At five months old, after bravely fighting through surgery after surgery, Sherri’s baby son Ronnie lost his battle. In 2020, Sherri opened up about her experience with baby loss for Baby Loss Awareness Week, explaining: “every year I fight that little bit harder to open up, it helps me, it helps my family and leading by example it shows my boys that it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to remember”.
One year on and Sherri speaks candidly with us again, as we enter into Ronnie’s birthday month and this year’s Baby Loss Awareness Week:
“A year on… I’m now counting down the days until my angel son’s eighth birthday (4 October) another year we can’t hold or celebrate with our little boy, another year wondering how he’d be asking to have his hair cut, what breakfast cereal he would be into, would he be Lego mad with his little brothers or following his older brother round like a shadow at football training.
Over the past 12 months so much has changed for us, we moved house for a start and it’s the first house I’ve lived in that Ronnie hasn’t. Packing his things was harder than I could have imagined, so much was just tucked away in the loft for the past seven years and moving house forced us to face it all. Genuinely, it’s been in the back of my head for years that I’d never be able to move as I couldn’t touch his things, but then we had no choice and I had too. Grief isn’t what you feel when you lose someone, it’s what you feel trying to live every day without them.
Baby Loss Awareness Week is approaching and with-it being Ronnie’s birthday month, there is no denying the emotional state that hits us as a family. Navigating our way through parenting his brothers is a daily reminder of what grief actually is though. I’m baking his brother’s birthday cake one minute and driving across county’s at 6am to visit a cemetery the next.
Parenting Ronnie in the beginning was fighting for him to stay alive, hospital appointments and community nurses that became part of my family. Parenting Ronnie now means something else entirely. Now it’s pushing myself to make a difference, scream a little about what made my son so special, help the people that helped us.
Earlier this year me and my brother jumped out of a plane for Demelza, we skydived for Ronnie, we fundraised for others that need what we once did. I promised my little boy that his life wouldn’t be in vain and I’ll spend my life keeping that promise to him.
Nobody should have to lose a child, but making sure there’s enough support around someone when they do, is detrimental to saving them too.”
If you’ve been affected by Sherri’s story and Baby Loss Awareness Week, you can reach out to our Family Support Team on familysupportdepartment@demelza.org.uk or call 01795 845280.
Or if you’d like to support other families like Sherri’s you can donate to Demelza today.