Because she was never meant to be alone

I met Anna through Footprints Baby Loss, a peer support group for parents suffering death of a baby in a multiple pregnancy. We got to chat online afterwards, and I asked if she would share her story. Anna has worked (amongst other things) as a circus and arts stage manager, firefighter and now works as a bereavement midwife.

Anna Pidgeon

I first felt my baby move at 19 weeks. Late at night. In a hospital bed. After laser surgery for advanced Twin Twin Transfusion Syndrome, TTTS.

The next day as the doctors checked our babies on the ultrasound, they passed over the first quickly, showed us the reassuring heartbeat on the second. And then returned to the first.

“I’m so sorry, there isn’t a heartbeat”.

Words that stay etched in your mind forever.

Yet, when I stand in the shower 7 years later and my mind spirals, that isn’t that moment that comes back. By that point the worst had happened, nothing to be done.

The spiral takes me through the ‘what ifs…’,

the ‘why didn’t I…’,

the ‘I wonder if I had just…’

I’ve learnt to shake myself out of that thinking, but I did think the spiralling would stop, that the triggers wouldn’t come. So sometimes it hits even harder now, because it surprises me, and because the trigger often comes from my daughter herself

“I don’t want to be in bed on my own”

“I wish my sister was here”

“I get lonely”.

Because she was never meant to be alone.

After our ethereal twin, Tillalottie (I know, weird name – there’s a story behind it but not for now), died, we saw a doctor. “So, what happens now?” I asked and, with a blasé look on his face, he told me that

now it would just be like any other Singleton pregnancy.

I sat at home that night and my mind was stuck. How on earth was I meant to do that, just carry on, with one baby living and another dead beside her.

How could we possibly live that for 20 more weeks? It turned out we didn’t have to. Two weeks later, at 21 weeks, my waters broke and the terror of our other baby dying too became all-consuming. My priority was to reach viability and give birth to one live baby.

So, when Beatrix was born at an impressive 29 weeks, her sister was born too. But my focus was on doing everything to keep Beatrix alive. She was whisked off to NICU, and I was up as quick as I could to join her.

A brief visit with Tillalottie as she lay fragile as a bird on the cot in the room. I requested hand and footprints but didn’t want to look at them.

We were told she would not be registered so I wanted to take her home, eventually, but my focus was on my survivor – hoping she would stay that way.

No one ever spoke about the fact that there had been another baby

We spent weeks in the nursery. We learnt everything we could about every machine. I pumped every 3 hours like I was a machine myself and no one ever spoke about the fact that there had been another baby. As she got stronger, I figured we were lucky and we should concentrate on that.

So, when twins were placed next to us in the nursery, I hid my tears and got on with it, I wept as I registered her birth as a singleton and moved on.

Wept as we buried her sister quietly, as a family, and then moved on.

Except somehow, treating Beatrix as a singleton was impossible. I couldn’t be near twins, if they came to the park I would leave, if they were mentioned in a story, I would skip the word (I still do that now in fact).

Two years later, it was casually mentioned that a different hospital would have considered Tillalottie a registered birth – based on her leaving the womb at 29 weeks. This discovery hit me like a wrecking ball and led to a year-long battle to get her registered and, even more importantly, to have Beatrix recognised as a Twin on her birth certificate. Those certificates arrived and I felt the universe shift from my shoulders. Recognition, in black and white, I had twins.

I slowly realised that ‘treating it like a singleton’ was impossible, ludicrous even. So, I stopped. I looked at Tillalottie’s handprints. I went to therapy. I talked to Beatrix about her ethereal sister. When people ask how many children I have I still sometimes say “one”, but sometimes I say, “actually, Beatrix is a twinless twin…”. Because she is not a singleton and that fact still sometimes takes my breath away as I picture the world as it could have been. But I would rather face that pain and take the opportunity to greet my ethereal daughter, because the alternative is actually impossible.

Nick Embleton

I asked Anna to share a bit more about her career and life experience.

Anna has dabbled in many careers since graduating from University of Edinburgh with a degree in Philosophy in 2006. Following that she worked for the BBC in local radio before deciding on a whim to go to Australia for a ‘holiday’. The following 20 years were predominantly spent working in the Arts as a Stage and Production Manager for festivals, theatre and for much of that time in numerous roles at Circus Oz. There were also brief dalliances returning to her roots in radio and testing new ground as a firefighter but the arts kept pulling her back.

The birth of her daughters sparked an interest in midwifery and when the world stopped turning in 2020 it seemed timely to make a change. From day one of study her passion was always in bereavement and she spent considerable time and energy seeking out mentorship and education opportunities in the area. After graduating in 2024 she assumed that it would be years before she was able to actively pursue this specific area of interest. But when a newly-created role of Bereavement Midwife became available at the end of her grad year she was thrilled and inspired to be given the opportunity to step up and start to build a new area of support and care for bereaved women and their families at Bendigo Hospital in regional Victoria.

After I spoke to, and read Anna’s story, I thought a lot about the brutality of Anna being effectively told to just get on with it. Pretend it’s a singleton pregnancy. Forget about the other baby. I don’t think you need to be anything other than a decent human being to see how cruel and thoughtless that was.

If you would like to learn more, or want to know about support available then -

• Footprints Baby Loss provides vital support to parents and families who experience the death of one or more of their twins or triplets before, during or after birth

• Skye High Foundation is a registered bereavement charity dedicated to supporting families who experience the loss of a baby from a multiple birth (twins, triplets, or more)provide hospital support such as the Butterfly cot cards

• Miracle Babies Foundation is Australia’s leading not for profit organisation working to improve, support and enhance all lives impacted by a premature or sick birth

• Red Nose is Australia’s leading authority on safe sleep, safer pregnancy advice, and bereavement support for those affected by the loss of a pregnancy, stillbirth, or the death of a baby or child

• Free online CPD accredited baby loss courses available via NHS learning hub but sadly only for UK residents - we’re working on making them more widely available. Bear with us, or if you want to host the resources contact me! We are working on Spanish and Portuguese translations (for Latin America) and adaptation for African settings.

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This post is also published here on Substack.