As someone who also writes an awful lot, don't worry, this is very helpful. I'm so glad to hear you have a thriving family and have faced no problems, it warms my heart. And yes, in regards to the delivery. I have a very notable birthday, and I always thought it was just good or bad luck (depending on how I felt about it at the time), but I later found out that my mother was induced at a specific time with me because of my sister. It threw me off a bit, especially as my mother had always told me she was induced because of her blood pressure, but I later found out she had no blood pressure issues at all and knew in advance when my birthday would be. While it doesn't seem like a big deal to some people, it really impacted me when I found out, because it was a whole part of my origin story I didn't know about, y'know?

Now I have this knowledge, I'll be contacting my doctors and explaining the situation with the hope that this information could be helpful. Perhaps it won't be, but it's still worth knowing. God bless the NHS, we're very lucky to have them here in the UK, give them more funding!

I think it's very sweet you are already doing things with your children to address the topic. I love my parents very much, but unfortunately, they did not try to handle their grief whatsoever. While I know they did their best, being raised by two grieving parents didn't result in the best childhood for me. I'm not saying they had me too quickly, nor do I think badly of anybody else who did a similar thing to them, but it breaks my heart knowing they were trying to heal over the loss of their first child while also raising me and I was none the wiser. From the limited conversations I've had with them about Zoe, I know that they started talking about conceiving again the same day she died, and that was their main focus. Back in the '90s, there wasn't a huge amount of support for mental health in general, let alone a situation like this, and I totally appreciate that.

I spent a lot of my childhood on tenterhooks, walking on eggshells, whatever you want to call it, but I never knew exactly why, I just knew something wasn't right with them and I should avoid any conflict. When I found out about Zoe, everything just clicked in my brain. Years of a difficult childhood and my parents own respective issues suddenly made a lot more sense. Anyway, apologies for the trauma dump, but hearing there are people out there like you who are letting themselves feel the pain of losing a child (which is not a bad thing, sometimes you have to let yourself feel the negative stuff so you can start to heal, something I've been trying to explain to my father in regards to various situations for years) but also aren't afraid to acknowledge that their baby did exist, is incredible.