It is 6 days till your death day and 9 days till your birthday.  I often questioned how it is possible for you to have died before your birth.  Death took over that fateful night between 25 and 26 September.  No-one knows when you died, how you died, why you died.  No cause.  Except for maybe the fact that my blood was too thick and that my body could no longer sustain you, nourish you the way a mama should nourish their baby.  Too many blood clots starved you.  But how can that be?  When everything was so very perfect on the 24^thof September, when I heard your heartbeat, and it was like a galloping horse.  Your heart was strong they said.  I asked can you come home earlier?  I felt uneasy those last days that you were with me.  I felt like a train wreck was going to approach us.  But in those days, I couldn’t name this unknown fear, only when it happened.

Then my sister asking on the way to hospital ‘What if Sebastian died?’.  I refused to believe that you could have died.  I clung onto hope desperately. It was as if my whole body was clinging onto this tiny thread of hope. Only what was the point?  I prayed desperately to the Lord that night when they told me your heart was beating no more.  Prayed. Dear Lord, please keep my baby boy safe.  Please Lord, let there be a miracle.  Please Lord take my life and let Sebby live.  Dear Lord please let there be a miracle.

My hope left, when I was alone in this room, looking at the line that didn’t have zigzags. That was your line.  Looked at my line, and it was going up and down.  Those were the zigzags of my contractions.  I left that room like a balloon losing all its air. Deflated. Depressed. Hope long gone. Collapsing onto the floor in the main waiting room where my mum and aunt waited, crying.  ‘This is so unfair.  This cannot be.’ Huge broken sobs wrecked through my body.  Complete anguish. Complete despair.  I couldn’t understand then why you had to die.  I messaged a few of my friends to ask for prayer.  ‘Please pray, baby is dead. Please pray for a safe delivery.’ Everyone couldn’t believe when they heard my news.  I closed myself off from the world. Withdrew into my woman’s cave of deep despair. 

The days ensued was focused on your birth, on the contractions that ravaged through my body.  But it wasn’t just contractions.  It was the contractions of grief.  They would come in huge big waves, and then they would ebb and flow.  And then they would come again, drowning me into deep mothering grief. Deep unfolding mounds of grief.  Questioning why?  Why did you have to die after everything that has happened?  Couldn’t you cling onto life?  Just a bit longer.  Couldn’t you cling onto life and fight? Fight? Fight for life?  Or your body just couldn’t cope with the lack of nourishment.  You were slowly starving and I didn’t know.  Even the doctors didn’t know. Then who else would have known? Would God have known that you were suffering so much inside my womb?  The one place where you were meant to be safe?

After your birth, time seemed to stand still. I seemed to be trapped in this never-ending elevator that didn’t move neither up or down. Just stood still in a silent vacuum with all-consuming grief.  Grief constricting me like a boa constrictor. Tightening its hold as the days and months spread ahead of me, and I had no way out.  I was trapped in this new club with other grieving mothers and yet I was so alone. I became well acquainted with grief.  Almost like an expert in grief.  Knowing that if I don’t move on from those stages, that I could become stuck in grief.  There were days I didn’t want to move forward.  Thinking I would forget you. Thinking you would forget me.  Thinking I would be a bad mummy. Feeding to my guilt that my body failed you. Failed in protecting you.  Failed in keeping you safe.  Failed in keeping you healthy. How could I not have known that you were suffering so much?  I should have known. I was after all your mama.  Did I even fail at keeping you safe?

After death, life was a rollercoaster ride.  A fiend.  Taking away my joy. Taking away the peace I had so much of while I was pregnant with you.  It took a long time for me to slowly move in to my new role as a mother to a little boy in heaven.  It took a long time to accept your death, as my new reality.  Truth to be told I didn’t want to accept it.  I didn’t want to accept it. I wanted to keep you.  I wanted to mother you.  And that was stolen from me. The greatest gift of all – to be your mama. 

But even through death you have taught me so much about life.  Thought me about courage, and how to live life to the fullest. Admittedly it took a while to reach that stage.   To enjoy life.  I still have many insecurities about my failings of being a mama, of me as a person.  But I’ve learnt lately to be freer, to laugh, and to not let every little detail in life bother me.  I had to learn to let go and Let God in.  I had to learn to move forward with life.  And I did.  I learnt to move forward with life. Slowly. Painfully. Crawling sometimes on rocks that would hurt my knees and hands.  But I moved forward, trusting blindly as I moved forward into a zone of new acceptance. New reality. It isn’t always plain-sailing easy.  But I am breathing and I am enjoying life to my fullest ability.

Do I miss you?  There is not a day that goes by without thinking about you, but saying that life has its own way of healing. Its own way of showing that there are many more things in life that can be enjoyed.  I do wish you were here, but I know that God’s good plan always prevails. And I trust Him with all my heart.  Life is bittersweet.  Yet beautiful.  I choose to see the beautiful moments in life.  Not the bad moments.  I choose to embrace life with all its peaks and all its low.  I am grateful to be alive, and grateful that I can travel the world and share the good news.

Life after your death has taken an interesting turn, and I will continue to move forward with a hope so sure in my life.