The Spider-Man Effect.
When I turned 21, there were a number of things that I hoped I’d be doing when I was 25. I hoped that I’d be married to my amazing girlfriend, working hard and playing even harder. But if you’d asked me at 21 where I’d be now, I never would have thought I’d be here. Even if you asked me a year ago “where will you be in 2017?”, I would have given you a VERY different answer.
There’s a stigma around men’s health - that we’re afraid to talk about how we feel and unfortunately, it’s often right. We internalize things and look strong for others, but inside we’re hurting. I think it’s time to break this stigma and time for men to tell their stories. To be listened to, heard and loved by others. My story is long and it isn’t easy to write, but I want to show that it’s not weak to tell your story. I want people to know about my son, Peter.
A year ago, my wife was pregnant. We were expecting a boy, and he was only 2–3 months away from being born. We were excited, nervous and totally overwhelmed at the thought of being responsible for another life. I had no idea how to parent or be a Dad, and no matter how many books I read and resources I scoured, nothing made me feel prepared. I figured that my ‘dad-senses’ would kick in and everything would be all good. As unprepared as I felt, I was so pumped to look after my little dude - to raise him on Power Rangers and Digimon, Medabots and Beyblades. We were going to watch Pokemon together and read Spider-Man comics together at bedtime. But no amount of excited, nervous preparedness could have readied me for what we were going to go through over the next few months.
At our final hospital appointment just days before his due date, everything was perfect. But two days later, we hadn’t felt any movement and we were worried. We traveled straight to the hospital that night to make sure that everything was fine, but things were far from OK. My wife and I sat in a quiet, empty hospital room while a doctor and a nurse checked on our son. There was no heartbeat to be heard and no movement to be seen. As I sat in that silent room, time seemed to stop and it felt like a lifetime. I held my wife’s hand and begged the doctor and nurse to tell me that everything was OK, that the equipment was malfunctioning. My son was fine two days ago, why isn’t he now?! They looked at us and shook their head, saying that he was gone and there was nothing they could do. No matter how strong I was, I couldn’t save him. I was helpless.
That night, my world fell apart. My son was dead. In an instant, everything we’d been looking forward to had fallen through my hands and shattered into a million pieces. My head swam as I demanded to know what had happened. Fear and despair took a backseat to anger as I paced around that small room, yelling, begging, demanding to know what had happened and why they couldn’t do anything to help my little boy. But for all that emotion, it was no use, they were as helpless as I was. I stood there and held my wife’s hand as she cried, and cried, and cried. I still can’t imagine how much it hurt her to know that the life growing inside her the past 9 months was gone. My head swam with so many thoughts, of all the things I’d planned and looked forward to doing with my baby boy, knowing that they’d never happen. It was like someone had cut a baby-shaped section from my heart, stomped on it and destroyed it.
Two hours after we returned home with the worst news of our lives, just after midnight on the 30th of May, my wife went into labour naturally. It seemed like a cruel cosmic joke that if this had happened 24 hours before, our son might still be here with us. 12 hours later, at 12:12pm, our son was born stillborn. There was no movement, no crying. There were no smiles in the room that day. There was nothing I wanted more than to do what I’d always planned - to hold my son and sing to him. So I did just that, I sat in the delivery room and held my son, cried and sang him the song I’d picked to be his lullaby. It felt so natural to hold him, and as I sang, I imagined a miracle occurring, that my singing would somehow wake up my son. But it didn’t.
I wanted to name my first son after my favourite superhero, Spider-Man. We called him Peter Benjamin David Smith, opting to give him two middle names so that he could also carry on the ‘David’ name that both I and my Dad have. It seemed so perfect, we couldn’t believe we’d considered other names for him. He was my little Spidey, and he was gone. Looking back, it seems ironic — anyone who is familiar with Spider-Man comics knows that his stories are filled with sadness and loss.
