In the world of living babies, birthdays are a celebration of achievements and a nostalgic look back over a year filled with heart-warming memories. In the world of baby loss, birthdays can feel like a roll call of missed milestones and serve only as a reminder of the widening gap between your baby’s physical existence and the present day. It is inevitably a bittersweet event, but with some time and focus it is also possible to find the energy to wish your baby a happy birthday and maybe even give them a little (or big) birthday celebration in their honour. Whether you lost your baby in the womb or after birth, there is always opportunity to mark the day, whether you choose to do it privately or publicly.
The run up can panic us, as we inevitably feel there is a huge amount of pressure on this one day that fast approaches. For me, it was as though I was being wound up, each day my chest feeling tighter, my heart just not ready to accept a year had passed. I imagined the day almost like a line that was defining of our journey somehow. I was afraid that it marked the end of something, the end of being freshly bereaved and the world suddenly expecting me to begin moving on.
My anxiety was palpable. We were approaching a finish line but I didn’t want to compete in the race. I wanted to push time back, I was desperate to remain in the days that were closest to my baby. As time pulled us apart, I felt the pull physically too. The last time I touched him, kissed him, smelt him, it was all being slowly plucked from my grasp, and I was clinging on to the cliff edge with just my fingertips.
The ongoing heartfelt wish to remain as CLOSE to your baby as possible manifests itself not just in objects and memories, but also in time.
While many of these feelings are universally shared the world over in baby loss, I realised in the end that much of my run-up anxiety was unfounded. As with so many highly charged life events – interviews, first dates, public speaking – our imagination has a tendency to run away into the most exaggerated possibilities. Such high emotional expectations, the feeling that all our intense grief will rise to the surface and explode. But in reality, the day arrives as any other, filled with sadness, yes, but also presenting an opportunity to include our baby in a day that will forever be special to us.
For many in the loss community, our baby’s birthday is also an anniversary of their death. Birth and death, events which should be separated by years and experiences, instead compounded into one single day. Other times our wombs cradled our babes so gently to sleep and kept them safe and close for days or weeks before we physically birthed them. Death before birth is so painfully topsy turvy in its nature, but regardless of this tragic circumstance, the day our baby was delivered earth side remains to be a poignant and life changing moment. The day they ‘arrived’, their day of birth. On this special day that commemorates their entrance into the world, we can allow ourselves both the space to grieve and the space to celebrate. And we can remember that death is only able to happen where life first flourished, and their life is forever bigger than their death. As we grieve their loss of life and their stolen opportunities, we can also celebrate the very fact that they exist, they are real, they are important and they are loved. Whether with or without breath, they were birthed from womb to Earth and therefore still achieved this day to commemorate.
We have this new date etched into our calendar forever – a date that they brought to our attention so vividly, a date that without their existence would have passed us by without much notice, a date that has therefore become special. A birthday is an opportunity for us to reflect on the year that has passed, and smoke out the better memories among the difficult ones. You can reflect on your journey and any precious moments you shared with your baby, along with all the spectacular lessons their brief life has taught you. You can realise just how much of a privilege it is to be alive to celebrate a birthday, and how fortunate you are to grow older, and this can give you added motivation to make something special of theirs.
As the day looms over the horizon, you can take a moment to decide, How will I spend this special day? As with anything in this world of baby loss, there is no right or wrong way to invest your time, you just have to find what is going to suit you best. Would you like to spend the day with your partner and take a fresh air walk as you talk about your baby? Or would you like to gather with family at your baby’s memorial spot? While some people may feel that it is just too painful to have a cake with no one to blow out the candles and choose to steer well clear of an open celebration, others may decide they want to mark the day in the more traditional way with a real-life party, and either is absolutely a valid choice. Whatever you decide, taking the time to think it through in advance gives you the chance to set plans in place and relieve a little of the uncertainty around the day.
If you do decide to keep the day just for yourself and your partner and your other children, there are many options to keep your intimate gathering special. The planting of a flower or tree in your garden, a visit to somewhere memorable from your pregnancy, or a quiet meal together with the opportunity to talk and remember your baby. The day is yours to do with what you wish – it is an open book, one you can write however suits you best.
If you decide to have a bigger celebration, then there’s no reason why you can’t. A party without the main guest may seem unusual, but why not? A child, whether in your arms or in your heart, is deserving of whatever you decide is appropriate. Dean and I chose to have a huge party for our son’s first birthday, and the busy and uplifting nature of the day was exactly what my heart required.
The very idea of a birthday party may seem unconventional, but then so is your experience of motherhood. You can embrace that and say, ‘We want to have a party, so we will!’
