Hi Everyone,

My name is Saskia and it is 5 years today since my precious 3rd daughter Salome died, aged 2 1/2 days. Salome died from early onset sepsis after a normal pregnancy and labour, followed by a sudden decline and a 2 1/2 day stay in NICU before she died in my arms. We now have a 10 year old daughter, an 8 year old daughter, and a 3 1/2 year old boy , our Rainbow Baby.

I used to frequent Glow very often. To be honest this site was a life saver for me. The support and wisdom I found here was invaluable. As the years went out I weaned myself off Glow and tried to refocus on other stuff, including our new baby etc. But when my anniversary days roll around, I come back to Glow because so few other places Get It.

Over the last few days I have been thinking about the current consequences for me of Salome's life and death. Trying to create and permit myself to use the time to reflect on how things are now and what still hurts. Here are my initial thoughts, my description of how life is for me 5 years in to my experience of grieving my daughter.

1. Life is basically good. Honestly and truly, at 5 years I do feel deep happiness. Often. There is a richness and depth to my life that wasn't there before I had Salome.

2. Life is still hard sometimes. I still carry Salome's loss with me every day. I still see myself as a mother of 4 and people rarely recognise that about me. The Grieving Mamma aspect to me is still constantly in there, sometimes buried deep down, sometimes sitting close to the surface. But she is still in there, howling for her baby, screaming against the injustice of it. That part of me is always there, but I have to spend less energy on managing that part of myself. Not that it's repressed or denied, it's just not as dominant as it was.

3. Salome's absence is made trickier by the birth and life of her brother. If Salome had lived we would never have had her brother. It is very difficult for me to imagine us all together on any dimension, and that is distressing. Our boy is old enough to start to understand that he had a sister who died, and he seems confused about this too. We do our best with that stuff. People think her brother's birth should have resolved our grief for Salome in some way.... As if our kids are a litter of puppies.... But no, thinking "If Salome had lived, our boy wouldn't be here" does not resolve it. It just short circuits my brain. No way to even imagine all my kids together.

4. My grief about Salome both helps and hinders my work. I am a counsellor working with people with chronic and terminal illnesses. I sometimes work with parents who are grieving the death of their child, and sometimes parents who are preparing to be separated from their child by their own death. This can be very hard work for me emotionally, but I think I do that work well. I kind of know the terrain and it does not scare me.

5. I am more anxious parent following Salome's death. I worry much more about my children being abducted, drowned, dying of sudden bacterial infections, getting crushed by Ferris wheels.... My ideas about how my children could die are endless. Knowing the stats of how unlikely all these deaths are does not help at all. You know how it is.... when you've had a child die, it doesn't matter whether any particular circumstance is a 1 in a 1 000 000 odds of 1 in a 16 000 odds. When it's happened in your home, that 1 is a very big number. There is no comfort in stats for me. When I consider situations of risk for my kids, my brain starts yammering with a "I can't lose another one, I can't lose another one, I would not survive that..." That's tiring to manage. Few people see that, and it's very draining at times.

6. My sleep is more fragile now. When my anxiety gets triggered I tend to lose sleep. I don't cope with lack of sleep as well as I once did. Here's how it works: something makes me anxious and spikes my adrenalin. For instance one of my kids has an asthma attack and needs to go to Accident and Emergency, ends up on the same equipment in the same hospital as our Salome was. I'm Ok at the time. I stay calm and make good decisions. I feel relatively OK in that moment. But then about 48 hours after, when the drama is over and my child is safely home, I get anxious. I usually have at least 1 night's shitty sleep after that. Here's another trigger: a beautiful little boy same age as our son went missing several months ago is a town not far from here. I was very anxious and couldn't sleep for about 4 nights. My poor sleep is not a massive deal but it is a shitty side effect of my grief that again doesn't get much air play.

7. Another consequence of Salome's death: RE that beautiful missing child, my heart really really really aches for him and his family. I think of him daily. It makes me nauseas. I have had very strong urges to write to the family. I have not done so. I can see via media they are swamped with support and it would not be good for me to connect with that family anyway. I am kind of drawn to their suffering in a way that is not healthy for me. I need to avoid reading about the situation in the paper or else I lose another night's sleep. I mean, I've got a dead daughter and I work with people with chronic illness. I've got enough sadness in my life already!!!

8. I rarely talk about my grief these days. It's not that people wouldn't listen. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about the depth of my grief and I don't know why. Sometimes I feel embarrassed that the grief appears to be largely gone... It's so variable these days. And I think overall that's a good thing. But I am alone with my grief much more these days.

9. My marriage survived. I am grateful for that. We are doing well as a couple. It's been hard work, but we are doing OK.

10. My faith did not survive. That was very very painful. Losing my faith was a massive grief in itself. Some kind of spiritual life is rising out of the ashes in the last 6 months, but spiritually the last 4 1/2 years have been shithouse.

11. I never once got a sense of Salome's presence after she died. Not once. Not in a dream, not a feather brushing over my head, not a butterfly in a weird place or an unexpected rainbow or any of that stuff that happens on TV. Nothin'. My husband had all of that stuff and I was really jealous.