We stayed at the hospital for a few days while my wife recovered, getting her strength back. We were away from the other mothers in the maternity ward with their babies, but for me to walk in and out of the ward each day down a corridor of crying babies was gut-wrenching, because I knew at the end of the hall I was going to enter a quiet room with no baby. That first night they let us keep Peter in the room with us, because we wanted one night together as a family. Placed in a ‘cuddle cot’ designed to keep him cold, we looked upon our little boy with both love and sadness. Every second, I hoped that he’d wake up and suddenly begin crying, but it never happened. Our family rallied around us, making sure that we were looked after and spending a little time with Peter. Their support was vital to helping us keep going, but I still regret having to put them through something so terrible.
We left the hospital after a few days and returned home. Having to leave the hospital empty-handed was a terrible experience, but we were so grateful to have received a teddy bear on behalf of another family who’d lost a child. My wife held onto that bear as we left the hospital and didn’t let go for days. Everywhere she went, he went. It was a relief, but it wasn’t the same as having Peter with us. We’d been given a Spider-Man stuffed toy for Peter a few weeks prior to his arrival and I found comfort in having it with me. When I held it, it felt like a little piece of him was still with me. For months I barely slept, having nightmares and restless nights. I discovered that I couldn’t bear to be in silence anymore. I had to have noise around me at all times, be it music, television or pure conversation. I would panic when it became quiet, involuntarily reliving the traumatic experience of sitting in the hospital as they tried to find Peter’s heartbeat in complete silence. I was tired, sad and empty.
One of the things that I never thought I’d be doing at 25 was burying my son, but a couple of days later we did just that. Peter’s funeral still feels like a blur, a completely surreal experience, but it definitely happened. To this day I still do not know who attended his funeral, but I know that there were WAY more people there than we expected. For someone so small and new to the world, he had touched the lives of so many of our friends and family. If you attended the funeral, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming to help us celebrate his short, but impacting life. It means so much to know that so many of you care. I may not have known you were there, but you came and paid your respects to a perfect life taken from us too soon. I wanted Peter to know who he was named after, so I placed my favourite Spider-Man comic issue in his casket to be buried with him, and wrote him a letter telling him how much I love him.
Months after this experience, things didn’t feel like they were getting any easier. I worked, came home and went to the gym, just as I had before he was born. Nothing had changed. Work was exactly the same, we still lived in the same house and we had a room full of baby things that wouldn’t get used. I didn’t go in that room for weeks, it hurt too much. As Christmas approached, we had saved enough money to buy a house and moving was a chance for me to have a change of scenery, to start fresh. It was the best we could hope for, but deep down, I still missed Peter. Even now, I miss him every day.
It’s now 9 months since he was born and never does a day go past where I don’t think about my son and how much I miss him. Some days I cry, some days I’m angry, and some days I feel numb. There’s still an emptiness inside me that can never be filled, the space that Peter would have filled. It never gets better, but every day it gets a little easier. Initially, I tried to keep all my feelings inside and be strong for my wife, but it wasn’t helping, I’d go to bed at night and cry, desperate for a break from the sadness. I needed help, I couldn’t do this alone anymore. For me, asking for help was something of weakness, a flaw in my manliness. I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to be free of the pain and hurt, to talk to someone about my feelings. Seeking grief counselling was one of the best decisions that I could have made at that time, giving me a chance to talk to someone about my hurt and to know that not only am I not alone, but that everything I was feeling was perfectly normal. I’d lost my son, so that’s a perfectly fine reason to cry.
I’ve seen a lot of resources for mothers about the loss of a child, but I’ve not seen anything from the perspective of the father. That’s why I’m telling my story. I want desperately for people to talk about my son with me, to help me find closure and free myself from this pain by sharing it with others. But everyone seems afraid to ask, so I implore you — don’t be afraid of someone else’s loss. It’s those people that need your support the most, to be heard and loved and listened to. If you see me on the street, ask me about my life and my son. I’m happy to share a moment with you, in fact I’d love nothing more.
His first birthday is approaching soon, so for those of you who were at his funeral and even if you weren’t, I ask that you visit his grave and spend just a moment with him. It’s OK to cry and feel sad, to miss him, but I want him to live on in people’s hearts other than my own. That way he’s never forgotten. When we have more kids (fingers crossed!), we’ll be telling them all about their big brother, and make sure he lives on in them. But he also lives on in all of us, that perfect child who touched so many lives.
My little Spider-Man.