doctors discovered a gastrointenstinal disease, which caused part of her bowel tissue to die.
At a time when Kate should have been leaving hospital with her little bundle, she was instead being told her baby girl would not survive.
At just seven days old, tiny Elsie passed away.
She would be six months now, the same age as my girl.
But instead of navigating solids, baby-proofing the house, and complaining about another book, Kate is learning to live with a loss too enormous for me
to fathom. She describes saying goodbye as being just like a “sledgehammer”.
Somehow, Kate found the strength to spend the past six, shattering months doing something proactive and profound.
Something to help others who find themselves in a fight for their child’s life.
From Kate’s grief, It’s from Elsie was born.
It’s a book club, and its members are our tiniest, most vulnerable battlers, at the Mater Mothers Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
That’s where Kate and Elsie spent their last days together, and where
Kate learned “you can’t hold your baby, but you can reach your baby”.
She’s put together a catalogue of children’s books that can be purchased by anyone online.
Kate delivers them to the NICU, so parents can read to their babies while they’re in their incubators,
hooked up to monitors, or on life support. I’ve never met Kate, but she reached out to me in the hope I could help spread the word about this beautiful project.
My favourite, Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes happens to be one of the books in the club, which I purchased for a family I’ll never meet.
It was the best $10 I’ve spent in a long time.
I’ve read this classic many, many, many more times than I can count on my fingers and toes, but you may now understand why you’ll never hear me complain about it.
Even when my words are slurring because I’ve run out of energy to make my mouth function, I will usually always agree to “one more” book.
I don’t know when I’ll ever get to have dinner before 8pm, but I do know exactly where the green sheep is and what the hungry caterpillar ate for breakfast.
I also know how lucky I am to hold my babies in my arms and read to them each and every night.
Elsie surely knows she lucked out too, with one very special mumma.
If you love bedtime, make your next book purchase one from Kate and Elsie. Visit itsfromelsie.com.au if you’d like to donate.
I don’t know when I’ll ever get to have dinner before 8pm, but I do know exactly where the green sheep is ...