Please be aware Adam has chosen to share a picture of Alfie's feet with his story.
Alfie was our biggest surprise.
When Lori told me she was pregnant, I was initially very scared and a bit speechless. Well, more than a bit! Over time, that turned into excitement. We were introducing a new life to the world. We were going to have our fourth child.
When we told our other kids they were so excited that Mummy had a baby in her belly. We asked what they wanted. Our little four year old daughter, Imogen, said she wanted another sister, our five year old son Oscar told us he wanted a brother. Deep down, we wished for another boy, too.
I was so excited to find out the gender of our new baby, perhaps even more so than I had been with the others. We’d found out the gender of our first three babies and, without thought, knew we’d do the same this time. We like to be prepared and being told ahead of time whether you’re having a boy or a girl makes the preparation beforehand that little bit less stressful.
Due to our two older kids being in school on the day of our scan, we’d arranged for Lori’s sister to come and help us out. Anybody with kids knows the impact they have on the home, so we spent the day doing housework and tidying up before anyone came to the house.
Evening comes. The kids are in bed, so we watch a bit of TV. During the evening, Lori goes to the toilet and notices some bleeding. We debate whether to call anyone but decide that rest will probably help, and we’d see how it was in the morning. We’d done a lot of work, maybe pushed it a bit too much. Lori headed up to bed and then began the worst time of our lives.
I received a text from Lori at around 1am reading, “Need you.”
She’d woken up and gone to the toilet. Her bleeding had become much heavier, and she could feel something between her legs. I got up to find blood on the floor; Lori stood in the bath. Within an hour we had an ambulance crew in our house, an ambulance outside with flashing lights, and a paramedic with a thick Black Country accent putting his hand on my shoulder saying, “It’ll be ok, mate.”
Lori got taken away to the delivery ward. I was left in the house with three kids, aged six, four and nearly one all asleep with no idea what to do. I called my Dad. It was about 2am. We stayed on the phone pretty much all night. Lori’s sister also spoke to me on the phone. She called for a taxi and ended up taking a 50-60 mile taxi ride to get to our house. When she arrived I sped to the hospital. I don’t remember the journey, I just knew I had to get to Lori.
We were told that Lori was going through a miscarriage but also told if she could hold our baby in for another four weeks the baby may still survive. Those were the slimmest of odds but still gave us some kind of hope.
But the hope remained just that, a hope. It didn’t become anything more than that because the hope was lost. It was taken away when, at 1am on the day we were due to find out our baby’s gender, Alfie was born. I like to imagine that he was as excited as we were to meet him and that he just couldn't wait.
Alfie was born extremely prematurely at 20 weeks.
Nothing quite prepares you for the feeling of being in a delivery suite in the hospital, knowing your baby is coming and knowing that your baby won't survive. You feel utterly hopeless, helpless and completely broken.
Every so often we’d hear the sounds of birth from other rooms. The screams. The first cries. As time went by, knowing what was to come for us, I grew to hate each and every one of those sounds. Why were we going through this? Why did we deserve this? Why were they getting their baby, but we weren’t getting ours?
It wasn’t fair to be thinking like that but no matter how much I knew that was the case, no matter how much I knew it wasn’t someone else’s fault I and Lori were going through this pain I couldn’t stop myself feeling anger.
When Alfie arrived, he measured just 24cm long and weighed 330g. He was born alive, but we knew that would change. Despite his size and how premature he was, Alfie stayed with us for two hours before going to sleep in our arms.
In those two hours nothing else mattered except Alfie. Both Lori and I were totally enamoured and in awe of our extremely tiny little boy. We held him. We cuddled him. We spoke to him. We felt his slight moves. We watched his mouth open and close.
I will always be grateful that we got to share that time with him but I’ll always hate that we didn’t get longer and that things weren’t different.
We spent time with Alfie in the Snowdrop Suite at Burton Hospital.
The Snowdrop Suite, for those fortunate enough to have never been in or heard of one, is a bereavement room. We stayed in that room, away from the rest of the ward, for nearly 12 hours before going home. Alfie was in the room with us, in a special bed, to keep his body cool. It was impossible to not keep looking at him. I remember thinking he looked so peaceful. We managed a few hours’ sleep and the hospital staff took pictures of Alfie for us. We cried a lot.
I always used to watch news stories where parents would say they’d cried for so many days following the death of a child and think, “I doubt you did actually cry for so many days”, but then it happened to us and I did. We both did. It was a sorrow I’d never felt before, a pain I’d never felt before.
While we were in the Snowdrop Suite, we were also given a memory box. In the box, we were given the small woolly hat that the midwife had put on Alfie. There was also a copy of the book, Guess How Much I Love You. I read it to Alfie. I broke down a few times doing so, but I read it to him. I’ve read to him every night since, even to this day. I almost view Alfie as my Little Nutbrown Hare and me as Big Nutbrown Hare.
We opted to leave the hospital when we did because we didn’t want to miss the first birthday of our youngest daughter. We had to be there for her, but leaving the hospital without Alfie was extremely hard. Lori and I both had a hard time deciding to go, there never felt like a right time. We gave Alfie a kiss on the head. We told him we loved him. We said goodbye.
