TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains information about stillbirth and infant loss, which may be triggering to some.
A mom in Spain is using her grief for good. Hayley Wilkins shared a video of herself dancing in her car while heavily pregnant. While the video looks like a celebration of a woman whose life is about to change, she had no idea what was coming. Her life did change, but not in the way she thought it would.
Wilkins had no idea that her baby wouldn’t survive. But now, she’s using her loss to make change; she’s taking steps to change the grieving experience. She realizes that while she can’t change what happened to her, she can make things a little better for the moms who come after her.
The mom detailed her experience on social media.
Wilkins shared a video on Instagram of herself dancing in the car. Over the video she wrote, “She doesn’t know this yet! But in less than 24 hours her waters would break but she’d never be bringing her baby girl home.”
“Everything was fine, and then within the space of about 10 minutes, I was bleeding heavily,” Wilkins told Newsweek. The 40-year-old content creator is originally from the UK, but now she lives in Spain. Her UK-based doula told her and her partner to head to the hospital.
Her labor became dangerous and almost deadly.
Wilkins was rushed for an emergency C-section after an internal scan. She was then placed in a medically induced coma. When she came to, she was faced with grim news.
“My partner was there and I looked at him and said, ‘Where is she?’ And I just looked at him and said, ‘She’s not OK, is she?'” the mom said. Her daughter, Sienna Elizabeth Rose O’Shea, was delivered stillborn. Wilkins had almost lost her life when her lung collapsed. Facing the reality of life without her daughter, her grief was overwhelming.
“I just said, ‘Mom, please just get them to put me back to sleep. I don’t want to be here,'” she admitted, per Newsweek.
It would be days before Wilkins got to see her baby.
Due to medical complications, Wilkins had to stay in the hospital for four days. But because of the way Spanish hospitals operate, Sienna’s body had already been moved. The mom signed herself out of the hospital, making a five-hour trip to see her daughter for the first time.
“I was so worried to see her, but when I walked into the chapel … I was like, ‘Oh my God, she was just so beautiful and perfect,'” she said. “It was like the happiest and saddest hour of my life.” Soon, she found herself planning a funeral when she should have been basking in newborn glow.
“I just kept thinking, this can’t be happening to me,” Wilkins said. “I think it wasn’t until a few weeks after the funeral that it really hit me. I had family come over and once everyone left, it was just me and my partner at the house. That’s when you’re in a house full of funeral flowers, not congratulations flowers.”
She turned her grief into action.
The hospital where Wilkins gave birth didn’t have a cuddle cot, a cooling device to allow parents to spend more time with their stillborn babies. Now, she’s made it her mission to get one so that families didn’t deal with the same grief she had.
“I’ve had in my head that I wanted to make sure Sienna’s death wasn’t in vain; that there was a reason,” she said. “The fundraising has been my biggest focus and it gives me purpose. It’s really taken off here.”
Through a GoFundMe, Wilkins has raised enough for almost three cuddle cots. “I just hope I can really make some big changes here, not just with the cuddle cot, but hopefully educating hospitals on aftercare and just a bit of empathy,” she said.
