Please talk to me about my babies. You may not see me holding them or see photos of them on social media but they are very much here in my heart. Months have passed and seasons have changed. Perhaps your life has moved on, but my precious little babies still remain a big part of me and my life every day. I will never get over this or move on but I will move forward on a different journey.

Please mention my babies by name, it means so much when you acknowledge who they are. Though they did not get to breathe even a breath of the air we breathe they are still my children. We had planned their names for years. These are the children we had hoped and prayed for all our marriage.

Please remember their birthday as you would if they were still here. I will always know how old they would have been at each coming year and the milestones they would have achieved.

They can’t be replaced by me just ‘having another baby’. There will always be a huge void in our lives where they were meant to be. They will always be my first. And besides our twins were our miracles, not every woman can easily conceive.

You may not realise it but saying words like ‘twin’, ‘birth’, ‘pregnancy’ or ‘baby’ around me with no prior warning or sensitivity can cause a seismic wave in my heart. Although I may look happy and content on the outside, on the inside yes there are fragments of happiness but amidst a field of broken dreams and I have yet to recover from a major trauma.

Yes it pains me to see that you are expecting, but that’s because you are a reminder of who I was when I had the privaledge of carrying my babies. I have vivid memories of feeling my twins kick and move and on the scans every two weeks they would cuddle and kiss. I could see them alive and well, they were perfectly formed. Yet please know that I rejoice that you are going through this amazing journey and will soon meet your baby. You and I have a connection and I understand some of those worries that you may have. Don’t forget too that I know what it is like to go through weeks of sickness, to suffer heartburn, pelvic pain and later to ride the storms of labour contractions.

I love that you now have a baby to take home from the hospital, please celebrate them, shout from the rooftops of the joy they bring, I would have and dreamt of the day I would do the same!  I love that your little one is growing up. Do tell of those cute things they do and say. Yet please don’t forget that I am a mother too.The love I feel for my babies is just the same as the love you feel for yours. The difference is I don’t get to show them. I love them and mother them from afar. Oh how I long for them and miss them each day. I breathe the memories of their short lives each day and I can’t simply dettach from the future vision I had built up of my life that was to be, with them and holding them.

I know for some, children can be hard to cope with and believe me I probably would be moaning by now about the stresses of coping with twins, but please do think before you tell me of your ‘bad’ day with the kids. Oh what I would give to have just one of those days or even an hour with my babies alive again.

Please don’t assume how I may feel. Please don’t pass me by if you don’t know what to say.  I need you and I am still me. Yes these times are hard for me but I am surviving through. Hopefully I will be a stronger me. I cling to hope and my heart is bursting with love.

Let me share with you about my babies. With my streams of tears there also comes a fountain of thankfulness and pure joy at having been part of their lives.

Please don’t forget them. My babies matter as much as the babies you can see. Especially to me. 💗💗

Today hubby and I spent the afternoon working with the NHS maternity bereavement team and a few other bereaved parents to rewrite the survey that goes out to parents who have lost about their care and gave our input to a new toolkit for parents as well as better training for medical staff. This will be put out nationally this summer.
I am so grateful for the amazing care and information we received when our world fell apart in September but in other hospitals this is not always the norm and some things we would want to be done better. We told them of what mattered the most.
We feel privaledged and honoured to have been asked and to hopefully make a difference for future bereaved parents.

For us the medical staff held us emotionally when our babies hearts had stopped and guided us through what we can only describe as a nightmare over the next few days and beyond to go through labour to meet them but then have to say goodbye. Yet amidst all this we remember the wonderful support of the midwives who sensitively looked after our needs as a family and respected our girls to the highest level they deserve and acknowledged who they were by calling them by name.

Being a part of this meeting today and what is to come is just one way we hope to continue to honour our beautiful daughters Chloe and Grace here on earth though they are not here with us 💗💗