‘ We became the couple with the dead baby’

Jess Clasby-monk, 31, lives in Hampshire with her wife Nat, 30, and their son Eli, one. Their first child, Leo, was stillborn at 37 weeks

‘Congratulations.’ I’m not sure if the care assistant who came bursting into the delivery room would have said that if she knew Leo had died. But I love that she said it, because she was the only person who ever did. Regardless of her intention, it was an acknowledgment that I’d given birth and that Nat and I had become parents. I needed to be told that I was Leo’s mother and he was my child. My body didn’t know there wasn’t a child to take care of. I was given medication to stop my breasts from producing milk, but they were still painful for a day or two. Knowing I was physically responding to a baby who wasn’t there crushed me. I hated my body for letting Leo die, for not being able to do the thing that other women’s bodies do every day, and I lost all trust in its ability to tell me something was wrong. We started fertility treatment three months later, and an early miscarriage only confirmed my mistrust in my body. I developed what I later identified as health anxiety. I put off a smear test, too afraid of what it would find, and a runny nose would leave me convinced it was a sign of something more sinister.

Our tragedy became a source of awkwardness for other people. Some found ways to talk to us, but others couldn’t and disappeared after sending a card and some flowers. When one couple got in touch after months of silence, I was buoyed to think they’d finally found a way to talk to us. But they were just getting in touch to break the news that they were having a baby. I realised then that we’d become the couple with the dead baby; the couple pregnant people didn’t want to be around. Socialising felt pointless at best, punishing at worst. I felt so angry with the world and everyone in it. Hearing someone moan about something mundane would leave me silently screaming, ‘But my baby died!’ It might sound selfish, but it was the headspace I was in and it made it hard to engage with normal social situations. Nat and I tried to cope by seeking out other people’s tragedies – we needed to know we weren’t the only people this had happened to. That we were same-sex parents made those stories harder to find; most of the couples we encountered were straight. We could relate to them up to a point, but there was always a disconnect, which added a layer of complexity to our grief. I think people want you to forget, or at least to stop talking about it. But you don’t, you can’t; you just find ways of coping. When I went back to work, the place I’d left on a pre-christmas prenatal high, I needed to find ways to make it feel different, to acknowledge that I was different. I bought new work clothes, I changed the route that I drove and changed the radio station that I listened to on the drive – the sound of Nick Grimshaw’s voice through a car radio takes me back to feeling Leo’s kicks. After Leo died, exercise was so far down on my priority list. I didn’t want to look after my body after what it had done to me. But we wanted to have another child, so I had to. I downloaded the Couch To 5k app and started working my way through the exercise schedule. I remember running on a treadmill in the gym in floods of tears, but I wouldn’t let myself stop. What began as a box-ticking exercise became something to get out of bed for. I went on to swim a mile in the Serpentine in London, and the ability to train my body to take on physical challenges has become a lifeline. When your self-esteem is in pieces, it’s a powerful thing to be able to say that you’ve achieved something – even if it’s just a walk around the block. Today, I do so much in Leo’s name that I wonder if people think I’m not processing my grief. But the way I see it, I’m parenting my child who isn’t here, just as I parent my child who is.

‘Hearing someone moan about something mundane would leave me silently screaming’