'Matthew's mother went to see her doctor and the doctor was worried about the baby.’

A child-friendly discussion of the loss of a baby.

By award-winning author Siobhàn Parkinson

Matthew is excited about the new baby. But then, one day, something very sad happens. The doctor tells Matthew’s mother that her baby isn’t growing properly and it won’t be strong enough to live outside her body.

Matthew and his mother and father will always remember their baby. But as time goes by, they will not feel sad so often.

This child-centered book is intended to help children and families who experience miscarriage, stillbirth, perinatal death or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

A new edition of the first published book by Siobhán Parkinson, who later became Ireland’s first Laureate na nÓg (Children’s Laureate).

It was writing this book that Parkinson found her voice as a children’s writer, a gift she credits to the baby she lost all those years ago.

PRAISE FOR ALL SHINING IN THE SPRING

‘Anyone who has experienced the loss of a baby; who is experiencing the loss of a baby will find solace in its pages’ – Mary Esther Judy, Fallen Star Stories

Some Information for Parents

All Shining in the Spring is a book for parents to read with their children. It’s not, fortunately, a book for every child, but I hope and believe it will help those families for whom the loss of a baby is a reality, and also those children whose friends or cousins or classmates may have had an experience like this in their families.

I wrote this book many years ago for my own son. I am not
any kind of expert. I’m just a woman who has had a certain life experience – a stillbirth – that I handled in my own way. This experience impinged not just on me and my husband but also on my son, who was six at the time. It seemed very obvious to me that my child needed as much as we did to grieve, and that he needed to be given very explicit permission to do that. My way of giving him that permission was to write our story, very simply, for him.

Not being a child psychologist, I didn’t have any theories about all this. I just followed my instinct, and maybe that is what gave the story its power. Certainly child psychologists I have discussed my book with since then seem to think I was on the right track. This is what one said to me recently:

“Grieving is the work our minds have to undertake to keep us healthy .. This book opens up an opportunity to discuss some important issuess about miscarriage, stillbirth and the loss of a small child both for parents and for the other children in the family. If we don’t have the capacity to grieve and mourn, then the pain and the rage provoked by loss can go unprocessed for an entire lifetime and may only come to the surface if a similar incident happens in the next generation of the family, when it can make itself felt as an explosion of grief and rage.”

It seems obvious to me that just as it is important that we as adults work our way through our feelings of loss, so children, whose grief may be hidden or suppressed or expressed as fear or anger, need to be given the opportunity to grieve also.

It’s hard, though, for parents who are in mourning thenselves to talk to their children about such a painful subject. If a child is saying nothing, maybe the parent takes this as a sign that the child isn’t really concerned. I can totally understand parents’ reluctance to open up a painful conversation, especially if they believe they may be upsetting or frightening their child. All I can say is that being allowed to talk about what happened in our family and cry about it and talk about it some more definitley helped my son at the time, and I know it has also hepled many other families who came across All Shining in the Spring at a time when they needed it. That’s why Little Island is reissuing it. There are still families, sadly, for whom this book will be of some help, and if yours is such a family, I really hope it will bring some comfort at a very sad time.

The following organisations may also be able to help you.

Siobhán Parkinson

Author of All Shining in the Spring

Rainbows
Supporting Children with Bereavement and Parental Separation
 

Feileacáin
Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Association of Ireland

Lily Mae Foundation
Supporting Parents & Families after a Stillbirth, Neonatal Death, Miscarriage or Medical Termination

The Miscarriage Association
 

Petals Charity
Providing specialist counselling after baby loss

The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust

Siobhán Parkinson was Ireland’s first ever Laureate na nÓg (Children’s Laureate). She has published more than 30 books for children and adults, in English and Irish, with publishers including Puffin, Hodder, O’Brien Press and Little Island Books. In 2010 she founded Little Island Books. She has won many awards and been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.