Sara’s Story – Becoming an Aunty after Loss

When I was 38 weeks and 5 days pregnant, my sister called me with the most amazing news – she was pregnant! I was so, so happy for her and her partner. I knew just how much this baby was wanted and I’d been waiting for this news! Now our babies would grow up so close in age, they’d be wee besties and poor granny would be exhausted from her new babysitting duties! 

When I was 38 weeks and 6 days pregnant, a doctor gave us the most soul crushing news – she couldn’t find a heartbeat, our baby had died. All of a sudden the future we had envisioned came crashing down.

A couple of months later, my brother and sister-in-law announced that they too were expecting. Watching their pregnancies develop was brutal – I was so anxious that one or both of their babies would die too. Suddenly statistics didn’t matter anymore – what difference does it make if the risks are low, I knew now that it could happen to anyone, stillbirth doesn’t discriminate. 

And it’s not just stillbirth – suddenly I’d found myself part of a community of people whose babies had died in a whole host of different circumstances: miscarriage, TFMR, neonatal death, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, SIDS…the list of ways their babies could die felt endless. I actually remember the day my niece was born feeling like I could suddenly breathe properly, I hadn’t realised that part of me had been holding on until both babies were safely here to relax.

I remember worrying that with these babies being born in the same year as Anya they would somehow replace her in the family – logically I knew this wasn’t going to happen because my family have always included Anya in everything but there was a little niggle there that took a while to shift. I think this was more so with my brother and sister-in-law’s baby, because they had fallen pregnant after Anya had died whereas my sister and brother in law’s baby already existed before she died. 

Now, my nephew is 2 and my niece is almost 2. I absolutely love both of them to bits and I love spending time with them, but I do struggle when I see them together – I see them wearing matching outfits or sitting in matching seats and I know that Anya would have been involved in these too. It is painful to see, but it’s also a comfort to have a glimpse into what she would have been doing.