What We Needed in the First Days

Looking back, I can see how important it was to tell the people around us how to interact with us in those first days post-loss. We feel so grateful to have had our loved ones on standby for what we needed, but it wasn’t without boundary-setting and clear communication.

It’s really difficult in grief to be able to verbalize what you need, especially as the depth of pain and weight of what you’re going through changes moment by moment. Still, we did it to the extent that we could to allow people to be there for us. 

We communicated what happened with Nathan’s unexpected birth and death immediately. The morning after he died, we shared a detailed WhatsApp “press release”, an adapted version for family, and a pared-down version for Jordan’s work and my paramedical practitioners who had been part of my pregnancy journey. In less than 24 hours, our closest people knew.

That first morning forced us to face the reality of our son’s death as we shared the news far and wide. That update communicated our first thoughts and boundaries around our grief. We said upfront that we could not comprehend what life would look like and how to move forward. We said that we knew that our people would be there for us, and that we were so grateful. We asked for their help in remembering Nathan with us, and we also said that there would be days when the shock and sadness would be too consuming. 

Soon, messages started flooding in. Because we set expectations in our communication that we might not respond to everything, it was nice to be able to heart-react to messages or send an emoji of acknowledgement rather than feel obligated to start conversations with everyone who reached out.

It meant everything to me to have people say Nathan’s name when they sent condolence messages or empathize with our pain, saying they were grieving with us. Perfect words didn’t matter, but hearing from our village did.

I can recognize that not everyone knew what to say, how to react, or how to respond. I have a lot of grace and understanding for people who didn’t reach out until later or until I sent a message to confirm that they received our news. That said, not every silence carried the same weight.

Not hearing from people was very noticeable, even though I wasn’t consciously keeping track of who had reached out. I wanted the people who had shared in our anticipation, or were part of my everyday life, to acknowledge that Nathan had lived and that his death would forever change us. I wanted as many people as possible to join me in recognizing Nathan’s life: that he was grown and born, and that he will be remembered.

Once people knew, support started coming our way immediately. In those early days, the tragedy of Nathan’s death felt isolating, so every message and gesture helped remind me that Nathan’s life had reached beyond us. 

Beautiful flowers were delivered to our home as early as the afternoon that we sent out our press release. It was difficult because flowers in my home had always felt like such a treat, and I could not ignore that they were mostly white bouquets. I could not escape that they were expressing condolences instead of joy for our baby.

Having sturdy flowers that wouldn’t die or brown too quickly, especially the white ones, helped because it was difficult to watch the flowers die. It felt like they were signalling time passing, which meant more time in this life without Nathan compared to the far-too-short time we had with him.

Taking care of the bouquets became an activity when people visited us and something for me to do with my hands. I could tidy them, consolidate the vases, and keep things looking fresh and beautiful. Keeping my hands busy was important in those early days of grief. In addition to the flowers, our thoughtful loved ones gifted us puzzles and brought over low-maintenance plants that I could tend to. 

After some deliberation between books and crafts, I used Amazon gift cards to buy a kit to bedazzle some coasters. I didn’t have the attention span to read books in those early days, even though it felt like I should turn to a grief book or journal. Amazon pointed me toward paint-by-numbers, sticker books, and tactile crafts to keep my mind from spinning out even further, and I settled on a silly, visually appealing, low-investment premade diamond art kit that gave me something to work on and keep my mind occupied.

For the first month after Nathan died, we kept our front door unlocked during the daytime. One, because I was in pain from my C-section recovery and didn’t want to keep going up and down the stairs, and neither did Jordan. Two, because we were fortunate to have our immediate family and friends coming regularly to see how we were doing.

Our visiting hours were 10 am to 4 pm. That was basically all we could handle.

Mornings were incredibly difficult and often sobby. By the evenings, we were crashed out from the waves of grief throughout the day and from seeing visitors, even though they were doing an amazing job of showing up for us. We made exceptions for Fridays, since Friday evenings and weekends were best for our friends to visit us, while weekdays were mostly about family.

The first three days after Nathan passed were all about spending time with our immediate family: my parents, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, parents-in-law, and eventually my nephews and niece. They brought over food and it felt really comforting to have meals together, even though there was a piece missing for all of us. My Mom was especially vigilant about making sure we had an overflow of meals, even switching out leftovers and bringing fresh food so we wouldn’t feel tired of eating the same thing. Her thoughtfulness helped us not feel as though we were living in the same nightmare each day.

