A Father's Grief Story:

He is MY Baby too!

A Father's Grief Story:

THE BEGINNING:

The Doctors words to me were, "I have to tell you that you have a baby son. But he is dead. He was STILLBORN and there was nothing that we could do. I am sorry."
Stunned, I asked, "What happened? Why did he die?" The reply was so inadeqate, but it was all that I ever received. "Everything went wrong that could go wrong with your baby, but we do not know why. It was internal. I am sorry. You must be strong for your wife."
I went into shock. This isn't happening to me. It happens to other people, but not to us. Everything seemed to be so unreal, like it was just a very bad dream.

Filtering through this sense of unreality, was the urgent need to be with my wife. As I entered the ward, my wife was crying. I sat alongside of her and held her hand. I didn't feel anything just then, I was just numb. The doctor said I must be strong. Tears wouldn't come and then I thought, I must tell my son and daughter what has happened. Will they understand was my next thought. He is 5 years and she is just 1 year. We had been telling them that we were going to have another baby, now I had to find the words to tell them that our baby had died.

WHAT DOES MY SON LOOK LIKE?:

I had not seen my son. Seeing dead babies was not encouraged by the Staff. My wife had seen Darren very briefly immediately after his birth. She had propped herself up on her arms to catch a brief glimpse of a "perfectly" formed little baby boy, before they forced her to lie down. They then gathered our baby up and "took him away." It's for the best they were quick to say.
My only concern at this time was for my wife. It was only later when I was in bed and I was trying to come to terms with Darren's death that I began to wonder what my son looked like. All I could think of was the Doctors words to me, "Everything went wrong that could go wrong with your baby, but we do not know why. It was internal. I am sorry. You must be strong for your wife." In my mind I began to try to make some sense out of that statement.
"EVERYTHING WENT WRONG" kept going through my mind. I began to think that maybe my son was disfigured. What did that mean? Had I as the father created a "monster?" If that was the case, what sort of a husband was I to put my loving wife through such a trauma.
The mind cannot live in a vacumm, when the facts are absent, the imagination or fantasies begin to "make up" the missing pieces of the jigsaw picture to try to bring some sense out of the tragedy. I pushed all of these thoughts deep into the back of my mind. I certainly did not want to share these thoughts with my wife. They were too painful. Besides, I did not want to upset her anymore.
It was a long time later before I learnt from my wife that she had seen our baby son. That the brief look that she had seen was enough to assure her that Darren was just "perfect," and had everything that he was meant to have. There was no disfigurement and he looked just beautiful. My mind was immediately freed from all those dark imaginings, to be replaced with a deep regret that I had not seen him.

Then God's promise flooded my mind to bring me peace. I would see my son one day in Heaven and he would be just perfect. Although I have never seen him, I will recognise him and he will recognise me immediately. These promises of my God eased my Grief pain and assisted me on the long road of healing.