Losing a parent while pregnant

[smiley10P]

Dear rylansmum,
The situation you find yourself in really sucks doesn't it ! My heart goes out to you and your family. This is one of those hard lessons in life. Like you my mother died of leukemia. The first time she got sick was in 1999 Dec. I was pregnant with third child and to complicate matters my father had a stroke just eight weeks prior to this and was a real burden on mum as she was very weak and sick and dad just wanted to be at her bedside day and night. Dad had really bad short term memory as a result of the stroke and this was extremely frustrating for all. My mother underwent three months of chemo, survived multiple organ failure and many other complications from the treatment.

Eventually dad recovered his memory and I gave birth to our third child. Almost five years later dad had another stroke and just days earlier mum was having tests because her leukemia had come out of remission. This time I had (Mum in townsville and dad in Tully hospital ) a five month old baby a both parents in different hospitals hundreds of miles apart from each other, it was jsut aweful. Mum was told without treatment she would die within about 6 weeks. She elected to have more treatment ( in Brisbane) but sadly the luekemia was more aggressive the second time around and she died 5 weeks later. Dad didn't cope well after her death and became very aggressive and paranoid. He now lives in an aged care hostel on the other side of the country and I write to him.

It is really sad that my mum never really got to know some of her grandchildren. We keep her memory alive and I have also been creating an album to celebrate her life and my children look at it regulary and we talk about all the good times we had together. I still miss her and it's hard not having her around especially when giving birth and having a new baby around as she was very much a hands on grandma.

I think taking photos of you and your mum together while your still pregnant and her touching your belly and taking photos are great ideas. Maybe with help your mum could write or dictate a letter to your unborn child, a precious momento to keep and for the child to read when he/she is older to know how much their nanny loved them.A video message would be good too if your mum is up to it. However things turn out it will be a hard road ahead for all but you will survive and life does go on just now it will be different without your mum around anymore. If you need to talk about how your feeling bb is great or you could see a grief councellor when the time comes.

I am now 30 weeks pregnant abd giving birth again without mum around will be hard but my little sister is coming with us to fill her shoes and just support us at this time. I hope your family are supporting each other it help so much when everyone pulls together in a crisis.