When the little black positive mark appeared on the pregnancy test screen, Amy and I grew more and more excited, holding the test stick together with a shared sense of its preciousness. Amy and I had been together since we were teenagers. Now, at age 30, the timing felt right. We couldn’t wait to be a family.
At the gender scan, the sonographer said we were expecting a girl. We named her Elowen. It means elm tree in Cornish. As our baby grew, our lives fell more and more into place. Our home in the New Forest was finally finished after months of renovation, making it just right for Elowen. And our business – a hostel in the mountains of North Wales – was running smoothly and we managed it remotely.
The world felt bright and complete, just like the warm months leading up to Elowen’s summer birth. She always kicked and danced every morning.
That was Elowen’s rhythm, and we memorized it.
But on that Monday morning, July 24, 2017, two days before her due date, there were no kicks, no nudges.
William Henry Searle talks about losing his baby daughter and coping with grief. Pictured with his wife and their son Eli in 2021
I leaned over the bed and called her name, “Elowen, Elowen, Elowen.” We thought maybe she was too far away to hear us. Amy poked and pressed her stomach.
I brought her a glass of cold water and a bowl of sugary cereal. Still no movement. We decided to go to the hospital; our bag was already packed with anticipation. Maybe this was it, the day we would meet our daughter and bring her home. But when we reached the highway, we both fell into silence. Amy stared at her belly and held it in her hands. I put on some music to wake up our child. No response, flutter or kick. I grabbed the wheel. I felt sick.
In the postpartum assessment ward, a midwife strapped Amy to a CTG machine and looked for a heartbeat – searched and searched. We were then taken to another room. It was dimly lit, with one bed and a computer screen. Amy was lying on the bed and I squeezed her hand. The screen is loaded. The sonographer moved the device over and over the contours of Amy’s abdomen. Then she stopped and attached it to a plastic hook next to the screen. She turned to us, took a deep breath and said, pronouncing each word slowly, “I’m sorry, but your baby died.”
Our world ended there and then.
Amy was given a pill to induce labor, then we were sent home. I barely remember those next few days, except when Amy sang Elowen’s song to her in the shower, holding her belly with both arms, crying. We covered all the mirrors in the house because Amy didn’t want to see herself as her pregnant belly sagged from the weight of our dead daughter. We held on to each other and didn’t want to let go. We kept hoping that the hospital had made a mistake.
After a long, painful labour, Elowen was born on July 27, 2017 at 1:35 am at our local hospital. We were terrified to see her, afraid she might be disfigured or injured in some way, so a screen was put up during Amy’s delivery. last contractions.
I watched her finally fall asleep at four in the morning, pale and exhausted. I cried into a pillow until dawn.
We didn’t see Elowen until the next evening; she lay in her little bed, wonderful and new. I had never seen such perfect beauty. I laughed through my tears at her chubby little hands, the wrinkles on her fingers, the fingernails.
I ran my finger over every feature of her delicate face.
On the day of Elowen’s cremation, we held our own ceremony. It was too much for us to attend. The sight of seeing her coffin slide off into hidden flames would have cost us our deaths. Instead, on a blustery August morning, we sat under a peculiar oak tree we called Elowen’s Oak. We made a pile of sticks that protected a few burning candles from the wind.
Her ashes were brought to us a day later in a teddy bear that we held as if our lives depended on it. But where was our child? Where was Elowen?
I was terrified that Amy and I would drift apart in our grief. She felt like a failure as a mother and I felt helpless. We wanted to die and look for our Elowen in death.
After a long, painful labour, Elowen was born at 1:35 am on July 27, 2017 at the local hospital. Stock image used
OUR PARENT HEART WAS AWAKENED. We needed to know what it felt like to hold a warm, alive child
I often found myself daydreaming about ways I could die. We needed help.
Eventually we got in touch with a counselor named Bren, whom we saw almost every week for a year. We ignored the old-fashioned ways grief was once understood—in “stages,” or “ongoing.” I didn’t want to deny the pain that accompanied a huge effort to keep Elowen from my heart. No, I had to endure the pain because it brought me closer to her. And we could only weather the storm together, not alone. It was up to us, as her mother and father, to somehow keep Elowen alive in the world.
Amy and I stayed close together. Every day we walked across the heath and ate together. I needed her. We also traveled abroad and took time away from our home, where Elowen’s stark absence became increasingly difficult to live with. The silence of her childhood room, her clothes that were never worn, the garden in which she was never allowed to play. Just as Amy felt phantom kicks in her stomach, I heard our little girl’s phantom shrieks and cries. One night I even jumped out of bed to check on Elowen.
We talked about whether we should try to have another child. Not to fill Elowen’s absence, but to prevent the feeling of us as a family from disappearing. In Elowen our parent heart was awakened and it stayed awake. We also needed to know what it felt like to hold a warm, alive child.
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On October 10, 2018, Eli, our son, was born by emergency c-section. It felt wonderful. Still, I also felt guilty that Elowen hadn’t gotten to this point—and about all the things Eli would have; all the adventures I planned with Elowen that Eli would have instead.
But his life soon shone with its own light. And we also moved. A change that seemed daunting but necessary to ensure we remained intact as a family, with Elowen firmly in her place among us.
Now we live in a remote valley in North Cornwall and Eli will be five next month. In the darkness of Elowen’s loss, I never would have imagined we would come this far. I am so proud. And I never take a moment with my son for granted. He is my world.
To the people who don’t know us, it seems like we only have one child. But we have two: Eli and Elowen. It’s just that Elowen is felt in the heart and not seen with the eyes.
Elowen: A Story of Sorrow and Love by William Henry Searle is published by Little Toller Books, £18*
*To order a copy for £15.30 UNTIL SEPTEMBER 17, GO TO MAILSHOP.CO.UK/BOOKS OR CALL 020 3176 2937. FREE UK DELIVERY ON ORDERS OVER £25. GETTY IMAGES