Bodhi's Story

Bodhi Lewis. Our third child. Our baby boy. The missing piece of our family.

Bodhi was born at 31 weeks on the 16 May 2024. We already knew at this point that our little boy would be born without a heartbeat. We had been told two days earlier that Bodhi had passed.

On the 14 May I was driving our daughter to nursery and myself to work, she was three years old. She was happily talking to herself in the back of the car, the normal three year old nonsense that she does, when she stopped suddenly and said to me, ‘mummy, you’re baby died.’ I didn’t know what to say, what to respond, so I asked her, ‘who told you that? My baby hasn’t died.’ Her response, ‘no one, I just know.’

When I got into work I couldn’t believe what had happened. This was not a normal conversation for my three year old to be having, she doesn’t use words like died or dead. I put the conversation out of my mind, it was all nonsense, because my baby was moving like they always did, they never stopped moving. That evening, I told my partner what had happened that morning, maybe I wasn’t so sure anymore. I rang the maternity helpline and explained what had happened to them, and they were lovely, straight away they told me to come up to the hospital. Once there I was hooked up to monitoring and there was instantly trouble, they couldn’t find a heartbeat. This wasn’t uncommon though, so I wasn’t that concerned, until they said they were moving me to a side room for a scan. I knew then that something had gone horribly wrong, was my daughter right?

It seemed like an eternity waiting for that scan, looking back now maybe I could have waited longer to get the news that nobody wants to hear. ‘I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat.’ The next two days were a blur of midwives, consultants, bereavement midwives and many more people. I didn’t sleep for two days, I didn’t eat anything, I was constantly sick, I didn’t want to go anywhere.

After Bodhi was born I felt a calm about everything, my baby boy was here, I could finally hold him. There was probably a sense of denial about what had happened and what would happen when it came time to leave. We spent two days with Bodhi in the hospital and leaving him there is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. My beautiful boy was gone and now the reality was setting in.

We went home and the next morning broke the news to our two older children about what had happened to their brother. It was heartbreaking. Bodhi is our baby boy, he is our third child, he is a younger brother, he is our family. He will always be spoken, he will always be missed, he will always be loved and he will never be forgotten. Our Bodhi Lewis.