FOOD
BEST-SELLING AUTHOR GEORGINA HAYDEN HAS A POIGNANT WAY OF REMEMBERING HER FIRSTBORN – THE PERFECT ANGEL CAKE
LAST WEEK, my husband Pete and I celebrated a huge milestone –10 years of being parents. Or I should say, we celebrated what should have been our son’s 10th birthday. Our first child, Archimedes, was stillborn. A perfect little boy, whose heart had stopped beating. Reliving the days leading up to me having him – the blissful ignorance that something would or could go wrong – is hard. Now I’ll be knee-deep in washing up or bathtime with our two daughters when a wave of grief will hit me. This was when I packed my hospital bag. Or it was at this time that I was batch-cooking a ragu for the freezer.
Before Archie, I was a food stylist and recipe developer, working on large shoots with lots of travel. I had a close-knit group of mates, and I married my best friend. I conceived easily and my pregnancy was glorious and I loved every minute of it. So, when Archie died, the fall was great. We had decorated the nursery and a Moses basket sat by our bed. One day, I went into the hospital nine months pregnant and the next I came out with empty arms. I’m pretty sure the pain of having to bury your own child is up there as one of the worst.
After Archie, the first thing to go was my appetite – a pretty standard response to trauma. But given my life had revolved around eating and cooking, I felt lost and didn’t know what to do with myself. I messed up scrambled eggs and relied on other people to feed me, because even leaving the house was challenging. But over time, food and cooking became a source of comfort. I re-learned how to look after myself. I planned a menu for each day. I wrote shopping lists and started a blog. (Those recipes became my first book, Stirring Slowly.) For me, the blog, the book and social media were my way of talking about Archie.
In the lead-up to what should have been his first birthday we held a supper club and
donated all the money to Sands (the stillbirth and neonatal death charity). For the day itself, Pete and I made Archie an angel cake as it seemed fitting. We didn’t know that 10 years on this would be the ritual that would stick. But it has, providing us with more comfort than we could ever have imagined. There isn’t much we can do for Archie, other than make his memorial bench look smart or talk about him publicly to help raise awareness. But we can bake him a cake – the gentle, soothing process is the ‘thing’ I take more comfort in than anything else. It is a process that grounds me and is something we do together as his mum and dad. Today, our daughters, now seven and almost four, help us decorate it, and it helps us talk about their big brother in a gentle way, so that he is always part of our family.
As well as bei
