Baby Loss Awareness Week – Poem by a Client.

Our guest blog this week comes from our client in light of Baby Loss Awareness Week. She highlights the importance of observing this week to spread awareness, comfort and security to all those affected by pregnancy and baby loss.

“Baby Loss Awareness Week (9 -15 Oct) is now in its 23rd year. This week is a wonderful opportunity to bring us together as a community and give anyone touched by pregnancy and infant loss a safe and supportive space to share their experiences and feel that they are not alone.

I am supporting Baby Loss Awareness Week 2025 to honour my beautiful son Jack James Tipton, and all other babies that have ran on ahead." - Laura Tipton.

Imagine This

Imagine nine months of pregnancy. Imagine every scan being perfect. Imagine washing and smelling that beautiful smell of baby clothes. Imagine picking out the pram and pushing it around the house in excitement. Imagine packing your hospital bag, making sure you have everything you need and more for yourself and your newborn. 

Imagine only spending four days with your child. Without feeding them, changing their nappy or hearing them cry. Not even once.

Imagine having to leave them after those four days. Imagine walking out of the labour ward without a baby. Imagine hearing other babies crying. Imagine watching those other lucky mums and dads walking out of the maternity doors with their newborn. Imagine people looking at you going through those same doors without a baby. Imagine feeling like you have absolutely no purpose to live at all. Because your only purpose was to be a mum, and now you can’t be one properly.

Now imagine the trauma of waiting for your son to finish getting his post-mortem done, just so you can feel his soft hands once again. But then being told you can’t ever see him again. Imagine never hearing him cry. Never seeing his eyes. Never taking him home. Imagine patiently waiting for weeks for the post-mortem results, to find out how your son died.

Imagine being told his death is unexplained. 

Now imagine arranging a funeral. Picking out songs and a tiny white coffin. Imagine seeing that tiny white coffin being lowered into the ground. Imagine going to the cemetery the next day and seeing the ground covered back up with soil. Imagine having to sit by a pile of soil in the ground, to be able to talk to your son. Imagine my son, listening to my stories, my crying, from a tiny white coffin buried in the ground.

Imagine smelling that beautiful smell of freshly washed baby clothes, whilst walking in the supermarket. And realising it’s not your baby. Imagine seeing people pushing their newborns in their perfect prams. Imagine hearing the loud crying from babies in the shops. Imagine hearing people complaining about their newborns keeping them up, when you would die just to hear your baby cry. 

Imagine people staring at you whenever you leave the house, not knowing what to say. Imagine people thinking they can’t talk to you about their beautiful pregnancy and gorgeous newborns, when I wish with all my heart they would. 

Imagine people knowing me as the mum who lost her son. Imagine every single day, having flashbacks of the doctor telling you you’d lost him. Imagine pictures flashing up in your head at random times during the day. Picturing his coffin in the hearse surrounded by flowers. Picturing it being lowered into the ground. 

Picturing your baby’s face. Picturing yourself pushing a pram with him in, whilst walking to the shop. Imagine how alone you feel, in a room with smiling happy people, watching lives go on without him, like he never existed.

Imagine dreaming of your baby crying, and it being that realistic you wake yourself up to feed him, and he isn’t there. Imagine your reality being scarier and worse than the nightmares you have. Imagine sleep being the only way to stop hurting, but you can hardly sleep, and when you do, you dream he’s alive. 

Imagine the only way to sit with your son, is to be in a graveyard. Imagine wanting to be dead, but you can’t be, as you need to make sure his memory lives on.

Now imagine people telling you “you’ll get over it”, “move on”. Imagine people asking you “will you have another”. 

Imagine that being your new normal. Imagine people wanting you to be the normal you. The happy you. The old you. It is impossible. 

Grief comes in three stages. The beginning, the middle and the rest of your life.