I now have a hatred for numbered birthday balloons, when we came home from hospital that afternoon the first thing I did was pop the rose gold foil number one, taking with it the excitement and happiness of her up coming party.  Eva was a bright shining force of nature; she was a perfect, healthy, beautiful baby who turned one on the 20^thNovember 2019 and two days later didn’t wake up again.

Throughout my whole pregnancy, I’d daydreamed about that first moment we would meet our baby. I’d hoped for a water birth at home and would spend hours picturing that moment: lifting our baby into my arms; feeling that rush of euphoria; hearing my husband tell us if we had a boy or a girl and then replaying that moment over in my mind for years to come. I’d tried to be realistic and tell myself most births don’t go to plan but nothing could have prepared me for my first moment after birth. A moment I replay in my mind time and time again and a moment I’ll forever wish was so different.

Spring and summer months usually bring good weather, better moods, new life and lots of hope of enjoyment, and fun times. Since 2015 though, these two seasons now only bought a little hope that was crushed, constant anxiety and left heartbreak that would last for years.

My daughter, we realise now, was our miracle baby. Her name means ‘princess’ and little did we know that she would become the sole ruler in our hearts, but also, the only child that survived in our hopes of having a family of five. We had tried for a couple of years to conceive naturally, without success, and just as we were about to consider IVF, a simple course of metformin worked wonders in 2011, and I found out I was pregnant.

“Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

W S Merwin, Separation

 In June this year our son would have turned four if we hadn’t lost him.

Sometimes the language we use erases the complexity of what has happened to us.  “Losing” him seems like it was accidental. Careless even.  We didn’t lose our son.  He died.  But even that doesn’t cut it so let me start again.