My baby died.  Three words that even when I speak them out loud now, still totally and completely destroy me to my core.  Everywhere I seem to look there are babies.  Babies on the TV, babies being born to friends, babies in the supermarket, babies at the bus stop.  Yet, my baby never came home with us.  There are still moments in each and every day where the shock of the fact that Phoebe is no longer with us still takes my breath away.  My legs lock to the floor and the reality of this very real existence for us causes me to ground to a halt.  A year on and the shock and trauma of losing our much wanted daughter is still very real and very raw.

It seems quite surreal to be writing about this now, when we are living in a time when rainbows appear to have become such a symbol of hope for us all in these unprecedented times.  Of course, for us, like so many bereaved parents, the rainbow has long symbolised the hope and happiness that we have dreamt of.

I’ve known for many years that I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), so we headed into marriage knowing that getting pregnant could be a challenge.  Neither of us expected we would get pregnant on our honeymoon but, just over a month after we returned home, I found I was visiting the bathroom several times an hour and my boobs felt like they might explode. “Do you think I need to take a test?” I half-joked to my husband, and couldn’t quite believe it to be reality when the test told us that we were, in fact, pregnant. In that moment we became parents, with hopes and dreams and plans for our future that were no longer a theory, no longer some far-off thing that might happen “one day.”

I remember the day I told Brett, my husband of seven years, that I was pregnant with our first child.  Brett and I had been together since 2006 in high school and had built a fantastic life together over the years.  We both had great careers (Brett a teacher and I a nurse), we had money saved up, a home with space to grow into and we were ready to start filling it with children.  It was December 28, 2017 and the warm sun had given us a break from the Louisiana winter.  I couldn’t stop smiling as I spilled the beans before I could even use the Arsenal onesie I bought to tell him.  I was met with a hug along with the biggest, most genuine smile I’ve ever seen on his face.

Fast forward to of our gender scan, Brett playfully opened the envelope given to us by our doctor… BOY… and I immediately started crying.  Through the years, we always wanted to have both a girl and boy but I secretly wished we would have our boy first.  We named our son James Martin, tying in both family’s names.  We were so happy that I can still feel the soreness in my face from smiling and laughing that day.  We spent that weekend, Easter weekend, celebrating our gender reveal with friends, family, and a feeling of happiness that was almost tangible.