Perhaps you will choose to have the celebration at your home and keep just close friends and family on the invites, or perhaps you will decide to create something much bigger. With this in mind you could take the opportunity to involve the community if you wish and create a fundraising celebration. We can be brave and spread the word on social media, call the local newspaper, ask friends and family to bake cakes to bring along and then display them on a table with a donation pot in exchange for a slice.
Often you will have something that reminds you of your baby, such as a star or a butterfly, and these are a perfect basis for a light theme. This also gives you the chance to spend the lead up to the birthday making special preparations, such as themed table decorations or bunting, which offers a peaceful distraction and gentle meaning in these approaching days.
From my own experience of early miscarriage, I know that a birthday is not always the most obvious date. A birthday can instead stretch across many days, from the date that we sadly lost our baby to the date they were due to be birthed. Marking the birthday of an earlier loss can offer its own challenges. The more private or possibly secret nature of such loss can make the date feel quite lonely; it feels brushed aside by those around us who cannot fathom the potential magnitude of the day. For each early loss I have experienced, the due dates have always remained etched into my memory, and the dates that I lost those babies are also something I will never forget.
You may find that friends and family are deeply encouraging in your intentions to mark the significant days, but you may also be made to feel as though you are somehow over-egging it. As parents to a baby, no matter how brief their life, you can always remain assured that you are entitled to celebrate or grieve on these days however you wish. You can see this as another opportunity to gently educate those around you of the world of baby loss and its enduring impact on our lives. These are days that will forever hold the ‘what ifs’ and ‘could have beens’. They are dates that changed your life and introduced you to both a pain and love that you were yet to know. They are dates that deserve marking in some way even if it is simply the lighting of a candle or holding your baby extra close in your thoughts.
However we decide to mark our baby’s birthday, we can be certain of one thing – their very existence is worthy of recognising and celebrating.
Once the day has passed, there is the familiar feeling of calm after the storm. We can feel as though there is a new chapter about to start, but we are uncertain of the opening sentence. There is so much emphasis on the big day that the days following can lead us back into feeling like a lost sheep. Now what?! One birthday down, a lifetime to go.
As we take the time to gather ourselves once more, we realise we are facing a forever without our baby. Such is the significance of the first birthday, the passing of it leads us into further unknowns. Personally, I struggled much more with my son’s second birthday than his first, feeling as though the novelty of his life and death was wearing thin to those around me and his memory was fading farther from my reach. A sense of, Another birthday passed and so many more to come, left me feeling floored and emotional.
The ongoing fight to keep our baby present in the memories of those around us can be exhausting and lonely. In these moments we can be reminded that grief rules our heart these days, and that’s OK, that’s the way it will be. Your baby will always and forever be special and present to you and those who care about them. Birthdays are always going to be a challenge, our grief will fluctuate and that is to be expected. And what I really want to say is, don’t be frightened.
The passing of time can feel so very cruel as you grieve the loss of your baby, and birthdays can feel like an unbearable hurdle. But my own experience taught me to not be afraid. The day itself can be remarkably peaceful, a whole day in fact that is dedicated to the memory of your baby, surrounded by friends and family and blanketed in love. If we remove expectations and the pressure of what must be then we find we have an opportunity to honour our baby and show them just how much they mean to us. Of course there is grief muddled in, sadness and heartbreak and the desperate wish for what we should have had, our baby is important and they deserve our tears. This day does not mark the end of your grief, it simply marks the continuation of your love.
I once heard a description for the meaning of ‘time’ that has forever stayed with me: ‘Time is a perimeter that measures change’. That is all it is, and while things change around us – the seasons, our home, our skin – the love for our babies remains forever enduring. As humans with an organising nature, we have titled ‘time’ and categorised it into neat calendars. Three hundred and sixty-five days, one whole year, one swift lap of the Earth around our beaming sun. The movements of the universe have offered us these markers without regard for our hearts, and we gather them and title them, and at times we cower at the expectations they present to us. But one whole year is simply time passing with a name – 365 days and we miss our babies, but we miss them at 369 days, we miss them at 300 days and we will miss them still at 400. The big scary ONE YEAR mark is really just as big and scary – and survivable – as any other daily, weekly or monthly mark we endure in the endless run of life after baby loss. My fear that my baby’s birthday would mark the end of something was entirely unfounded. It wasn’t the end, there was no grand finale. And the same goes for you.
Your story is not yet finished. It does not finish at loss, it does not finish at a first-year anniversary, and it will not finish even if you go on to have other children.
As your baby’s birthday approaches you can:
Expect to feel anxious and overwhelmed in the run up.
Ease some of that anxiety by deciding how you would like to spend the day and beginning to put some plans in place.
Plan a big party, a small family gathering or time alone with your partner.
Allow yourself time to both grieve and celebrate, and remove the pressure of expectation.
Remember time can never separate you from the love and memories you hold for your baby.