Always Our First - The Loss

In 2013 we lost our first child at 12 weeks. It was traumatic and painful. I'd had an awful first trimester, full of sickness. I made it to 12 weeks and thought that we were safe. That night I started bleeding, and bled until our little angel was gone. The emptiness that followed was immense, it was a grief for a life that the world didn't know about, a deeply personal loss and a lonely journey. We believed our baby was a girl, so we planted a flower in her honour and named her Angel. We held a memorial service with a few close family members, but I never felt we did enough to acknowledge the life. This is a piece I wrote on the anniversary of our greatest loss.

Tomorrow marks a year since you left the warm safety of inside me and went to live eternally in the safest place there is. A place where no one can harm or hurt you, where there is only love. I did not wish for you to make it there before me.

I always wonder what you look like, what your little personality is like, if you are a great singer, or as stubborn as me.

I can't wait to meet you, and when I do I know I will know you, my heart already knows you, for you are really part of me.

I will hold both your hands and swing you round in circles, you will giggle, your curls will fly everywhere. Then I will pick you up and hold you close and never let you go.

I always wonder - will you be forever young? Or will you grow up in heaven's glory? When I meet you will your shoes be bigger than mine? And what will you be like? What language will you speak? Will you speak at all? Or will the language be the language of the heart? The silent knowing of holding someone you have missed for a lifetime.

From the moment you were created, while you hid in the darkness of my womb, I didn't know you were there, but I loved you.

My child, you must know that you are loved, more than words can ever say. You must know that I carry you. And that ever since that moment of the tiniest of miracles I have felt I am a mother and that you are very real.

You are my first and my only, my precious little gift, my hidden pain.

No one else saw you, and yet I felt you, through every vein in my body, closer than is possible for anyone else to be.

And as I felt you, tired and sick as I was, I knew that this was just the start of all the times that I would give myself up for you, of all the tears I would cry over and over for you, of everything I was willing to give. And I knew you would be worth it, without question, every little bit.

You were my greatest joy and my greatest pain was to lose you. To lie there and bleed, to plead with God to keep you, my cherish child, to know exactly what was happening, but be completely powerless to stop it.

The world doesn't know you, you hid yourself so well. You have a little soul, a purpose and a personality. Until we meet again I can only imagine your face but I see a shining smile.

You would be nearly six months old now if you were living in this world. You would be my pride and joy. Instead I also hide you, because I don't know how not to.

I want to acknowledge you, so the world knows you are real. And yet I can't because to the world you never were.

I still feel empty without you, alone in my love and grief.

I am your mother and one day we will finally meet. And until that day I'll imagine you, and I'll think of you and I'll pray that you are safe.

And when I meet you, you will sing to me and we will dance and play together and I will never let you go.

My precious child.

Mummy has not forgotten. xxx