Admin after Baby Loss

The administrative work that follows a death is a well-known part of grief. I understood that conceptually after watching my parents navigate the sudden deaths of siblings and support their own parents. Even when arrangements have been discussed in advance, it is jarring to watch grief turn almost immediately into forms, phone calls, and decisions.

And the death of a baby is not supposed to happen. The administration after baby loss is already an unimaginable and difficult feat when you have to start thinking through services such as a funeral, burial, or cremation.

There is so much more admin than I ever could have expected. This is one of the hardest parts for me to reflect on because it caused me so much anguish in my early days and the calendar, with its constant recording of passing time, continues to make me acutely aware of my loss. 

If you’re going through admin for baby loss now, I’m truly so sorry for what you're enduring. It’s more than just the funeral services. There is the formal admin of death, and then there is the admin of the life that was supposed to continue in a different way. It’s the algorithms that need to be updated, the appointments that need to be cancelled, the work leave that needs to be changed, and the tangible reminders that need to be put away, including maternity clothes and baby supplies.

After Nathan died, I remember getting home to a house that held evidence of every phase of what had happened: untouched new maternity clothes I had just ordered, baby stuff, and pumping supplies from my one night at home getting into a new routine for him. Before we could begin making decisions about what came next, we were surrounded by the practical remains of the future we had been preparing for. I rage-cleaned the next morning.

The first administrative task we completed was a WhatsApp communication to our village. We decided to write one update so that we didn’t have to keep repeating ourselves in individual messages. We needed it out as quickly as possible because our friends had been messaging that night asking how Nathan was, and he had already passed that afternoon. Twelve hours after Nathan died, at 4 am, I remember researching how to send announcement-only WhatsApp messages so we could send something out that wouldn’t turn into a massive group chat. We used our baby shower invitation list to create the first set of people we knew we absolutely needed to tell and then continued to add people: extended friends, some of my current and former colleagues, and others from different parts of our lives. We made minor edits and sent additional versions for my extended family and Jordan’s work. For my workplace, I didn’t send anything further to a wider audience because they didn’t need to know all the details; I had included the leadership and close colleagues in the WhatsApp message and trusted them to keep my information private.

Once the message was sent, the next set of tasks was already waiting.

Everything is in my calendar. If it’s not there, I will likely forget or schedule something else. Those I’ve worked with know that I try to live by “no agenda, no attenda” for meetings. I inherited that saying early in my career from someone and never looked back.

Being organized with our calendar has served Jordan and me well over the years. We don’t have a shared one, although it would probably be more efficient for us. Every Sunday, we review what our week ahead looks like together for meal, social, and exercise planning purposes.

With our baby’s death, my calendar became my nightmare. It was a constant reminder of everything that changed and the administration that needed to follow his death. Every time I opened it, there was something that was no longer going to happen or something new that should have never needed a place there.

Right after Nathan was born, I added to my calendar: NATHAN BORN: 31 WEEKS! 🎉🏥🩵 (There is almost always at least one emoji.)

I was lying in my hospital bed when I added an annually recurring Nathan’s Birthday 🥳🦒😍 calendar event on April 11th.

I don’t know where I was, but eventually I added Nathan’s Day 🖤 to my calendar on April 14th, for the day we lost him.

It broke my heart, but I ultimately decided to change my annually recurring calendar event to a multi-day event from April 11th to April 14th: Remembering Nathan 🦒🩵 For me, his birthday as a standalone event is too painful knowing that he is no longer with us earthside.

We have a family calendar that my sister-in-law creates each year with photos and important dates marked, customized for the recipient. On ours, there are lots of smiling photos of their kids and us, and the calendar at Jordan’s parents’ house has pictures of their kids with their Grandma and Grandpa. Since she marks birthdays and anniversaries for everyone, I’ve already decided that I want our Schwartz family calendar to match my digital one: marking three days to remember the special, life-changing, and too-short time we had meeting Nathan. He is our first baby, the third boy cousin, and the fourth Schwartz grandchild.

I remember Jordan telling me, in his deep sorrow, that he had also added Nathan’s birthday to his calendar first thing after our boy was born. Without talking to each other, we had both immediately marked the date that changed our lives forever. Now, our shared excitement will always carry the wistfulness of missing our son.

