Reflecting on my heavenly and earthly babies
As Baby Loss Awareness Week draws to a close, I feel like I have to share some thoughts. Not that I’ve yet worked out what thoughts I have that I might share. But I guess in a way it feels like I owe it to my two heavenly babies to say something. It’s as though staying quiet would be to do them a disservice, to cease to acknowledge their existence, to have demonstrated that I have ‘moved on’ and they are no longer at the forefront of my mind. So here I am, typing furiously against the clock as I’ve left it to the last minute (perhaps I’ve been out of journalism and away from its deadlines for too long!).
You may have noticed that I put ‘moved on’ in inverted commas and that’s because, while it’s a term that a lot of people use, it’s not one I like. To me, to ‘move on’ suggests a leaving behind – to move away from point A and towards point B. I much prefer ‘move forward’. Semantically, it’s perhaps not really any different to ‘move on’ but, for some reason, to me it has more of an air of making progress in the context of what’s gone before, not of leaving behind that which has gone before. And where baby loss – or any form of bereavement – is concerned, I think that’s important. Never more so, to me, than now, amid the hustle and bustle of busy family life with two under-fives.
When I look at how far we’ve come on our journey, there has been so much moving forward. This time six years ago we were excitedly expecting our first baby. Just over a month later we joined the club that nobody wants to be in when we discovered that that much-loved baby would never join us on Earth.
The following year, and the first for which Baby Loss Awareness Week registered in our consciousness, we were yet to be blessed with a baby to hold in our arms. Twelve months later, we lit a candle for BLAW’s Wave of Light and placed it among the many cards that honoured the arrival of our not-quite-month-old daughter. BLAW 2020, like my of that year for many of us, I suspect, is a blur in my mind.
By 2021’s awareness week, things had changed considerably. At the start of that year we had experienced our second miscarriage but a few short months later we were excited, and relieved, to be expecting again. Last year’s BLAW was the first we could mark having, to the best of our knowledge, completed our earthly family.
With two under-fives, one of whom is now at nursery, life has become pretty busy. As any parent will know, there’s a lot of plate spinning to be done, and the occasional bit of sweeping up when you drop one. Perhaps it’s inevitable that baby loss isn’t at the forefront of my mind as much now as it was back in 2018. For one thing, we no longer have the ever-present thought that it could happen again – a thought that can threaten to rob expectant parents of so much joy during pregnancy. For another, I’m just not sure there’s the headspace.
It’s perhaps testament to the busyness of our family life that I’m currently typing this with a candle at my side because I’m about four hours late joining (or, perhaps, running along after) this year’s BLAW Wave of Light. But while others were lighting their candles at 7pm, I was otherwise engaged with everything involved in getting two small humans to bed after a busy day, including racking up some more fundraising miles in honour of their siblings.
Having earthly children, particularly young ones who need so much direct care and attention, can make it difficult to fit in other things, both in physical terms and, often, in thinking. Is it a slight to my two heavenly children that they are no longer at the forefront of my mind because of their siblings? I hope not, and I don’t think so.
When we lost Lentil we were living with the grief of loss and also the ever-present question of when we might ever welcome a child into our home as well as our hearts. That waiting in itself was all consuming. When we lost Pip we were faced with wondering whether we would ever be able to give Charlotte an earthly sibling or whether she was destined to grow up an only child. Again, it was a lot to process.
As I watch Charlotte and Daniel grow, I know we are now the other side of those whether and when questions. We’re navigating the wild and wonderful path of parenthood, rather than battling uphill to reach it. And, when I think of Lentil and Pip, it’s never far from my mind that, had we not lost them, it’s highly unlikely that we would have Charlotte or Daniel. We will never know what Lentil and Pip’s earthly personalities would have been like but we know for sure that we – and we like to think the world – are blessed by having Charlotte’s and Daniel’s here.
I talked earlier about moving forward and I think, ultimately, that’s what each of us is doing all the time, whatever our circumstances. At every point in our lives, to some extent, we are moving forward through life, our experiences and outlooks shaped and influenced by what has gone before. Whether we realise it day by day or not, our entire approach to parenting will be influenced in some way by the two babies we didn’t get to hold in our arms. Whether Lentil and Pip are at the forefront of our minds on an given day or not, we can never get away from the influence they will always have on our lives. And nor would we want to.
In the Bible, Ecclesiastes chapter 3 tells us, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” There have been seasons when we have wept and mourned our babies who died. At this point, we are in a season that sees us laughing and dancing a lot with our babies who were born. Should we feel guilty for laughing and dancing when we still have two babies who died? I don’t think so. It doesn’t mean that we care any less about Lentil and Pip or the fact that we lost them. It simply means that, alongside our love for them, we also carry our love for our two living babies. None is more loved than another; we simply, through necessity, have to demonstrate our love for them in different ways. Our four babies, each with a special place in our hearts.
In the last six years time has moved on, we have moved forward, seasons have changed but we are still, and will always be, part of that club that nobody wants to be in. No change in circumstances will ever alter that. And until the day we get to see our heavenly babies face to face, there will always be times when we wonder what they’d have looked like and been like, and times when we’re caught off-guard by reminders of our pain and grief. But we hope there will also be many times when we smile and laugh and dance and sing with and because of their siblings.
Sarah Moore is the author of For the Love of Lentil, A journey of longing, loss and abundant grace, which tells the story of her experience of pregnancy and miscarriage. Copies of the book are available here.