After a happy, healthy pregnancy my beautiful little prince Shay Shepherd was born in the birthing pool at Burnley General on the 18th of February 2016. 7lb 3oz of pure perfection, I’ve never felt love like when I looked into his eyes, it was the best day of my life.
Later that day I took Shay home, and every day with him after that was filled with nothing but love and happiness. I felt like the luckiest mummy in the world getting to see him grow and change every day. My life revolved around him, he was my absolute world. My health visitor was so happy with him as he was meeting all his little milestones and was a healthy, thriving baby boy.
At 6 weeks and 4 days old Shay went to bed as normal, there was no cause for concern he was as perfect as ever. On the 5th of April 2016, I woke up to find Shays body was cold and lifeless, his eyes were closed and I couldn’t wake him. He was blue lighted to Blackburn hospital where we were met with a dozen doctors who began working on him, at this point I still thought they were going to save him. I now know he had been dead hours. After 30 minutes of trying to bring his still little body back to life the doctor in charge pronounced him dead. My whole world fell apart in that moment. I’ve never and will never feel pain like that. From the shock and pure horror of waking up to him unconscious to the doctor telling me he had gone. These will always be the worst, most heart wrenching, soul destroying memories of my life. My life and me as a person changed forever that day.
I’d never seen a dead body before, I’d never even been to a funeral and now I was to begin planning my own sons. In the coming months Shay had two post mortems and an inquest and his death was put down to “natural causes”. It’s hard to accept that such a perfect, thriving, precious little baby died for no reason. He just breathed in and never breathed back out. I try to take comfort in knowing that he wasn’t in any pain, he never knew pain or heartache or sadness, he peacefully drifted off to sleep surrounded by nothing but love.
Over 4 years on I still think about Shay every day, the pain still lives inside me & I wish things could be different but I have learnt to accept that in this life I have to live without him because I don’t have a choice. I truly believe we will meet again when I join him in heaven. Even through the grief and the hurting I am still the luckiest mummy on earth to have had someone so special to call my own. He made me a better person just by having known him and I’ll be forever grateful for the short time we got together. I would not trade this pain for the certainty of a living baby, because Shay was one of a kind and he will always be mine
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