When we sat down with Cheryl, I was prepared to have a difficult conversation but I didn’t expect for the conversation to play over and again in my head. And if that is how I felt, I can only imagine how it must feel to lose the hope and future that you had planned for your new baby. 

Cheryl lost her baby at 21 weeks due to a rare genetic syndrome called Patau’s. The diagnosis didn’t come up in the original 12 week screening tests, and so Cheryl and her husband Mike continued through the first 6 months of pregnancy with the usual hopefulness and excitement of any first time parents. 

They then found out about the anomalies at the 20 week scan due to growth and development of their baby. They also found out that the baby was a little girl. 

One of the most poignant moments of our chat was the difficulty that Cheryl felt when a friend of hers had a baby girl, at the same time that her baby should have been born. And the pain that Cheryl felt when this little girl (who she loves!) reached the various milestones that she herself would be seeing, had she not lost hers. This is something that is very difficult to speak about, because nobody wants to sound bitter. But there is no doubt that anybody who has suffered from infertility issues, miscarriage or baby loss hasn’t felt the unfairness of it, when seeing others that got there ‘with ease’. 

Ironically in this situation, Cheryl was, at the time, working as a grief counselor. She described to us one of the most clarifying pieces of information about grief that I have ever heard, and it has since helped me to understand what I went through when I lost my own Mum. She explained that when you lose somebody that is very close to you, be it a parent, spouse, brother etc, the neurons in your brain can’t equate the loss. This is why you still pick up the phone to call them, or see them around long after they are gone. It is also why your life will irrevocably change in many ways, as it did for me following the loss of my Mum. 

However, when you lose a baby before you have had a chance to form a relationship with them in real time, your pathway changes and your future changes. You need to rebuild your pathway and refocus on a different future to what you’d been facing before the loss. Add in the clothes you’d purchased, the cot you made and the name you’d chosen and it makes coping with the loss all that much harder. 

We’re by no means professionals on this topic - but we recorded the podcast episode in the hopes that anybody who is currently going through miscarriage, baby loss or infertility problems can maybe feel slightly less alone, in what can be an incredibly isolating time.  We have put some links below (from Cheryl herself) which may be helpful for anybody that has been through the same thing.

Please remember - you can always reach out for help from your fellow equestrian mums. We’re here to listen, to bolster you when you feel like you’re in a bad place, and to encourage you to keep your head above the water. We’re by your side.

Sophie (& Katie) xx

Recommended Links:

• www.cruse.org.uk/understanding-grief/five-stages-of-grief 

• www.trisomy.org 

• www.ashermans.org 

Recommended Books: 

• Ask Me His Name: Learning to live and laugh again after the loss of my baby - Elle Wright 

• The Baby Loss Guide: Practical and compassionate support with a day-by-day resource to navigate the path of grief - Zoe Clarke-Coates 

• Saying Goodbye: A personal story of baby loss and 90 days of support to walk you through grief - Zoe Clarke-Coates