Kelsey Parker has reflected on her son's devastating stillbirth.
On June 22, the podcaster announced that her baby boy Phoenix, whom she was expecting with her partner Will Lindsay, was tragically “born sleeping”.
Kelsey is also a mum to her six-year-old daughter Aurelia and four-year-old son Bodhi, whom she welcomed with her late husband Tom Parker, before he passed away from cancer in March 2022.
Now, a few months on from the loss of Phoenix, Kelsey has detailed how she has been coping with her grief.
Speaking on her joint podcast Mum’s The Word with co-host Georgia Jones, the 35-year-old recalled that she gave birth to Phoenix a week early.
“This came as the biggest shock because I thought I was going to have a perfect little baby, and that’s not been the case. The only thing I can make light of is that maybe I have been sent this [grief] for a reason,” Kelsey noted.
“He actually wasn’t breathing when he came. I know other people want answers, but there isn’t an answer that I can give people. I’m still going through the process of losing the baby,” she admitted.
“Grief looks so different to when I lost Tom. It feels a lot different because with a baby, you’re sort of grieving for something that you’ve not got. I had 13 years with Tom, so it’s a completely different grief,” Kelsey explained, before sharing how her children have been coping with the loss of their sibling.
“With Aurelia, the problem is that she needed an answer, and what she was finding was that the answer that I was giving wasn’t good enough. When Phoenix died, I first said, ‘Phoenix is now with Daddy.' Well, that was it, she was angry with her dad,” she detailed, adding: “I feel like we’re at a stage now where she’s okay with the answer.”
“When something happens, Bodhi just sort of misses it a little bit. When we lost Tom, Aurelia was a bit older, she understood it, he was 18 months and had no clue. Even with this, he understands it, but I think with Bodhi, because he’s had so much loss and the only person who’s been through it all is me, I think as long as I’m present, he’s happy,” Kelsey added.
