Intro
I woke up the morning after and, for half a second, forgot that he was gone. And that half-second broke me more than anything else.
In the first days after losing your baby, you live in a haze. You don’t want to move. You don’t want to breathe. You want to lie in bed and scream until your throat bleeds. But when you have another child at home, you don’t get that choice.
The Early Days of Grief
You get up. You make breakfast. You dress your child for the day and play with them. You pretend everything is normal — even though you’re dying inside — because your sadness spills into them, and they don’t understand why. So you swallow it. You hold your scream in your lungs. And it feels like one of the hardest things you’ll ever do: Pretending life is okay while your soul is bleeding out.
It’s the phone calls you have to make to organise your baby’s burial. It’s pretending you’re not the mother of the baby who just died because it makes that other person uncomfortable. It’s being told you’re no longer eligible for maternity leave because you don’t have a living baby, even though you need that time to heal more than ever.
Going Through the Motions
I didn’t want to be a “functioning” human being. I wanted to grieve. I wanted to wrap my family in bubble wrap, so I’d never have to feel this pain again. I asked myself a thousand cruel questions: Was it something I did? Could I have changed anything? Was there a moment I failed him?
The first days after losing him were a blur of hurt so deep I couldn’t catch my breath, of rage so violent it felt like a wildfire in my chest, of guilt so heavy it bent my bones.
One of the hardest days came when I took Angus to playgroup. Did I want to go? Fuck no. But as a mother, you’ll do a thousand things you don’t want to, to keep your other babies afloat. I walked into that room sobbing, and everyone turned to me. Is everything okay? They asked. It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know. But having to tell them that my baby had died, and why, shattered me a second time. Living it. Speaking it. It tore me open… But it also stitched something back together. Tiny, fragile stitches. Because talking about White James, keeping his memory alive, began the slow, brutal first steps of healing.
Grieving While Expecting
When I fell pregnant the third time, I never announced it. I was too busy holding my breath, praying history wouldn’t rip my heart out again.
When I saw those two lines, the first thing I felt wasn’t joy — it was terror. Not because I was pregnant, but because I was scared history would repeat itself. Scared I would lose another baby. And somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a cruel thought whispering: I shouldn’t even be pregnant right now. I should be holding my newborn. Instead, I was back at the start again. Pregnant for the third time.
Caring for my one-year-old. Learning to live with grief so heavy it clawed at my chest with every breath. Grief never really goes away. You get better at hiding it, because people don’t know what to do with your pain. Or you work your way through it, slowly, until you figure out how to carry it better.
The Rainbow After the Storm
We knew we always wanted our kids close in age. So after losing our second son at 25 weeks, three months later, I fell pregnant again. Was I ready? Hell no. I was in the thick of grief.
Marshall had just changed jobs. We had just packed up and moved into a new house. (When you live in station houses tied to jobs, you don’t get to stay when the job ends.) Grief shows you very quickly who’s truly there for you — and who isn’t. Our bosses made it clear that we were on our own. Marshall was ordered back to work, five hours away, just eight days after we lost our son. And I still had a one-year-old to care for. So we moved. New house. New job. Same crushing grief.
Never announcing the pregnancy was my way of protecting myself. I didn’t want to get to 25 weeks again and have to explain to the world that my baby was gone. If I didn’t acknowledge the pregnancy, maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much if I lost him, too. Of course, the guilt consumed me. I should have been treasuring the pregnancy, not avoiding it. But self-protection was all I had left.
Every scan felt like walking a tightrope. I was always waiting for the words: “We found something wrong.” It wasn’t until the 20-week scan, when we flew to Brisbane to see specialists and got the all-clear, that I let myself believe: Maybe. Maybe this baby is staying.
Even then, it took until 30 weeks for it to feel real—eight more weeks. Eight more weeks until maybe, just maybe, I’d hold my baby alive in my arms. After what happened at Rockhampton Base Hospital — after the horror of birthing our son, White James, at 25 weeks, and walking out of that place empty-handed — I swore I’d never step foot in that hospital again.
So, we upgraded to the highest level of private health insurance. This time, we were ready. At 38 weeks, I had a planned C-section, and Hunter came screaming into the world. My rainbow. My anchor.
Learning to Carry Grief
The second I saw him, I loved him. No hesitation. No doubts.
And here’s the raw, ugly truth: If White James had lived, we wouldn’t have Hunter. And Hunter is my world now, too. So, somehow, in some savage twist of fate, both of my sons exist because of each other.
In a perfect world, I’d have both. But this isn’t a perfect world. Today, I have three healthy, wild, beautiful boys. But my heart will always ache for the one who isn’t here.
It will always cry out for White James. And no number of babies will ever fill that space. He’s not replaceable.
He’s part of us — woven into our family, invisible but unbreakable. His name lives in our whispers, our prayers, the quiet pauses between chaos.
And I wouldn’t change it. Not for comfort. Not for ease. Not even for the impossible.