Beatrice Hetty Rose (17 Aug 2022 - 17 Aug 2022)

Beatrice arrived in the world on 17th August 2022. Her Down Syndrome was confirmed at fourteen weeks and she stayed with us for 33 weeks. She was a strong girl, and we are very proud of her. Bea knew nothing but warmth and love and will be sadly missed by her Mommy, Daddy, and all of her family.

A memorial service was held at the Repton School chapel on Saturday October 22nd.

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So now we find ourselves in this weird position. We’re her parents forever, even if she didn’t get to stick around. She’s past tense, but the love never will be. Our first little girl, forever. It’s important to me that everyone knows that we didn’t stumble into being Bea’s mom and dad; at every step of my pregnancy, we made informed decisions. Statistically, 90% of couples in our situation would have terminated the pregnancy, and it is important for me that you all know that we knew exactly what we were getting into when we decided to continue with the pregnancy. When I was pregnant, I followed a lot of Instagrams and I watched a lot of TikToks where women talked about fear and loss, grieving their baby's diagnosis, having to come to terms. We never had to do that. We never felt anything other than the purest relief. We were ready for her. We would have been the best parents for Bea. We chose her. And I would chose her again, over and over, forever. I wouldn’t change a single decision that we made if it meant that I’d lose a single moment of the time that we had with her, short as it was.

Another thing that I heard – something that I haven’t looked into too closely, because I desperately want it to be true, and I don’t want to know if it isn’t. I read somewhere that the reason that comparatively few pregnancies with chromosomal differences are carried to term (roughly 840 babies a year are born with Down Syndrome in the UK, which is 1 in every 920 or so) is because most of those pregnancies end before 7 weeks because not every woman can physically carry a baby with a chromosomal difference. And, if that’s true, Bea and I were doing something miraculous from day one. And I want to believe that that was true. Bea’s Down Syndrome was such an important part of who she was to us. The fact that it was clearly visible in her face when I held her in my arms is a deeply precious thing to me.

There's an Alan Bennett line, “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.” In the days after Bea died, I clung to familiar things. On that Monday morning, two months and change ago, I kept thinking of poetry, the way I sometimes do. On my phone, I have a folder called "Serve God, love me, and mend" and, in it, I collected things that helped - messages from friends, poems that I stumbled across, one way or another. Mary Oliver wrote these lines, in her poem "In Blackwater Woods": To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes, to let it go. To let it go. We love Bea desperately - we will love her this way forever - but I also know that, eventually, I will have to let her go. I want to believe that the energy that was Bea will come around again, one day, and if she's someone else's little girl, next time around, then that's okay too. That's okay.

To end, I want to go back to that photograph from Abi’s babyshower – that woman who had four weeks and change to go. Somewhere, maybe, everything went to plan, and that woman is sitting, somewhere that is not here, holding her baby, who is a little over two months old. I dream a life for that little girl – where she overcame challenges at her own pace, and was spectacular in her own way. Where she was loved by everyone who came into contact with her. Where she had, and I have stolen this too from a poem, I’m sure – a very star-like start. Where she got to stick around. I dream a life in which she had a chance to out-run her own death. Go on then, sweetest, smallest girl. Go.