We had friends drop off food, and many people sent Uber Eats, Skip, or DoorDash gift cards as an immediate response to our press release. My closest elementary school friend brought together a big group of elementary and high school friends to pool money to gift us a week’s worth of nibbles that we wouldn’t have to prepare: fresh fruits, crackers, cheese, deli meat, oatmeal, and other easy groceries. It helped so much in the haze of those first days not to worry about our nutrition or have an excuse to ignore eating.

After those three days, we opened our home to friends who we could tell were desperate to see us and cry with us. They have since told us that seeing us in those early days helped them too. It made everything real for all of us: the bad, but also the good, knowing that we were all there for one another. It made me feel like I would survive.

This might not be everyone’s preference, but we identified quickly that we appreciated the company of our closest friends and invited that in. We were very intentional about those boundaries, though, and I imagine that everyone will have different preferences for how they want to interact with people at the height of their grief. We’ve maintained these boundaries through how we’ve managed our energy and time even past the early days of grief.

We told our closest friends that, rather than bringing food for us and leaving us alone, we preferred that they stayed and ate with us. Our friends were thoughtful and handled this one of two ways: deciding what we were eating so that the burden of thinking about it wouldn’t be on us, or asking what we preferred within a small range of options or cuisines. It felt like a good sign that we were returning to ourselves and our appetites when we could be honest that we were open to a salad or something a little lighter than the full trays of heavy comfort food that most people were bringing over. We’ve always loved hosting: preparing everything, making people comfortable, and bringing everyone together. In those early days, we asked our friends to bring the food, see us in our vulnerability, and care for us in our own home. We were still bringing people together, but in our grief, they were holding us together. 

Having our friends over allowed us to talk about everything we had gone through and to show them Nathan’s memory box, which felt really important to me. I wanted them to see his things and recognize the little boy whose life we were all grieving.

I also wanted as many tangible things as possible to remember Nathan by. Right away, I bought myself rings with his birthstone and a “N” necklace. I chose a giraffe early on as Nathan’s symbol because his incubator in the NICU was called a Giraffe; I purchased a wooden giraffe-family puzzle with our names engraved on it and a giraffe jewellery holder. And I made it clear to people that I only want Jordan and me to buy giraffe things for each other and for Nathan, so that people don’t turn me into an eccentric collector with random giraffe gifts.

In those early days, I couldn’t handle being in touch with too many people or maintaining conversations with too many people at a time. I couldn’t sleep in the first two weeks. My midwives said it was likely from the hormones and my body expecting to be awake in the night to nurse. I figured it was also the grief, the adrenaline, and the fear of what I might dream about while missing my son.

I initially got sucked into the baby-loss threads on Reddit because I could relate to what other people were describing. Eventually, absorbing so many traumatic stories became overwhelming and began to feel self-flagellating rather than supportive. It became scary and hopeless to be surrounded by everyone’s competing misery.

I’m so fortunate that I have friends who live in different time zones, so I could message my girlfriends in London and Toronto to check in and share my thoughts and feelings while everyone else was asleep. We traded messages, and mine were often essays, and I felt so relieved not to spiral anonymously and alone. 

In addition to our friends creating and holding so much space for us in those early days, Jordan and I had daily check-ins during the first month after Nathan died. We would sit on the couch, sometimes with a candle lit for our boy, and talk about how we were feeling, who we had spoken to that day, and what comfort we had received. We would talk about where we were struggling or what we were learning about ourselves and each other. We would speak about what we could see in each other and recognize each other’s resilience. Sometimes, we would just hold each other and cry for ourselves and our son.

When I was cleared post-C-section to resume physical activity, we began doing walk-and-talks. We have continued this practice as we try to stay connected in our grief and remembrance of Nathan.

These check-ins in the early days helped us understand what we were feeling moment by moment and what we needed from our village. Before we could tell other people how to support us, we often needed to understand and communicate with each other first.

In the end, it was communicating with each other and communicating with our people that allowed us to survive those early days.

We were not expected to know exactly what we needed, and support did not mean that everyone instinctively knew the right thing to do. We were able to receive support because we had people willing to listen when we told them what we understood our needs to be, moment by moment.