Liam's Story

Our baby boy was born early in 2022 after an extremely stressful pregnancy for my fiancée. He tried to come early at 23 weeks and the doctors asked us if we wanted to let him go or fight. An obvious choice for us, we chose to fight for our boy.

He was born on the 14^th of February 2022 and he was absolutely gorgeous. We named him Marcellus, the Latin word for little warrior as he was just that. My daughters, his older sisters, loved him so much they screamed when we brought him home and fought over who got to hold him. He had an extremely happy life for a time – always laughing and grinning, he had the cheekiest of smiles.

He was an extremely healthy boy, however on the 23^rd of October 2022 we awoke to our normal ritual, I went to get my girls from their bedroom and then proceeded to make them breakfast. While I made breakfast I head a sound I will never forget (my fiancée screaming). I ran to the baby’s room as fast as I could and when I came into the room my heart shattered, our baby had lost all colour in his skin and there was no cry aside from my fiancée and myself. No laughs, no smiles, my little boy had stopped breathing.

I called emergency services as quickly as I could and while awaiting an ambulance I was instructed through giving my little warrior mouth to mouth and attempting to resuscitate him. The ambulance arrived and quickly took action, they did everything they could but he wasn’t breathing. They rushed him to the hospital and we followed quickly behind. When we walked through the doors of his hospital room we were met with many doctors and nurses and they told us “we have tried our best and he is a fighter but he is unfortunately not going to win this time“. My fiancée screamed and cried and the only two words I could get out were “my boy” and we held our poor beautiful baby boy for the last time. His body was cold and lifeless and the doctors told us and repeated to us that its nothing that we had done and that it was SIDS. We broke.

In the next coming weeks I’m constantly thinking of a quote I once read “in peace sons bury their fathers, in war fathers bury their sons” This is the most unnatural thing any parent can go through. We have so many regrets and self-blame moments, we know it wasn’t our fault, but the pain and fear will forever scar us. No parent should ever go through this pain and no child should be taken from the world with no explanation. This is our story.