When you leave a delivery suite without a baby, it doesn't feel real. As we left, we passed a man with a baby carrier. An instant reminder that others were leaving the hospital with a baby, while we were leaving with nothing more than a box and some pictures. The anger returned but brought with it guilt for having those feelings and then complete and utter sadness followed.
If I’m honest, I don’t remember much about the days that followed. I don’t remember much about our daughter’s birthday, and I don’t remember many conversations. I do remember telling our two oldest children about what had happened and it being heartbreaking. I don't think you can ever be prepared to tell children about death, let alone the death of a baby, so we told them Alfie was too small and had gone to live in the clouds. Overall, I was vacant. I probably wasn’t a great partner. I probably wasn’t a great Dad. I’ll admit I had thoughts of self-harm. I was there in body, but, mentally, I was gone. I was lost. We both were.
Nothing prepares you for the loss of a baby. It’s the sort of thing that you know happens, but you never truly believe it will ever happen to you.
I'd dealt with grief before several times. Losing my Mum was unbearably difficult but this was something else. I can’t speak for Lori, but the word we both used a lot was ‘broken’. Even then, for both of us ‘broken’ was a massive understatement.
I’ve never felt grief like this. It was, and is, so different. I genuinely felt, and still do feel, like a piece of me is missing.
When you grieve usually, you have your memories and, really, those are the things that encourage the grieving. You miss the person, but you miss the memories also. With a baby so young, you don't have those memories. You have all the hopes and dreams for your little one that pregnancy brings with it but then they're gone. You grieve those hopes. You grieve those dreams. I felt like we'd had part of us, a part of our future, taken.
Losing Alfie had such an incredible impact on me and I couldn’t really cope. Trying to be a parent, my favourite thing to be, almost prevented my grieving because Lori and I didn’t want to appear much different to our kids. They kept us going, but our grieving was saved for evenings. Neither Lori nor I slept all that much. We still don’t.
When I think of Alfie now, I still hurt. I still have moments where I feel lost and moments where I become a bit numb to everything around me. I think Lori feels the same. I often think Lori must feel worse. I then feel guilt for feeling as I do, but this is grief. This is what grief does. Grief is selfish.
Thankfully, I don’t feel anger over other people being pregnant anymore. I do, however, struggle to talk about pregnancy without the thought of Alfie. For that reason, I try to stay away from any pregnancy chat.
The worst times, I find, are the ‘good’ days. The days where I don’t think of Alfie as much, well, don’t think negatively. On those days, my acceptance turns into guilt, which turns into anger at myself, which turns into sorrow. One day, this will change. I’ll learn to deal with it better, but I won’t heal.
My youngest has started to walk everywhere and has started to reach to hold mine and Lori’s hands. There’s something about holding your kids’ hand that’s hard to explain but means so much. That connection. When I think of Alfie, I think of that. I think of the fact I’ll never be able to hold his hand. Such a little thing, but such a big thing. These are the thoughts that hurt.
I discovered very quickly that support from the NHS for Dads following a late miscarriage is severely lacking.
I went to my GP to discuss my mental health, something I’ve never done before, and was, effectively, told that I’d be okay. I left with the feeling that the mentality was because I didn’t literally give birth, I would be able to get over it in a week or so. It just felt belittling. The hospital would only talk to Lori and that was about anything to do with Alfie. I was left feeling invisible. Ultimately, that’s when I found that Sands and other charities were the only option for any professional support for fathers. Things should be better than that.
Sands have been brilliant in giving me online support through web chats. Writing things out to online bereavement counsellors has helped me, and they allowed me to take a step back and understand more about my feelings and how to manage them. They also made me understand how past grief played a role in how I felt after Alfie passed.
Knowing there is someone there is such a comfort and so important. From a male perspective, there doesn't always seem to be a place to go, and people don't necessarily understand the pain you feel but Sands did, and that help really did mean so much.
We don’t want Alfie to be associated with pain and sadness. We want Alfie to have a positive legacy.
Since losing Alfie, we’ve seen the amazing work charities like Sands do and how they keep people going, they have been the ones that have made the difference to us.
We decided, at the hospital, that we would raise money for charities in Alfie’s name, ensuring that he plays a part in improving support for others going through the same and, hopefully, helping to prevent further cases through money raised. That can be his legacy. That can be his positivity. That can be how he impacts a positive change.
We had two hours with our little man. We got to hold him. We got to kiss his forehead. We got to tell him we loved him. In hindsight, he was so strong to survive for those two hours. Through reading others’ experiences, it has made me feel more comfort and more grateful for the couple of hours we shared with Alfie. But the positive impact we will make in his name will last longer than two hours.
Since Alfie has passed, it’s struck me how many people have gone through similar pain and similar loss. However, I still feel there’s a lack of awareness to the grief attached to it, particularly from the perspective of the Dad, but also for the Mum.
I’ve found that people don’t talk to us about Alfie. I understand it. I understand that people are uneasy with how to approach it with us. I understand that most, thankfully, don’t understand the pain we’re going through. But he is still our boy, and I’d never stop anybody talking to me about him or wanting to talk about him. Speaking helps.
We won’t ever forget Alfie. We won’t ever stop loving him. We will always feel proud about, and of, him. We will make sure we make him proud. We have to.
Alfie is our son and he is always with us.
