"Then he let go." Kylie Kwong's partner was four months pregnant when her water broke.

Chef Kylie Kwong and artist Anh Do sobbed while talking about the loss of her son, Lucky, who died in utero and was stillborn in 2012.

Kylie and her now wife Nell met at an art gallery exhibition and quickly fell in love. Having kids was something Kylie had always wanted having come from a big tight-knit Chinese family.

“I was very maternal, I felt confident about being a mother,” she told Anh.

It was decided Nell would carry the baby because Kylie was six years older and had her business to run, whereas Nell’s work as a contemporary artist afforded her more flexibility.

Introducing you all to my beautiful, extraordinary, courageous, inspiring life-partner, Nell! We got married on Sunday and we are SOOOOOOO HAPPY! ???????????? pic.twitter.com/8P1P6Fx4cM

— Kylie Kwong (@kwongkylie) March 19, 2019

It took four years for the couple to fall pregnant [with a donor sperm].

Their son was due on August 2, 2012, but one Friday night four months into Nell’s pregnancy her water broke.

At the hospital they were told she would go into spontaneous labour in the next 24 hours.

“It was like being in a really bad car accident, and hitting full ball a brick wall. Suddenly our whole life got thrown into complete anxiety, stress and trauma,” Kylie said.

“Are you saying the baby is going to die? There was so much confusion.”

That night, Kylie says she “cried for 10 hours straight”.

“It was so sad because there I was lying next to my beloved. She was so upset. She said to me I don’t understand…”

“But in the end we felt blessed. He lived for six days inside Nell and then he let go.”

Kylie and Nell were able to say goodbye to Lucky with the help of a Zen Buddhist teacher who performed a spiritual ritual over Nell’s pregnant belly.

“It was so important, we got to be with him, mother him, we got to say goodbye to him,” she said.

When Anh asked what Kylie said to her son in that moment, she took a second to compose herself.

"I said, I really loved feeding you. I said I want you to know that your mother is the most amazing person in the world and you are very very loved. I said, I want you to know we have always loved you and I promised Nell and I would always look after each other."

Despite the trauma, Kylie says losing their son gave them the greatest gift.

"He's given us a deeper understanding of the preciousness of every single moment," she said.

Kylie also told Anh about her experience coming out as a teenager to her traditional Chinese parents.

She knew she didn't have feelings for men from the age of 14, but it wasn't until she was 19, and had fallen in love, that she told her mum and dad she liked women.

Here is a clip of Kylie's telling her father she is gay. Post continues after video.

She'd spent her later teenage years hearing her mother's words in her ears, "You just haven't met the right man yet".

When her mum did have a conversation with her about it she said, "I understand why you are attracted to women because of the emotional side of you and I know that you like to have very deep rich conversations. But I don't understand the physical side.

"Mum, you don't need to understand it, you will never understand because you don't feel like that," Kylie explained.

The conversation with her dad came six months later and ended in tears.

“One night we were having dinner, it was a weeknight and dad just like lost (it), he just snapped because he had been sensing over the weeks that I was seeing someone and he knew it was a woman,” Kylie recalled.

Kylie remembers saying "Yes dad, I'm gay".

He thanked her for being honest and then told her, "It's Wednesday, I want you out of the house by Saturday. From this moment on I disown you as my daughter".

Then he told her, "When you call home you can speak to your mother and your brothers but I'm not going to speak with you".

"I was a mess," she told Anh.

 

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I proposed to my beloved @nellartist in Jan 2015. I wanted her to enter her 40th year filled w Hope ????Positivity & Joy. (As you know we had lost our little baby Lucky in 2012 so the years following were really, really hard ). Fortunately for me she said YES! ????????On Sunday we finally got married! Today I turn 50 & this year as I proceed to re-focus my energy into new directions, I said to Nell several months back, ‘Let’s get married before I turn 50. Let’s just do it!’ When Lucky sadly left his mothers far too early, the first thing Nell said to me, amidst our utter despair & grief was ‘We must never, ever lose the Love ????that made Lucky’, this became our mantra. To relay this story in our ceremony on Sunday whilst truly ‘feeling it’ was profound. It will be 7 years this April since our lives changed immeasurably, yet our spiritual ✨bond has never been stronger. We made a commitment to each other back then & have worked at strengthening this every single day. At the base of all of this is Community. Our Community has always been there for us, & we have continuously reached out to them. We want to sincerely thank @jonowen76 @waysidepastor @grahamlong2018 @jongardens @thewaysidechapel for your kindness & openness; to our dearest friend & collaborator #SaskiaHavekes @grandiflora_sydney who created this other-worldly floral ????????????cave; to great friends & artists @romancewasborn for making @nellartist feel & look sooooo special ????; to our Spiritual Teacher, lifelong friend, Buddhist Marriage Celebrant #SubhanaBarzaghi & @bodhievents for holding our hands throughout this entire journey; to @seanmoran64 for cooking the most delicious, nourishing roast chicken ???? wedding lunch ????; to @adriancookphotography for skillfully capturing our untold happiness; to our extraordinary Mothers for giving us Life. I know that our little Lucky is really, really proud of his Mothers, his Divine Light imbues every single thing that we do ????????????????????????????????????

A post shared by kylie_kwong (@kylie_kwong) on Mar 19, 2019 at 2:01pm PDT

Two nights later, Kylie heard footsteps outside her bedroom door.

“I woke up to my father’s sobbing face on my pillow. And his whole kind of energy and demeanour was of this vulnerable, a lot kind of smaller presence, beautiful presence,” she said.

Her father said to her, "Oh my darling I can’t do it to you, you’re my baby. You’re my little girl and I just can’t do it to you. I just can’t, I can’t. Even though I don’t understand your way of life I can’t throw you out".

Kylie says she felt proud of her 52-year-old father in that moment.

"What he did in that moment was drop 52 years of ego in those two quiet nights," she said.

From then on they had a great relationship until his death from prostate cancer in 2006.

"It was one of those great lessons in life, we have to be ourselves, no matter how hard it is - be yourself. There is no other way," she said.