THERE ARE WAYS TO HEAL

÷ DON’T panic if you run out of tears. You may have cried endlessly, screamed, shouted and asked ‘why?’ countless times but then, suddenly, there is nothing.

This doesn’t mean you have stopped caring or that you are completely broken. Feeling numb is simply another part of the grieving process. ÷ READING other people’s stories of how they survived loss helped me immensely. They serve as useful reminders that your feelings of helplessness will eventually pass. ÷ AFTER losing a baby, other people’s bumps and prams appear suddenly to be everywhere. This will hurt less over time. It helped me to consider pregnant women as walking messages of hope. ÷ PEOPLE worry that they are going mad as they find themselves wanting constantly to repeat their story. Accept this as your brain’s way of helping you process what has happened, taking you closer to eventually accepting it. ÷ I HAD no idea how much terminology and medical jargon could hurt until I lost a baby. The children we lost were referred to as products of conception, miscarriages, missed miscarriages, silent miscarriages, failed abortions, foetuses, cells, tissue. Every time my babies were called anything other than ‘a baby’, I wanted to scream. However early on in pregnancy your loss was, or however late, whether your loss was at birth, in neonatal or in early years, you lost a child. ÷ TEARS of sadness and grief are actually made of a different substance than tears of joy. They contain hormones and chemicals that help release the pain we are carrying. Crying can be truly healing.