Hollie’s Story

Hollie and her partner heartbreakingly lost their son Finlay through neonatal loss in February this year.  When Hollie’s waters broke prematurely at 32 weeks, Finlay was delivered by emergency c section and unfortunately got infected with a severe case of E. coli, he lived for 15 hours and died in Hollie’s arms in the hospital.

It was our honour at Petals to be there to support Hollie and her partner. So much of the work our incredible counsellors do is with couples and it can play a vital role in helping parents navigate this devastating time together.

We are so grateful to Hollie for speaking so openly about Petals’ support and how much it meant to her.  She says:

“I was so worried that the worst thing my partner and I had ever gone through, was going to break our relationship. Not only had I lost my baby but was I going to lose my partner too, was this going to ruin us? I wanted to do everything in my control to try and get through this together, so when the hospital told us about Petals, I was desperate to reach out.

Petals helped us understand that even though you and your partner have lost your baby together, you realise you grieve in completely different ways and at different times. For the women they experience a lot of physical pain etc, however for the partner they’re there, witnessing it all happen to someone they love and their baby, there is a loss of control and feeling useless, not being able to do anything to help. Petals helped us massively, by allowing us to understand what each other was feeling and going through.

Each session allowed us to communicate openly and speak about our baby freely, knowing you weren’t speaking to someone who was friends or family, who might feel emotional themselves or not know what to say to you.

Petals allowed an hour of our time to grieve, processing the most painful feelings; from the days in the hospital, to all the robbed memories we will never have with our baby. The sessions also helped in how to cope with the feelings of how am I going to get through this, I have lost the most precious thing yet the world and people in it are still going on.

I’ll always be thankful for our sessions with Petals, and think it’s so important for anyone going through something similar to speak to the counsellors – as there’s nothing to lose but potentially lots to gain, even though it might feel like the hardest thing to do, to talk about your loss.

You feel so incredibly alone and isolated because of this awful thing that has happened to you but Petals is there to help remind you, you are not alone, you can speak to people and they will help you get through it.