“Christmas Day arrived and all I could think was that we were missing someone” How to cope with loss over the festive period

I can still remember that first Christmas after he died, thinking my baby would have been two months old if all had gone as planned. I was five months into my pregnancy when I lost my baby and so many plans had already been made for his due date in October. We had named him Axel. Now it was December, all around us friends were having festive parties, but I was still deep in my grief and wanted to stay home. Christmas Day arrived and all I could think was that we were missing someone. Two friends had recently given birth and I saw pictures on Instagram of their babies by a Christmas tree, as our baby should have been. How strange it all seemed, as though it still wasn’t my reality.

My husband’s family are in Sweden, mine just outside of Copenhagen, so travel during the festive season has always been a big thing for us. I couldn’t face being on a plane, surrounded by people I didn’t know and having to pretend to be happy for our family and friends. Before Axel died, I worried it would be too much to travel from London to Stockholm with a new baby, but now there was no need to worry. That year we stayed in London, I wasn’t ready to pretend everything was okay. My husband and I watched Christmas movies with our eldest son, sat up talking late into the night and relinquished any pressure to be sociable. Grief versus happiness is a strange dynamic; you want to be happy, but because you simply cannot, it accentuates your sadness.