Feelings of failure, sorrow, and self-blame are common. We can also experience amazement, sadness, fury, and incredulity, sometimes flipping between these emotions fast. This whirlwind of emotions is a totally natural response to sadness, even if it may make us feel like we're going insane.
POST-BIRTH DEATH
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Once you hold your baby for the first time, your heart melts, as their reach out to you, your unconditional love grows and if the unthinkable happens your heart breaks into a million pieces. Its real soul destroying and devastating heartbreak that is not just a teenage first crush or watching your grown up child moving home for the first time as they leave for university, but one that would affect your life and your actions forever.​
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As a parent who has experienced the joys and turmoil's involved in the miracle of life, having those few random cells grow and going full term, then meeting a beautiful and wonderful creation in my arms even if its was for such a short time, giving my love unconditional and feeling complete, only to have it snatch away in a moment. Fighting so hard to give life back to hopes and dreams. Wishing and bartering with God to swop places so my wife could be with our child once more.
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Having to listen to doctors and professionals telling us, that this was no-ones fault and that it's one of those things that sometimes happen. while at the same time looking for someone or something to blame, just killed a part of my soul forever. The realisation that 'life isn't fair' and 'bad things do happen to good people', only fortified my quest to ask why!
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SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME (SIDS), formerly known as Cot Death
Once people talked about 'Cot Death' in hushed whispers, they were ready to point fingers and blame parents as 'things like that don't happen', and 'there must of been something wrong with that child'. Their understand of why such a cruel turn off fate could happen to a loving family while breaking their believe of the natural order of life. However, as people became more aware and a few high-profile figures lost their babies, their perceptions shifted.
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The phrase "cot death" was eventually abandoned owing to its deceptive claim that sudden infant death can only happen when a baby is sleeping in their own cot. It was time that name changed to SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME or SIDS to describe the sudden death of a seemingly healthy baby or toddler that remains unexplained after a thorough autopsy and death scene investigation. It is, in it’s essence, a diagnosis of exclusion.
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By its very nature SIDS can strike at any time, without warning. While the cause is currently unknown but some characteristics associated with higher SIDS risk have been identified, such as exposure to tobacco smoke, frontal sleeping (baby slept on their tummy) and lack of ventilation. As such, there has been great progress over the past few decades on educating parents about how to reduce SIDS risks. However, reducing risks is not a failsafe way to prevent SIDS and at least 300 babies still die in the UK each year.​
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About 90 per cent of cases of SIDS happen in the first six months. Most are in the first three months of life, peaking in the second month and it is more prominent in boys. As with stillbirth and neonatal death, the unexplained nature of an unexplained death is incomprehensible, heartbreaking and often exacerbates and prolongs the grief.
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I will never forget the screams in my head as I tried in vain to breath life back into my son's tiny body, It felt so unreal that my baby just forgot to breath and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bring him back to his loving family. So I blamed myself as I am his daddy and should of been there to protect him from the hooded shroud of darkness, but instead I wanted to be numb, I wanted to stop feeling this heart break, I just wanted to swop places so my son could live once more
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SUDDEN UNEXPLAINED DEATH IN INFANT OR CHILDHOOD (SUDIC or SUDC)
Like SIDS, SUDIC is the unexpected death of a child at any time without warning, and share many of the same unanswered questions. SUDC affect children and infant aged between the range 1 and 18 years old, while that remains unexplained. Around 40 children are affected every year in the UK, comparable to 1-2 seemingly healthy children dying every fortnight, often going to sleep and never waking up.
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The agony on parents and families across the country would stay the same, and the fact that there is no easy solution why is a price that many people pay on a daily basis. Even being informed that it is unexplained does not stop you from wondering 'how this could happen?' and 'why don't anyone know?
The taboos around SIDS and SUDIC still exist. People, friends, and family continue to struggle to accept the truth that some newborns, toddlers, young children, and teenagers just fall asleep and never wake up. There is no rationale for the chaotic and heartbreaking experience of childhood bereavement, despite our best efforts to find a solution.
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If a child dies, it doesn't seem to matter if he is three, thirteen, or thirty years old. We are all experiencing the same emotion. How is it possible for a parent to outlive a child?
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TRAUMATIC BEREAVEMENT
In the pages of this website, we have talked about some of the syndromed labelled as natural bereavement in children, but what about traumatic bereavement, this may include dying in an accident, by suicide, through drugs and alcohol, or as a result of violence. No parent ask to outlive their children
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The feeling of loss remain the same. Our babies, children are not in our loving arms and our loss break our soles. You may have been involved in the accident or aftermath of the terrorist attack. But trauma can also happen after any sudden or unexpected death, or where you have witnessed someone you love suffering or pain. ​
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I'm really proud of his legacy and the fact that so many people know his name. Being able to speak freely about my son has benefited me and made me content that the child had and still makes a difference.​​​​​​​​​​
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