When you are first thrown into this new way of life, and it truly is a new way of life, everything is a blur.
The hours just go by without you even realising it and days turn in to weeks so quickly.
The people around you try to keep you in some sense of normality but to be honest you don't really notice what they are doing.
If your lucky and the professionals are involved, they will provide you with the basic physical things your body needs to keep going and to mend e.g medicine and food. Your body almost starts to run on auto pilot, you know it needs energy and rest but the actual task of doing this can feel like an insurmountable goal.
Once you arrive back in your home your instinct is to lock the doors, close the curtains and hide away from the world. The reality is that you now have to deal with the task of arranging things like funerals and registering your babies birth and death (which is done at the same appointment).
After you have survived those initial 2 - 3 weeks your life seems to move on in slow motion. The world is going on around you and many will have their support systems diminish as family return to work and their 'normal' routine.
Those first 12 months, filled with 1st anniversaries, are the hardest 12 months that many will ever have to deal with. To get to the end of that year is an achievement that those who have never suffered a loss cannot imagine.
The bereaved family then move on to the rest of their lives as a grieving family. They are then faced with the public perception that "they must be over their loss by now"
They will never be over their loss, no matter how many years pass that loss will always be there. As time passes it may not feel so raw but it is always there.
We are now in our fourth year of being a bereaved family and there are days when we all struggle to keep functioning.
We have turned our grief into our motivation to keep fighting for changes to bereavement support.
Sometimes I think we also use it as an escape from our pain. The busier we are the less time we have to think.
Our charity is going from strength to strength and by being busy it helps us to carry on without Charlie in our life.
We will all have times when we struggle but we know we can rely on the other family members to keep us going or to take over our role for a while whilst we get ourselves back on track.
If you are the friend or a family member of someone who is going through grief please remember to check in on them every now and then.
This may seem a small thing to ask but to them it can make a huge difference to their day, week or month.
Many people will stop talking to them about their baby scared that they will upset them or 'set them off crying'.
They will truly appreciate you talking about their baby, they want to talk about them to keep their memory alive. Not talking about them can often be more hurtful as it feels as if everyone has forgotten their child.
As we move into the next stage of our charities development, and we begin to progress with the support we can offer to families we will always take time out to remember our motivation.
Charlie was an amazing little boy with the most beautiful face. He showed strength and courage and fought strongly to the end.
We feel honoured and proud to share him with the world and hope that through his fight we can continue to support other families struggling with their loss.
He has already made lots of changes to the current provision of bereavement support and we know this will continue to increase as our cause spreads across the UK.
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