I couldn’t let my guard down in case the worse scenario happened again

Gary and Michelle from Sutton Coldfield lost their twins Alana and Dana – ‘The Bears’ – at just 3 and 26 days old. In this blog, Gary explains how his grief and trauma affected how he coped with parenting when their daughter was born a year later.

My name is Gary and I’m what you might call a standard stereotypical bald headed, tattooed bloke, now in my 50s having lived out my ‘best’ life in the 1980s. Our story starts with Michelle’s first pregnancy 18 years ago – but it is the after-effects of what happened that we really want to share.

Back in 2003, my fabulous wife Michelle and I were talking about trying to get pregnant but there were some major points to consider – her lack of monthly cycle and my poor mental health. She was waiting for a fertility appointment and I had embarked on getting treatment with a clinical psychologist to help sort myself out. 

I’d had a traumatic childhood which had affected me right into adulthood, but I wanted to be a good dad, and I wanted my relationship with Michelle to work, so I persevered and attended therapy every week. 

That’s when we found out Michelle was pregnant

The week before Michelle’s fertility appointment I came home from work and was presented with a positive pregnancy test. We were completely over the moon. We’d managed to get pregnant naturally. 

Shortly before our 12-week scan, Michelle had pretty intense pains and we were worried. An early scan showed that we were expecting twins. We thought we might never get pregnant and then there were 2 heartbeats! We were in shock but totally in love with the 2 little growing bodies that we saw on the screen. 

Then we were told there might be a problem

Our medical professionals suspected they had Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), and they were right, so we then embarked on a physical and emotional rollercoaster of twice-weekly appointments, amniotic fluid drainages and scans. The day before the twins hit 29 weeks we were told that they needed to be born: the rollercoaster we were on suddenly grew dramatically in height and width.

Baby Alana died when she was 3 days old, and Baby Dana died when she was 26 days old.  
We were completely broken. For months we didn’t know whether we could keep going and the stresses and strains of our grief were immense. 

Joy followed by fear

In the late spring of 2004, Michelle told me that she was pregnant again. I remember my instant reaction was one of joy, quickly followed by fear. My grief at the loss of my twin girls (fondly called ‘The Bears’) was still so intense that any delight was quickly stifled with thoughts of: “What happens if this baby dies too?”. 

Feeling so vulnerable from their loss and my ongoing treatment for my poor mental state, I just couldn’t think far enough ahead to know how I could let myself truly love this new being in case something else went wrong – and I was plunged back into the depths of grief. At the time I felt I was being selfish, but I couldn’t let my guard down in case the worst-case scenario happened again.  

Protecting our daughter

Our third daughter was born in the winter of 2004, a healthy barrel of a baby, chubby and short! She became my world.

I was going to protect her and be there for her like no other dad in the world could. Yet the effect of what I’d been through didn’t end just because I had a healthy baby to hold. I sensed that other people  thought, “Now you have a new baby, the loss of the other two will disappear”. How wrong they were. 

My protection of her brought real fear that, after her birth and taking her home to start being a family together, she might die and leave me completely and utterly bereft again. 

Parenting after loss made me incredibly anxious

It was the little things that really traumatised me. If she was in the living room in her basket while I popped to the kitchen to get something, I’d experience huge anxiety walking back into the room. What if she’d died while I was gone? 

Checking her cot at night was impossible for me. The very picture of seeing her sleeping silently with no movement made me instantly wake her to make sure she was still alive. How Michelle constantly checked on her, I don’t know. I left these difficult, emotional tasks to Michelle. At the time I really couldn’t help myself.  

Changing our lives and helping others

A few years later we went on to have another successful pregnancy and our son was born. I was much further on in my therapy journey at this point and having had our daughter for some time then, it became easier to check on our son and know that he was genuinely sleeping, alive and well. I was able to sink the fear to a minimum and rationalise that it was my trauma and grief that gave me those feelings.  

Some say that our experiences can break us. They can, and did, but they can also make us. We’ve both now been qualified counsellors for many years. Without everything we have experienced, would we be the counsellors that we are today? I honestly don’t think so. We are both passionate advocates of mental health and supporting those who may be having or have had similar experiences to us.  

In 2021 I published my book ‘Daddy & The Two Bears’ to give a perspective of loss from a dad’s or male point of view. It’s something that is not well documented or spoken about, which is why it is fantastic to see Tommy’s highlighting the issues that dads and partners experience. Our little ‘Bears’ changed our lives forever. It was a bitter-sweet pill to swallow but one that in turn will hopefully help others.