I had to decide if I wanted to add monthly reminders for Nathan’s birthday on the 11th of each month of Nathan’s first year. (Yes.)

When I was pregnant, I started to think about the cute photo op that I would do for my baby each month. For their daughter, our friends took photos with slices of pizza alongside their growing baby girl and added one slice each month until they had a 12-slice pie and a one-year-old. I thought that was so cute, fun, and a perfect excuse to have pizza at least once a month. I had a few themes in mind that I'm saving now as hand-me-downs for Nathan's future siblings.

I remember that on the drive home from the hospital after Nathan died, something my brother-in-law said reminded me about daycare. I remember being numb, saying out loud that I needed to cancel the daycare deposits. No more little lamb emoji (the daycare is called "The Good Shepherd") every month to help me count down my baby’s arrival and the year we’d spend together while I was on maternity leave. 

Then the mail came: his birth certificate, his social insurance number, and, eventually, his death certificate. We only got to type Nathan’s name and personal health number into government systems a few times, and those times were to request documents related to his birth and death. As painful as those systems can be, I had imagined doing that kind of admin for him for many years to come, and I wish I still could.

When the Canada Census of Population questionnaire arrived, its deadline fell three weeks after Nathan’s death. It asked how many people lived in our household, and I felt hollow at one more reminder that I could not say three.

Writing this is making me realize that Jordan and I never spoke about everything we had set up for our baby shower. We had a baby guessing game for our family and friends and his inbox was filled with emails each time someone submitted a guess: baby’s weight, length, due date and time, first-name initial, eye and hair colour, and more. I'm sure he saw all of those when logging in again after Nathan died, and we never talked about whether the software sent automatic follow-ups once our due date arrived and passed.

I find reminders like this extremely painful, knowing that we were supposed to have fun going through all the responses, reading all the “for when there is turbulence” notes we asked our friends to fill out at our travel-themed event, and sending out an update about the winner of the guessing game once our little baby entered the world. We didn’t get to do any of that, and I feel like it will always be too painful to revisit those notes.

I had to delete the My Registry Chrome extension and avoid engaging with the Amazon Baby Registry items. I stopped clicking on anything baby-related because every click seemed to teach the algorithm to show me more. I let our completion discount expire with no follow-up.

I could never have expected that all the things I thought would orient me in the last few weeks of my pregnancy would break my heart after my son’s death. No single calendar event, email, or cancellation was the worst part, but together, they became debilitating.

I remember sitting at our dining room table in the weeks after Nathan died and robotically going through everything that was no longer needed: no more baby prep class, no pelvic floor physio birth-prep appointment, no dietitian appointment to use my work benefits and make a postpartum meal plan, and no need to have my dental cleaning before giving birth. Instead of reordering, I needed to cancel that West Coast Kids order of toys that Jordan and I had both excitedly picked out after the baby shower. 

Three days after Nathan died, I sent my work manager a reflective message about how surreal it was that only one week earlier, I had been at the hospital trying to figure out a plan and work coverage because I was going into early labour. I told him that while I was in the hospital, I had blocked my calendar until April 22nd because I didn’t know whether Nathan would be born that day, April 11th, or whether the hospital care team would be successful at keeping him in for longer. I told him that I was not in a place to plan or picture what a return to work would look like and said that maybe we could talk in a week.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?! I had added the administration of work on top of the shock and devastation of my loss because I still thought it was something I needed to manage. I had seen how much comfort Jordan was getting from his manager, company, and the extended network of colleagues who sent flowers, wrote thoughtful messages, contributed money, and generously shared their own stories of pregnancy and infant loss to connect with us on a deeper level.

Jordan found some distraction with a very gradual return to work two-ish weeks after Nathan died. With both of us being ambitious, high-functioning senior leaders in our jobs, it felt like a welcome distraction to believe that work would be there for us and we’d return to an understanding, comforting space.

