Blog 3 : Becoming A Dad in Grief

Written on 26th February 2013

Blog 3 : Becoming A Dad in Grief 

Most people have a job that is an enjoyable experience, or at a minimum gives them money to pay the bills. I have one of those. However, I also have another job. It's a job that I didn't want, a job that I don't enjoy and it certainly doesn't provide any money. That job is being a dad in grief. 

It starts hard and doesn't really get any easier.  A dads first job is normally to send a happy "Welcome to the World" message to family and friends, unfortunately, my first job was to inform them that there were problems and we had a very sick little girl. Not only did I have a critically ill little princess, I also had a wife recovering from surgery who was given so much medicine she wasn't fully aware of what was going on. How do I tell my wife that our beautiful baby girl is fighting for her life?  

In 31 hours, Mia had lots of visits from our family and friends. As my wife was recovering from the operation, it was my job to greet people, brief them, take them to the neonatal ward to say hello to Mia. I am not complaining at having to do this, it comes with the job, but after telling the 10th set of visitors what had happened, and how ill my daughter was, it started to get quite draining. The 31 hours and 21 minutes ended when we said goodbye to our princess, my thoughts and feelings around that time will remain private. I slept that night, unlike my wife, who stayed awake all night crying with the midwife. The guilt I felt when I woke up that I had left my grieving wife alone all night was unbearable. 

For most people, 2 days after your baby is  born, you'd be thinking about going home, introducing them to their new surroundings, laying them down in their Moses basket, looking forward to taking them out in their shiny new pram. I did go home that morning, but it was to go and pack all those things away into their boxes to be returned to the shops. I needed to do this before bringing my wife home, I couldn't let her come home to that.  

Nothing prepares you for the things that you deal with in the hours and days after you lose your baby, adrenaline alone gets you through it. There is a registry office in the hospital. Registering your babies birth is a momentous occasion, it's the first time that you see your babies name in print officially, and that name you have chosen for your baby is with them forever. I made my appointment with the registrar, but this time around the appointment had 2 purposes, the registration of both the birth and the death of Mia Rose Greenall. Again, this is something that I didn't want my wife to have to go through, I felt I needed to protect her from even more heartache. I made the appointment alone, I couldn't put her through that after all she had just been through herself. I came back from the registry office to a visit from the family bereavement councillor. Hearing what you have to do to arrange a funeral for your new born baby is a conversation that I certainly never thought I'd be a part of.

 

It was at this point when I thought that all of a sudden I'd wake up from this dream, no, nightmare, and Mia would be lying in a cot at the side of her mum's bed. But I didnt wake up. I didn't wake up because I wasn't asleep. This was real, and I had to accept that, because I knew that this was with me for the rest of my life. On the 5th June 2013, a part of me died with Mia, not to be returned until we are reunited.