The new normal is a phrase widely used by those who have lost a baby. It's a completely different way of life, like nothing you'll have ever experienced before. You can break up with a partner and it hurts but, eventually, things just go back to normal. You lose a baby and the entire trajectory of your life is altered in one, swift and devastating blow. Everything you were certain about, everyone you were certain about are smashed into tiny pieces. The house you planned to raise your child in? Tainted. That friend you've known for years? Gone. That TV show (One Born Every Minute) you used to love? Ha. Forget it. Your whole world is turned upside down and you're left in an emotional, painful state and before long you realise, this is how it is now. This is my life, this is my "new normal".
It's so very unfair. We have to rebuild our crushed world that we lovingly created and we have to rebuild it with key pieces missing. It's an impossible task and so we have to make a new world. It's not as good and we miss our old world but it does the job (just) nonetheless.
The New Normal Project is nothing fancy, nothing groundbreaking and it's not going to make the pain you're feeling go away. It's just a simple concept. It's a platform to tell your story and how your life has been altered. For example: I've moved house because our old one held to many painful memories, I've got a puppy instead of a baby now, I'm debating changing career as I don't know if I'll be able to return to childrenswear...
If you want to tell your story and how your life has been changed just go to theContact Me page and send me an email containing:
- Your name
- Your baby's/babies' name(s)
- Your blog name/website address
- Your story (it can be as detailed or as brief as you like)
- What's changed in your life.
I'm really want to gain a collection of stories to show parents that they aren't alone. If I could describe how I felt after the first initial few weeks it would be isolated and confused. I was constantly questioning if what I was feeling was normal and left wondering if anyone else had been through this and survived. I also want to use this as a legacy for our babies, so that their names are out there in black and white because they exist and their stories deserve to be told.
Olly's story - From his Mum, Carly:
I lost my baby Olly on the 25th of July this year. I was classed as a low risk pregnancy and everything seemed pretty straight forward all the way through, I was in fact over due by 4 days when the unimaginable happened.
Olly was an active baby and his movement never changed, that night I went to bed and he was still wriggling as normal, I dozed of to sleep.
I woke suddenly with a gushing feeling "my water has broken" I screeched. My boyfriend flew out of bed and turned on the light, the bed was covered in blood. He rang an ambulance and tried to lift me from the bed but the blood loss was so great that I couldn't get up. The ambulance took 28 minutes to come which felt like a life time, but they eventually came and took me to the hospital. When we arrived there I was taken to a room where I was met by a roomful of docs/nurses being prodded and poked, whilst one of the doctors scanned my belly, "im sorry he said, there is no heartbeat or blood flow". My partner burst into tears I just nodded my head and asked what I had done wrong.
They did there best to comfort us before they had to discuss what happened next.
The doctor explained that it was in my best interest to give birth to olly naturally, so I rang my older sister and she came to the hospital to support me and my partner during the labour and birth.
26 hours later olly was born, and he was just perfect 7llb 7oz and masses of dark hair.
Olly spent most of the day with me, my partner and our 9yr old son Kian (he was so brave). Our familys also came to see him to say there goodbyes
We were staying in the forget me not suite and the midwives taking care of us were just lovely, they took prints,casts and photos of olly and gave them to us to take home in a keepsake box.
Leaving the hospital that night was awful, I was just quiet and sad, I don't think it had really hit me still.
The next 2 weeks were just horrible, registering olly, funeral arrangements, songs to pick, poems,what service to have, burial,cremation?? It was all to much to deal with on top of coming to terms with what happened, every phone call and every meeting with people, was so hard for me to do without breaking into tears, my boyfriend was such a rock though, he got me though everything.
2 weeks later he was buried after a lovely service.
It's all been swings and roundabouts since then, I have good days and bad days, I just feel an emptiness that can never be filled.
My placenta was sent off for testing and I am awaiting an appointment to discuss with the doctor exactly what happened but they wrote the cause of death as vasa preavia on the still birth certificate, I've done my own research on the condition and it saddens me even more, I still can't believe this happened.
I can't actually believe how many people have lost there babies!!
Until this happened I knew so little about still birth, it's so sad that this happens, can't think of anything worse.
Olly was an active baby and his movement never changed, that night I went to bed and he was still wriggling as normal, I dozed of to sleep.
I woke suddenly with a gushing feeling "my water has broken" I screeched. My boyfriend flew out of bed and turned on the light, the bed was covered in blood. He rang an ambulance and tried to lift me from the bed but the blood loss was so great that I couldn't get up. The ambulance took 28 minutes to come which felt like a life time, but they eventually came and took me to the hospital. When we arrived there I was taken to a room where I was met by a roomful of docs/nurses being prodded and poked, whilst one of the doctors scanned my belly, "im sorry he said, there is no heartbeat or blood flow". My partner burst into tears I just nodded my head and asked what I had done wrong.
They did there best to comfort us before they had to discuss what happened next.
The doctor explained that it was in my best interest to give birth to olly naturally, so I rang my older sister and she came to the hospital to support me and my partner during the labour and birth.
26 hours later olly was born, and he was just perfect 7llb 7oz and masses of dark hair.
Olly spent most of the day with me, my partner and our 9yr old son Kian (he was so brave). Our familys also came to see him to say there goodbyes
We were staying in the forget me not suite and the midwives taking care of us were just lovely, they took prints,casts and photos of olly and gave them to us to take home in a keepsake box.
Leaving the hospital that night was awful, I was just quiet and sad, I don't think it had really hit me still.
The next 2 weeks were just horrible, registering olly, funeral arrangements, songs to pick, poems,what service to have, burial,cremation?? It was all to much to deal with on top of coming to terms with what happened, every phone call and every meeting with people, was so hard for me to do without breaking into tears, my boyfriend was such a rock though, he got me though everything.
2 weeks later he was buried after a lovely service.
It's all been swings and roundabouts since then, I have good days and bad days, I just feel an emptiness that can never be filled.
My placenta was sent off for testing and I am awaiting an appointment to discuss with the doctor exactly what happened but they wrote the cause of death as vasa preavia on the still birth certificate, I've done my own research on the condition and it saddens me even more, I still can't believe this happened.
I can't actually believe how many people have lost there babies!!
Until this happened I knew so little about still birth, it's so sad that this happens, can't think of anything worse.
💙👼🏻💙 thank you, our babies should always be talked of and remembered x
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