From the heart: The hardest goodbye
Sean Foster, 32, was excited to welcome a second son, but the joy was quickly followed by tragedy
Picking my newborn son up from his cot on the hospital ward, I held him close and breathed in his new baby scent. With his brown hair and tiny fingers and toes, Koa was absolutely perfect and I couldn’t have been more proud. But as I started putting him into his baby carrier to leave the hospital, instead of the excitement that most dads feel when taking their baby home, I was numb. Everything was just wrong. There should have been three of us leaving that day. Instead, just hours old, Koa had been left without a mum, and, at 31, I found myself a widower.
My wife, Taylor, and I started dating in 2013, after meeting through work in a call centre. And, after several dates, it was already apparent to me that Taylor was everything I was looking for in a partner. She was caring and funny, always cracking jokes – and, with her long brown hair and nose piercing, she was gorgeous.
We welcomed our first son, Elijah, in May 2018, and Taylor was a brilliant mum. Although it took me a while to adjust to my new role as a dad, struggling with nappy changes and night feeds, Taylor seemed to be a natural, and I felt incredibly lucky to be learning from her.
‘Let’s bath him together,’ she’d say,
‘Taylor was everything I was looking for’
showing me how to test the temperature of the bath water. And I often heard her singing lullabies to Elijah at bedtime, enjoying the sound of her soft voice.
Then a few months after Elijah arrived, Taylor and I got married in a beautiful ceremony in the Lake District, surrounded by our closest friends and family. And the good news just kept coming when, the following year, Taylor and I discovered we were expecting again.
Healthy son
In July 2020, Elijah went to stay with Taylor’s sister for a couple of days while Taylor was admitted to hospital following contractions. Less than an hour later, our son, Koa, was born, without any complications, weighing 7lb 7oz.
‘You’ve done it again,’ I smiled as I held Taylor and our newborn tightly. ‘He’s so perfect,’ Taylor replied, besotted with Koa already.
It was amazing how quickly Taylor seemed to recover from labour, walking around the ward and havinga shower just an hour after giving birth. ‘I just can’t wait to get home,’ she grinned to me, excited for Elijah to meet his new brother.
Koa and Taylor were to stay in overnight for routine checks ahead of discharge the next day. And as I returned home from the hospital that night, Elijah still at his aunt’s, I texted Taylor, reminding her of how brilliant she’d been.
‘I’m so proud of you. I love you,’ I said. She read my message, but I knew she’d be too tired to respond, so I rolled over and went to sleep myself.
Then, in the early hours of the next morning, I was woken by mymobile ringing. It was a doctor from the hospital. ‘Taylor has been taken ill, you need to come in,’ he said. The lack of willingness to disclose any more information told me it was serious, and I rushed to hospital fighting an awful, sickening feeling.
Routine check
At the maternity ward, I was met by two nurses who immediately ushered me into a side room. They explained that Taylor had been found unresponsive during a routine check, and doctors were trying to resuscitate her. ‘She was fine when I left,’
I wept as I tried to reason with the doctors, but nobody could ascertain what had happened to her.
I was taken to see her on another ward and, as I watched a team of doctors performing chest compressions on my wife, my whole body started trembling. In tears, I gravitated to her side and grasped her hand, just like I had done the day we made our wedding vows two years earlier. I squeezed it tight, as if to pass on some strength to her to keep fighting. But this time, her hand was limp and lifeless, and I knew that she couldn’t feel me, she was already gone. Minutes later, I gave a reluctant nod to the doctors to confirm that, though they had done their best, it was time to stop.
As I left the ward, all I could think about was Elijah, now two, and my newborn, Koa. In a matter of hours, their mum had been taken from them, with no explanation, and, on what was supposed to be our first day as a family of four, we were now left as a family of three. Navigating my way back to the maternity ward, I felt empty. And collecting Koa without Taylor just felt wrong. ‘Your mummy should be here,’ I thought as I held him in my arms, sobbing, while he lay blissfully asleep. Leaving the hospital with your baby, strapping them into the car seat for the first time, and making the journey home, shouldn’t be done alone. As I did it all, without Taylor by my side, I felt sick with grief.
No time to mourn
At home, it was as though I didn’t have time to mourn my wife. I had to begin preparations for Taylor’s funeral while looking after a newborn and a toddler. Family rallied to help, but I felt I owed it to Taylor to do everything just as she would have.
Following a post-mortem, Taylor’s death was found to be the result of the rupture of a splenic artery aneurysm, a rare condition associated with pregnancy.
COVID-19 restrictions allowed just 20 of our closest friends and family to say goodbye to Taylor, while the boys stayed with extended family and at nursery. I wept as I delivered my speech about my wife, crediting her for being such an amazing mum and teaching me about parenthood. In the months since Taylor’s passing, I’ve been adjusting to life as a single father. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve had to rely on friends and family to help with the boys, and have been diagnosed with PTSD.
I lie awake some nights, unable to process and accept this new life I have without Taylor. The boys are still far too young to understand what’s happened, but I tell them stories about her each night before they go to sleep, such as the time I asked her to be my girlfriend on the bench in the park. And we have photos, bottles of perfume and her favourite CDS to remind us of her.
All Taylor ever wanted was to be a mum, and I’m determined to raise our boys as she would have done, so that they will be a credit to her. I think of her each day, and I always will.
‘I gave a reluctant nod to the doctors’