I remember holding Xavier’s tiny hand in my own. Willing his little fingers to curl around mine.  Of course, they didn’t. The rise and fall of his chest was the only testament to life and it was artifice. A mirage. But he was there – his tiny little body – being kept alive by machines. I could touch him. I could let tears fall over him. I could kiss him. And as we said our final goodbyes, I could hold him. I sang to him as his last breath left his body. I kissed him softly as I said “he’s gone.”

Our time together had contracted suddenly and violently.  I thought we would have a lifetime to share, but in the end we had 13 perfectly normal days and one deeply sad, deeply profound, deeply beautiful one. I am so grateful for that last day.

A day when friends and family gathered around our son and bid him farewell as he passed from this world into the next.

A friend of mine recently became a mother.  She gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.  She imagined a lifetime with him. Her time with her son contracted when he was born without breath. She didn’t have years with her son. To kiss him. To hold him. To tell him all the things a mother tells her child. Instead, her and her partner had to try and convey the love of a lifetime within a few short, raw hours.

It is hard to describe how precious that time with your child is. Knowing that this beautiful, perfect little being will not be a physical part of your life going forward. Knowing that this time is all the time that you will get. Wondering how you will survive. Willing yourself to remember each fingernail. Inhaling your baby’s scent. Trying to fight through the fog and shock of grief so that the memories will be indelible. Wanting your friends and family to see your little one – for them to understand his perfection, his importance, his profound impact on your life.

There was a time when a baby born without breath would be whisked away, never laid in their mother’s arms. A time when women were urged to forget and have another baby. Time has taught us that this approach does not heal, that it has left deep wounds and that a mother never, ever, ever forgets. Mothers and fathers need time with their babies. Babies are just as precious when they are born still. And it perhaps it is even more important to spend that time, to form that bond, when there will be no future opportunity to do so.

Many hospitals have invested in cuddle cots – a specialised cooing system which allows the parents to spend more time with their precious child.  The system allows babies who have passed way to remain with their families so that they are not required to be cooled in mortuary environment. Cuddle cots enable family members to travel to visit and meet the baby, siblings to meet one another and even gives parents the option of taking their baby home to lay in their own cot, in their own room or travel in their own car seat. It’s about giving parents choices, and reassuring them that they can spend as much time as they like with their child, without the fear of the baby needing to be cooled in a traditional mortuary.

Not all hospitals have them, or enough of them. In honour of her son, my friend is raising funds to buy such a cot for the Greenslopes hospital. It will give other families the gift of time, when time has been cruelly shortened.

 Please consider donating to her cause here:
PLA Cuddle Cot for Gabriel

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