Social media can be a challenging place for a bereaved parent, simple innocent videos can be a trigger.
Recently I have been seeing lots of videos where people are acting out the mannerisms of their children. The first child is x
The second child is portrayed as x
And the third child is x
I have been blessed with 2 living children after the loss of their big brother following a diagnosis of Bilateral Renal Agenesis. One day I was thinking about another of these videos I had seen (thanks Facebook algorithm for ensuring I see as many as possible after I hovered too long on one video!)
I began thinking about my first rainbow baby (my first living child) and thought they were nothing like the ‘first child’ portrayed in these videos and I thought about my second rainbow baby and knew they were nothing like the second child in these videos.
Then it hit me, they aren’t my first and second babies, they are my second and third!
They are the first and second children I was lucky enough to parent but they are still my second and third babies.
While I know social media videos are for fun and a bit of escapism, the jolt I got from the juxtaposition of the order in which my children were born and how they are parented hurt my heart.
Navigating life after the loss of our precious boy never ceases to throw curveballs at us. They don’t hit as hard as they used to but they still take my breath away and make my arms ache for my child.
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