I didn’t return to work until eight weeks after Nathan’s death, and even that was too soon. In hindsight, I wish my workplace had proactively coordinated the basics and communicated that back to me, like asking IT to set up my out-of-office responses and confirming who could access my accounts. I ended up logging in to my work laptop, not because I wanted to work, but because I didn’t feel confident that the responsibilities affecting my customers would be maintained while I was away. I had been told not to worry, but I knew how much I had been holding and how difficult it could be for work to continue smoothly without a clear handoff. I knew I would eventually have to return, and I was trying to make that return a little more manageable for myself.

I checked Slack because I had heard so little and wondered whether anyone knew about my loss. I opened Outlook to make sure other people had access to my meetings and folders. I wish that whole administrative experience had been more guided by my workplace. I was so used to directing everything, not relying on others, and doing things on my own that, when I did not receive communication about a coordinated plan, I defaulted to handling it myself. I didn’t want to, but the loose ends were still there, and the responses I received did not give me enough confidence that someone else had taken responsibility for them.

About three weeks after Nathan died, my manager told me that the company had sent a meal-delivery gift card the week before, and I realized I had not seen it because it had gone to my junk mail. Until then, I had received minimal messages from my colleagues that I had included in the WhatsApp update and did not know what, if anything, was happening internally. That meal-delivery gift card was the first gesture I received on behalf of my workplace. For me, it was not the most straightforward gift to use because it required some additional coordination at a time when I had very little capacity. Once I understood how it worked, I realized the delivery service was designed primarily for seniors living independently, with meal options such as low-sodium, diabetes-friendly, and finely minced selections. It felt completely disconnected from what we were living through, and the mismatch was almost hurtful because it reflected so little understanding of who we were or why something more familiar and flexible would have made things easier. Although well-intentioned, the gesture created another task: I decided to research local senior communities in need and arranged to donate the gift card so it could be put to better use.

While I was viewing my work calendar, I remember crying because I saw my previously saved calendar blockers for upcoming midwife appointments and my maternity leave. My midwife appointments had already changed before Nathan died; I got a new schedule on April 11th to reflect his early arrival and ensure we had the right postpartum care. Eventually, those appointments still happened, but without my baby. Instead, they focused on post-up healing, grief, and administrative tasks that the midwives helped with so that we didn't have to go back to the hospital after everything we went through.

During my pregnancy, I had booked an intake meeting with a new doctor to try to be accepted into a clinic closer to our house for when we had the baby. I had to call them about a week after Nathan’s death to tell them that my baby had been born and died, but I still wanted to join their clinic for me, Jordan, and Nathan’s future siblings. My new doctor is so compassionate, and I feel really grateful that she will be part of my care team when we’re ready to try again for another baby.

Even when each individual person was kind, every system still required me to explain what had happened. To transfer doctors, I spoke to my original doctor during a virtual appointment, then had to go into the office to sign permission for my records to be faxed. It’s a pain on a normal day and feels impossible while grieving, but it had to be done.

It wasn’t until about a month and a half after Nathan’s death that I gritted my teeth and began the process of accessing Nathan’s health records, including all provider notes, diagnostics, and nursing and allied health entries. Typing his name multiple times, providing his birth and death dates, and stating that I was authorized as the mother of a deceased minor was extremely painful. When these records finally arrived three months after his death, I read through them to see how his care team had clinically monitored and understood his journey. Throughout most of the records, he was referred to as “Baby Boy Gutierrez” or “the baby.” I read through everything pretty calmly, but a sob erupted from me when the final line in the report used his name for the first time: “Nathan died in the arms of his parents.”

The administration I do for Nathan now feels lighter. It’s little things like asking my aunt to change our text thread background from my Christmas pregnancy-announcement reveal picture to a picture from my maternity photoshoot, since she has so much love for our baby and wants our thread to keep showing that. It’s ordering pictures for the scrapbook I made to tell my pregnancy and birth story. It's working with Etsy vendors on custom rings with his birthstone and recreating his funeral flowers on a magnet. It’s ordering what I needed to finish Nathan’s corner with his urn and have touches around the house and jewelry I can wear to keep my baby close. It felt relentless, but the most difficult admin from the early days is over.

Now, most of the admin I do helps me carry Nathan’s life forward. There are still orders, dates, decisions, and things to follow up on, but they’re no longer just proof of what ended; they are remembrance.