So I wanted to share my journey… I didn’t know what to say at first, but I knew that if I just spoke about my experience I could be helping a mama out there somewhere deal with their experience of what I feel is the worst thing for someone to go through.

So let’s begin by introducing myself, I’m Maria @Cheshiregossipgirl and owner of @mama_society , I’m 28 and live in Cheshire, I became a mama back in 2016 when our angel Sebastian was born and he will be 4 today, we also have Gabriel who will be 3 at the end of October and Milan who is 6 months old.

As it is #BabyLossAwarenessWeek I want to share my story as we do every year, we always like to raise money, share our story and talk openly as much as we possibly can, as you’ll often find just talking about your loss will make you realise just how many mums have also lost their babies… whether it be a miscarriage, stillbirth or they may loose their babies in just the first few days/weeks of being born.

For us (me and my partner Ainslee) we lost our baby at 29 weeks gestation, we knew we were having a boy and as we were both young, healthy and very active it hadn’t even crossed our minds that something could ever happen to our baby. So when at 29 weeks I just felt unwell… kind of like I had a urine infection that after a few days of feeling unwell my mum persuaded me to head to out of hours (as it was a Sunday) to get checked over and if I needed antibiotics then it would be good to get them in my body ASAP to get me feeling better again but when they were doing all the initial assessments and did baby’s heartbeat beat, they were struggling to find a beat but reassured me that ‘sometimes baby can just be in an awkward position’ so brought in the scanner and after a while of scanning me they just didn’t say anything… so I said ‘is everything okay?’ Still at this point not expecting anything bad to have happened… so when the nurse said ‘there’s no heart beat’ my whole world turned upside down, that moment still haunts me to this day.

Then I basically had to get induced and push my baby out which I just hadn’t even thought about yet but the midwives were just incredible and SANDS the stillbirth charity (which I ran Wilmslow Half Marathon to raise money for a couple of years ago) helped with supplying us with a special room so myself and partner could be together throughout and we had tiny little clothes to put Sebastian in once he was born and a beautiful keep sake box to take home with us filled with memories of our son.

For any mama who is currently going through this I want to tell you that the dark hoke you feel like you’ll never get out of when this happens does get better.. and you will get pregnant again (probably sooner than you imagine) and that baby will be so so special even if your pregnancy feels terrifying you will get to hold your baby and have your arms finally filled! I promise! And you will go on to inspire others and it will make you who you are.

Let’s all talk about our baby loss experiences this week to let other mums going through this never feel alone ❤️

Maria xx