Behind the joy of motherhood, some women carry the silent weight of child loss and grief.
Pregnancy brings immense joy and anticipation to many women who are often excited to become mothers and start a family. It is a chapter full of preparation for a new baby and dreams of the future. But what happens when a woman’s dream of becoming a mother is cut short? Pregnancy is no easy journey, and is often wrought with physical and emotional trials. While many women leave the hospital cradling their newborns, others leave with empty arms and broken hearts. In Nigeria, where maternal and infant mortality rates are high, the birthing process often demands strength and resilience. Child loss is often the breaking point for a mother, no matter the circumstances. Saying goodbye to a baby is a devastating and unimaginable experience — one that reshapes the course of a woman’s life forever.
To understand the weight of this devastating experience, I spoke with Chinwendu, a young mother who carries the searing memory of losing her first son, who passed away as a baby in a Lagos hospital. For Chinwendu, her pregnancy brought her happiness. She lovingly called him her “rainbow baby”, a symbol of hope after a previous miscarriage. One of her most cherished memories was the gender reveal party her sister insisted on organising. A sunlit day at a beach park in Washington state, filled with love, laughter, and the promise of new life. She remembers teasing her friends, who were convinced she was having a girl, while she proudly declared it was a boy. Looking back now, she says that day feels like ‘another lifetime.’ Her experience lays bare the raw heartbreak of child loss and the unspoken weight many mothers carry.
Chinwendu’s story: A mother’s heartbreak
In her first trimester, Chinwendu was diagnosed with a few conditions and advised to see a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist. However, she found a Black female specialist with whom she immediately connected — a relationship that would later help her through the difficult delivery of her second pregnancy, a girl.
In November 2023, Chinwendu recalled travelling from the U.S. to Nigeria, full of joy and anticipation. “My sister’s wedding was in December, our anniversary, my birthday…we wanted to celebrate everything together,” she says. However, that joy began to unravel during a distressing encounter at the Atlanta airport. A Delta staff member confronted Chinwendu over a small carry-on containing essential pregnancy items. Despite explaining her situation, flight status and pregnancy, the staff member insisted she consolidate her bags. “She just wouldn’t listen. I kept saying, ‘I’m pregnant, this is medical,’ but she didn’t care.” While trying to comply, Chinwendu first felt an unusual discomfort in her body after having to bend low; this was the first warning sign of the tragedy ahead.
Upon arriving in Lagos, Chinwendu began bleeding. Her father, an OB-GYN, placed her on immediate bed rest. However, days later, she went into early labour. “It all happened so fast. I started feeling this pain in my back, and before I knew it, I was delivering my son,” she says, her voice breaking. Her baby boy was born breathing, but very fragile at just under 28 weeks. They rushed him to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), the only nearby facility with a neonatal unit. But even there, the resources were dire. “They had no ventilator. They were manually resuscitating him all night. Eventually, it damaged his organs.” Despite the staff’s best efforts, the lack of equipment proved devastating.
Eventually, LUTH transferred her baby to a private hospital, Evercare, where Chinwendu could finally be with him — and to hold him for the first time. However, it was too late. “They told me if he had been brought there earlier, maybe he would’ve had a chance. But by then, his little body had endured too much.” On 23 November 2023, while her husband was still en route to Nigeria, she received the news she had dreaded: there was nothing more the doctors could do. “They told me to come say goodbye,” she says softly. “Time just froze. I didn’t know how to move. I was in shock.”
With friends and family at her side, Chinwendu finally held her son in her arms as they removed the breathing tubes. “I couldn’t feel anything. I just sat there and kept humming, “Be still and know that I am God.” Her voice falters, still carrying the weight of that moment. Though time has passed, the pain hasn’t dulled. “It doesn’t feel like time has moved since then,” she says. Chinwendu’s story is one of unimaginable loss, yet also one of remarkable strength in the face of heartbreak.
When a mother’s worst fear becomes reality
Chinwendu sat frozen after receiving the news of her baby’s death. Her body remained numb, and her spirit shattered. “I felt paralysed,” she says. “I was sitting in a chair in front of his bed, where I’d been the whole time, and I remember just not being able to move. People were talking at me, not really to me.” When the time came to remove the tubes keeping her baby alive, she still hadn’t held him. The nurses asked if she wanted to, and though her body resisted, her friends gently helped her up. “Someone placed him in my arms, and I held him, but I couldn’t feel him. I couldn’t feel anything. The hospital staff didn’t allow her much time with her son, rushing her to let him go so they could take him to the morgue. Chinwendu noted that other countries have different practices, allowing the child and mother more time. “It felt like everyone was rushing me. But I needed to be with him.”
