Travels With My Son

This zero waste linen dress was my first creation after Stewie was born. In the three weeks between his funeral and my six week doctors check up, when I was utterly bereft and broken and the finality of everything had really hit me, I would go into his nursery and sit at my new table that I bought so I could write and make whilst feeling his presence. I would pick up pieces of this dress and slowly pin or stitch a single seam at a time. Sometimes I’d just sit with it in my hands and look around his nursery, wondering how we were suddenly in this new world without him, and how I would need to relearn to live as a completely new person. 

I find comfort in giving things meaning, or finding meaning where I can, and so making this dress was symbolic to me at the time – the first item I created after Stewie’s death, and subsequent birth. It’s a zero waste pattern meaning every single piece of fabric gets used – it all has a purpose and is important. Nothing is wasted or insignificant and everything counts. That’s exactly how I felt about my pregnancy and our short time with Stewie. Even though he never breathed outside of me, the almost nine months we had together all counted. Every minute mattered. Even in those first weeks when I discovered how nauseous it’s possible to feel, and the last weeks when I cursed being so heavily pregnant in a historic heatwave. It all meant so much. Especially the fact we got to have so many adventures together – he visited six countries with me (seven including the UK where we live), and was with me to snorkel with (very small) reef sharks, see leopards and meet and play hide and seek with elephants. Not many babies get to do that.

The Made With Love label – that rang so true as I poured the love I couldn’t give to Stewie into this dress – was designed by Kylie and the Machine. This choice felt significant for a reason beyond the wording, as Kylie had publicly shared her own heartbreaking experience of stillbirth a couple of years earlier on her Instagram account. I think this was the first time I had properly engaged with the awful realities of this kind of loss, even though I had been sort of abstractly aware of stillbirth before, mostly through seeing one or two celebrities share their own experiences. But I’m not sure I had really let it take space on my radar before, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, pregnancy and babies weren’t of interest to me for a long time and they weren’t really part of my daily life or social circle either. Whilst I always knew I’d like to have children, I’ve never actually been much of a ‘baby person’, and for years I had a pretty serious aversion and anxiety around the idea of pregnancy, which I’m so pleased disappeared when I was actually pregnant – but it meant I tended to avoid most things to do with pregnancy and birth. But also, as a society I just don’t think we give enough space and understanding for conversations about loss and grief, particularly baby loss which is such a deeply emotive topic. Somehow though, before I’d even started trying to get pregnant, I had seen the deep cavernous impact of stillbirth – but also, thankfully because of Kylie’s incredible outlook, I had also witnessed how it’s possible to honour and include your baby in your family even when they aren’t physically here. 

This is one of the reasons I feel so passionately about being open and giving space for people’s differing experiences, and talking honestly even when it feels difficult, painful, or even uncomfortable. Not only does it help support and validate the experiences and feelings of others, but it can also have such a massive impact for if or when we or our loved ones experience trauma. Whilst I never would have dreamed in my wildest nightmares that this could become our reality, it is through others vulnerably sharing their experiences that we have been able to move through the hardest time of our lives with a semblance of positivity, and even gratitude. I 100% believe it is thanks to other people that we are where we are today, and that I’m able to talk and reflect on our experience in the way I can, just eight months after the death of our son.

This is why I knew I wanted to share Stewie’s Positive Stillbirth Story – for anybody who has just found out they are going to deliver their baby in silence, or who already has, or even for anybody else who feels they can open themselves up to this difficult topic. It was only through reading three such stories via the Positive Birth Company after we found out that Stewie had died that we were able to give him (and us) the positive, though bittersweet, birth we did, and so I wanted to share through our own experience how even in the very darkest of times it can still be possible to hold on to an ember of light.

I photographed this very meaningful (but very un-ironed) dress the moment I finished it, in the sunlight streaming in from Stewie’s nursery windows illuminating his wooden safari animals. I hung it against the handmade alphabet tapestry I bought for him during one of my pregnancy insomnia shopping sessions, something that became quite a regular occurrence as I became accustomed to getting about five hours sleep a night. The tapestry hangs above the nursing chair that originally belonged to my Grandma, which my mum then used as a nursing chair for myself and my sister. It’s just so special to me, particularly as my mum and I reupholstered it together when I was eight months pregnant – in the middle of a heatwave, so I hear this was all fairly dramatic on my part. I spent so much time sitting in this chair when I was pregnant, feeling Stewie kick and wriggle under my hand or sleep peacefully when I myself couldn’t in the early hours of hot summer mornings, or when I just needed to catch my breath after carrying him upstairs. I still sit there now, when Finley the Aching Arms bear isn’t there. On the bamboo table bought by my parents on their honeymoon in Swaziland 43 years ago sits a ceramic plant pot I made whilst pregnant, holding a money plant grown from one of many money plant ‘babies’ my mum gave me years ago.

I love everything in this room. It reminds me that there is still so much beauty and meaning all around me, and that being small (or short in duration) does not make something insignificant – and that’s how I will always feel about my beautiful son’s very short but very significant life. 

I first wore this dress in Cornwall where we escaped as soon I was ready after my six week check up, with my leopard shoes that remind me of our Sri Lanka safari with Stewie. Every time I wear it I’ll think of him and remember those early days when I started trying to piece myself back together, and feel proud of how far we’ve come.

The ZW (Zero Waste) Gather Dress was designed by Birgitta Helmersson and the instructions can be bought on her website.