‘I’m sorry I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to tell you what had happened to my baby’: the letter you always wanted to write

I walked in, arms empty, to register a birth and a death. You probably thought I had left the baby at home. Some of you knew me from prenatal classes or the maternity ward. You greeted me: “Where is she? How is she? What did you call her?”

I’m sorry I couldn’t answer, but I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to unravel – for my sake, and yours. I didn’t want to tell you what had happened to my baby. It would have frightened you. It would have changed your day and affected the happy and significant event of registering your baby’s name and existence.

I hope none of you ended up in my situation – a cot death at five weeks and two days. A halted existence. The day I had planned to register her birth, was the day I found her lifeless. That year, 1986, 1,388 babies died; numbers peaked in 1988 at 1,593.

Did you, like me, put your baby to sleep on her tummy? It was the norm back then. The evidence for a safer sleeping position began to filter through in the late 1980s, too late for my daughter, but it has saved tens of thousands of lives since. Babies need to sleep on their backs.

Did you, like me, smoke during pregnancy? I smoked after the birth, sometimes in the same room. I had been advised by my GP to stop, but there was no mention of smoking as a risk factor for cot death.

More than a third of cot deaths could be avoided if women didn’t smoke in pregnancy. Don’t smoke then, or in any area where your baby can be affected. Please do not troll me. I am owning my mistake.

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I have spent years skirting around certain questions, such as how many children have you got? Answering “two” feels like a denial of her existence. Answering “three” can generate queries that may lead to the cot death disclosure, and I am still incredibly uncomfortable about sharing that detail with expectant or new mothers. I don’t want to scare them, but they do need to know the risk reduction measures.

You probably never worked out why I behaved so oddly in that register office. Belatedly, in answer to your questions: she was at the coroner’s office; she was dead; her name was Stephany Thèrese Walls, and now I am crying all over again.

For full Safer Sleep advice, go to Lullaby Trust.

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