Kathy Benson remembers the day Deb de Wilde walked into her life. It was early 2004, and she had just lost her daughter at the age of seven days.
“My daughter was born early and very unexpectedly and quickly at home, which was not the plan, but that’s how it happened,” Benson tells Mamamia.
“She was taken directly to Grace Ward at Westmead, then never came home.”
A friend contacted de Wilde, who paid Benson a visit.
“She came to my home and had a cup of tea,” Benson remembers.
Listen: How to support a loved one who’s lost a baby. (Post continues.)
“My son was 18 months old at the time and he was there having a massive tantrum on the floor. She was just so calm. She was just this lovely calm influence that came in.”
Most of Benson’s family and friends didn’t really want to talk about the baby she’d just lost, but de Wilde did.
“I wanted to validate her life,” Benson explains.
“It was a very short life, but it still needed to be validated. It still was important to me.”
De Wilde was there to hear whatever she had to say, or scream.
“If I wanted to just scream at the world, she’d say, ‘Okay, you do that.’ Wherever my emotions took me, she allowed that. She was there to virtually hold my hand.”
Top Comments
Deb is a fantastic woman and such a wonderful support to parents. She helped my husband and I following the traumatic birth of our daughter, during which she was fine but I almost died. She helped us process what had happened in the days after the birth and was always just a quick phone call away when we had questions - about anything. Thank you Deb!!
A colleague of mine had a stillborn baby in the early 1970's at 38 weeks. He was quickly whisked away and she has no idea where he is buried. The nurses were very cold and clinical and she was told that instead of crying about it, go home to her husband and have another baby. I wish there was someone like Deb to offer her compassion and allow her to grieve her loss.