Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Guest Post: Georgie

Today we are lucky enough to have Georgie with us Guest Blogging - she is an amazing person. Please take a moment to read her post and feel free to leave comments in response on our Facebook page


                                                    Remembering Blake - My Story
This is my beautiful baby boy Blake, born at 16:46pm on Sunday, December 4th 2011.

He had lots of black hair, and deep-blue eyes, with a dark 'patch' in the inside corner of his left. He was a quiet, happy, greedy, contented little boy.
One Monday, 13th February 2012, we went to sleep in the early hours. My partner Daniel, Kaicia (our daughter) and I all woke up. Blake did not. Even though we rushed him to hospital, our beautiful baby Blake was pronounced dead at 10:22 am on that fateful Monday.

Reports from the Post-mortem showed that Blake's death was due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Statistics from the FSID, the country's leading cot death charity, states that over 600 babies die unexpectedly and unexplainedly every year in the UK.

Grief is a normal process to go through, and having a seven year old daughter to look after is hard. We answer whatever questions Kaicia has and she has help from Winston's Wish, a great charity that helps children to remember the happy times with loved ones, teaching them that grief is normal and that although not here, Blake can still be a part of our family and lives.
We say good morning and good night every day to Blake. We have a picture of him 'asleep' as well as several others of him where we can see them everyday. We have a 'Best Little Brother' certificate, and a four special teddies - One from Bear For An Angel, a cause very important to me, that provides parents with teddies to hold in memory of their angel babies (we also got a certificate each as well), a musical teddy that a neighbour bought for Blake, a blue elephant toy that makes a noise (my Dad got it for Blake's first Christmas, which he was here for) and finally, a Me To You bear holding four hearts (Blake, Kaicia, Daniel and myself), as well as candles and holders. That's Blake's shrine and as you can imagine, it has pride of place in our lounge.
Not long after Blake died, I started to write to him, letting him know how I felt. It was never intended for others to see, then one day I had the idea of uploading them, as a blog, to Tumblr, and 'Letters To Angel Blake' was born. My favourite entry in the blog is called, '71 Days, 71 Memories' (one for each day of his life) which I am seriously thinking of publishing.
Creating memories and incorporating your loved ones into your everyday life is hard, but ultimately one of the most rewarding things you can do. The more I do, be it blogging, helping the FSID to fundraise, buy more memorial items... the closer Blake feels to me.
It's not about denial - In fact, it's quite the opposite, you are saying, 'hey, my baby may not be here for you to see but he's here, and we will never forget him!'.
Of course, there are many things that Blake will never do. But there are ways around this, for example at a fair last summer, my daughter sat in the Fire Engine and also met a police officer. Blake would have loved this, but he was there! Kaicia took some photos with us and simply held them up while we took pictures, so he was there with her..... 


Next, after Christmas, we are making a memorial garden for Blake too, consisting of a raised bed, some lovely memorial ornaments and an Acer tree. We plan to spend as much time there as we can.
My advice to you is to never try and suppress any bad feelings you have, any sorrow.... Let it come to the surface, and turn it into something beautiful. As someone wise once said to me, "They live on through us and all we do".
Thank you for reading Blake's story. I hope you can take something positive from it :)
If you would like to guest post with us in months to come, please send us a message via our Contact Us page.