12. I got a tattoo about 18 months ago. I am glad I waited to come up with a tattoo that was about her life and her legacy rather than a tattoo about her death and my grief for her. Since I got my tattoo I feel less of a need to go to her grave. I feel like I am carrying a beautiful gravestone with me wherever I go, and that helps.

13. Salome would have started school this week had she lived. Today I was around other kids who are 5, all excited about school. But had she lived, our Salome would have had cerebral palsy, lots of organ failure, and goodness knows what other serious impairments. Starting school would have been very different experience for her and for us. If Salome had lived, our whole lives would have changed to cater to the challenges she would have faced. I still fret about that: would we have had what it takes to parent a special needs kid? Would our marriage have survived that? Did Salome see something in us that she knew we wouldn't cope? Is that why she chose to leave us? That's a knot that I can't untie. Mostly, I don't believe Salome chose to leave us as simply as all that, but those thoughts still show up sometimes.

14. We have been really lucky in how we have been supported by friends and family. I'm still getting texts and cards at anniversary time, 5 years on. Not my husband though. People don't text him or call him to ask him how he is, which pisses me off.

14. Overall, I am a braver person now. I like who I am, even though I am acutely aware of my failings and my limitations. Salome's life and death, and my continued grief for her, continues to shape me. It's not past tense for me. But my grief is more a haunting sense of absence now rather than a tangible pain. It's an emptiness rather than a sadness. I feel hollow and cold, but not sad exactly. But she's in there still, that Grieving Mamma part of me. She is still screaming and crying and searching and covering herself with dust. I still ache for my lost daughter.

Enough about me.

To my beautiful Salome, my beloved third child, always loved and never forgotten. I carry you etched on my heart till the day I die. Precious child, my heart remains broken. So honoured you were ours, but 2 1/2 days was not long enough.

With endless love,
Mamma.

PS Anyone else out there a few years down the track? What's it like for you?

I just want to say, you write so beautifully and that is an absolutely lovely tribute to your daughter. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

We also lost our third child. He died at full term from a sudden random cord accident. Now we have a fourth child, our rainbow. I am only 18 months out from our baby's death but I already can count on one hand the number of friends who consider me a "mom of four" just as you relate.

I can also relate to your heightened anxiety now with your living children. Not that I am "glad" about any of our tragedies that have happened to us losing our sweet babies; but may I say it is a relief for me to read that you have similar anxiety responses as I do now. I also view myself as on the wrong side of statistics, and knowing the chances of bad things happening to my living kids are so low, but I do consider all sorts of horrible things as possibilities now.

And I, too, can not wrap my head around the fact that my beloved rainbow baby exists, when his brother is dead, and that they both would not be here living at the same time, in any circumstance. I simply don't know how to reconcile that. Right - everyone thinks our rainbow baby's presence relieves our grief over our other baby's death. No. To me, they are completely separate entities.

I am happy for you that your marriage survived. My marriage has also survived, and has become so much stronger. I can hope this for everyone who must endure this hell of baby loss.

I am inspired to try and make reflections on my baby's anniversary every year as you have done here, as I think it is a loving tribute. Thank you. Remembering your sweet Salome on her 5th anniversary.

Saskia, I have nothing really to add as I am only six months out, but felt the need to tell you how much I enjoyed reading your post. It gives me peace and reassurance that things won't always be this awful. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your post. I am not far out, only 2 months, but it gives me hope to see where you are. I am also a counselor and am going back to work this week. I am so worried about how to handle it, since I work with grief and loss too. I'm glad to hear that your loss has deepened your work with clients. I'm hoping that getting back to helping others will help me move forward.

I am so sorry that you lost your daughter.

Saskia,
I loved your post.
I could relate to the fact that you are managing well along with the various ways your grief reveals itself.
Thank you for this post. It made me feel less alone.

Thank you for visiting Glow after all these years. My son died almost three years ago. He was my third child, and I had a fourth after him, who is alive and healthy. I am the mother of four boys.
I relate to everything you wrote up to 9 (and except 4 obviously)
I had lost my faith before his death. I don't feel braver yet, quite the opposite. But you give me hope. I worry about my kids (and my husband) dying all the time. Not as obsessively as 3 years ago, but still so much more than I would have otherwise.
I also feel very close to suffering parents, I have made connections with parents of kids suffering from cancer in my community, although my son didn't die from cancer at all. Somehow it makes me feel less alone to be around people who are not scared by grief and sadness.
I'm dying to get a tattoo but I'm still waiting for the right fit.
But enough about me,
Happy birthday to your Salome. I absolutely love her name. One of the names I would have chosen had I ever had a daughter. Salome may you be dancing wherever you are.

Saskia- I can relate in many ways to your post, and would love to really sit down and type them out. I will! I will!

Remembering Salome with you. 5 years. it's like a sucker punch in some ways, a relief (for me, to feel good in my new 'normal').

all the best..

Karine- HUGE HUG!! I think of you every time we read I'll love you forever... thank you dearest. thank you for being such a huge support for me! xoxoxoxoxoo

Thanks Sme,
a huge hug to you too. I only recently found out that Robert Munsch wrote the book in tribute to his two stillborn children. Even before I knew, I felt that I was reading the book for my living children and Malak at the same time. Now I know that it was meant to be read like that. It makes me feel like I'm not totally crazy after all...