My heartfelt sympathy and warm loving wishes to all of you. I cannot even begin to imagine your pain at the moment. But by sharing it, you are helping yourself and your family.

My neighbour had to have her second child, a daughter, aborted at 5 months due to an extremely severe heart deformation, which meant that she was unlikely to survive even gestation, let alone labour. (The defect was picked up on a merely routine scan, when she had gone there on her own; she was told to go home and talk it over with her husband and make the hardest decision of her life). After the birth the hospital held a form of Baptism for the baby, and her name is in a beautiful book of remembrance in York Infirmary chapel: one which is kept specifically for babies. She is buried in a churchyard in the village where her grandparents live (as her parents were in rented accommodation and still house-hunting at the time). Since then my friend has had her third child, but has never excluded Lucy from the family number. Both children knew all along they have a sister "with God", and each Christmas she has her candle at the candlelit services in our village church. She would have been about 12 years old now. When Heather moved to our village it was only a few months after the event. She was always open about it, even then, and we have cried together over our respective kitchen tables!

There is a difficult road immediately in front of you, but it will get better, I'm sure, because of the love and support you have for each other. It will just take as long as it takes, like any road, and you must go at your own pace.

Andrea