After her son passed, she insisted on cremation; she couldn’t bear to leave him behind. But what followed was another heartbreak. When she saw his body at the morgue, “they had wrapped him up … no diaper, his hands and legs bound, tubes in his nose and ears,” she recalls. The sight was unbearable. “That set me off in a way I can’t even explain.” She cleaned him herself — dressed him, wiped him down, and placed a diaper on him. “I didn’t get to give him a bath… and looking back now, I think that’s something I would have wanted, just to take my time and be with him.”
At the crematorium, Chinwendu finally saw him for the last time. “That morning, he looked alive. He had no bruises on his face anymore. He looked like a baby. Like my husband. It was actually creepy how much he looked like him.” She pressed his tiny hands and feet into ink, taking their prints. “As soon as they turned on the flames, it all hit me. I don’t remember screaming, but my friend said I did, and that it didn’t even sound human.” Chinwendu blacked out. When she came to, she was on the floor. “All I could think was, ‘They just set my baby on fire’.”
The days after were lost in a blur. “I don’t remember the drive home or what happened. People came to see me, but I have no memory of it,” she says. “I was just existing.” She later learnt she was dissociating, a trauma response. “I’d black out for hours. I’d be in bed and then suddenly find myself in the living room. I didn’t know how I got there.” And yet, she remembers small moments right after the hospital, like watching her niece and nephew fight over her grapes, which was the first time she laughed since the whole ordeal. The hospital told her he had likely died from an infection that had reached his brain after multiple resuscitations. There are no words big enough to contain that grief, but Chinwendu carries it every day since.
From the deep loss of her son to a deeper purpose
Even now, Chinwendu often finds herself transported back to the most painful moments of her loss. “Sometimes when I sleep, or when it’s really quiet, if I close my eyes, I’m back there,” she says. After losing her son, her body responded in ways she didn’t expect; she experienced phantom kicks. “The day I picked up his ashes, the milk stopped immediately. It was one of the strangest and most painful things I’ve ever experienced. It felt so final, like every physical tie to him just vanished.” She’d planned to give him a milk bath, but she forgot it in the chaos of going to the hospital. “There was nothing left,” she says. “My stomach disappeared, my milk dried up. It was like I’d never been pregnant. Like he was never here.” To keep a piece of him close, she found a weighted teddy bear urn, the same weight as her baby, and kept it in the nursery. She found this urn on Etsy from another mum’s suggestion. “I still cuddle it,” she says. She considered turning his ashes into a diamond, something lasting and beautiful, but she hasn’t decided yet. “Maybe one day.”
As she attempted to grieve, others tried to hurry her through it. “Several close family members told me how disappointed they were because I was still sad. They said, ‘I thought you were strong.’” But others, women who had also lost children and shared their experiences online, offered comfort: “It doesn’t go away, but it won’t always feel this way.” When her son, Imole, would have turned one, she found the strength to share his story publicly for the first time. “I didn’t want him to only live in my memory. I wanted people to know he existed.” In his honour, she’s working on setting up a fund through her father’s pro bono clinic to support families who can’t afford healthcare. “People think because I have another baby, everything’s fine, that I’ve moved on. But I haven’t. I love my daughter more than anything, but I also still grieve for my son. I’ve just learned to hold joy and pain at the same time.” And in moments of healing, she finds purpose. “The more I talk about him, the more he lives. The less likely he’ll be forgotten.”
Finding solace in online communities
In the early days of her grief, she didn’t attend support groups or open up to others. But TikTok’s algorithm brought her into what she calls “the lost mum club,” a quiet space where she could scroll through stories of other women who had endured similar pain. “Even though I didn’t participate, just hearing how others were healing helped me feel less alone,” she shares. Podcasts, books, and online communities became a lifeline, a reminder that while grief is deeply isolating, it is not unique. “It helped to know I wasn’t spiralling, and that this pain didn’t make me weak.”
For other women walking this same path, Chinwendu offers the advice she wishes she had followed: “Don’t be like me. Let people help you.” After shutting herself off from loved ones, she tried to carry the weight of the loss alone.
Her message is clear: allow yourself to grieve, unapologetically and without a timeline dictated by others. “If all you can do is cry in bed with the curtains closed, do that, but don’t stay there forever,” she says. “Set a timeline that is just for you, and when it’s time, get up and let people hold you up.” More than anything, she encourages women to reject shame, guilt, or pressure to move on quickly. “Grief will try to poison your body if you don’t let it out. You have to feel it and then, when you’re ready, start to live again.”
