'Life after loss': How TikTok helped me when my newborn died

"I became a mum in 2023, but my arms were empty. This year, I finally get to wrap gifts for the child who came home. It's a happiness tinged with grief"

Maddie Biggs once used Tiktok for sharing what she'd baked, where she'd been on trips and how she'd upcycled the occasional bit of furniture.

In September 2023, everything changed.

In a video watched hundreds of thousands of times, she shared clips of the utter devastation she and her husband faced when their baby, Teddy, was born prematurely and with a condition called congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH).

"Basically, he had a hole in his diaphragm which meant some of his organs had risen to his chest cavity, and they were pressing against his lungs so his lungs couldn't develop properly," Maddie said.

A team at King's College Hospital in London carried out a procedure while Maddie was pregnant which involved inserting a tiny balloon into Teddy's chest to push his organs down and allow his lungs room for growth.

The procedure appeared to be successful, and scans were showing improvements - but then Maddie went into premature labour at 29 weeks, just hours after she and husband Michael held a baby shower for their son.

Despite the best efforts of staff at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Teddy lived for 24 minutes before doctors said there was nothing they could do to help him.

"Straight away, they just handed me him in his blanket with his hat on," Maddie said.

"The theatre room was so quiet, there wasn't really a sound at all after that."

The couple spent the next five days in the hospital's maternity bereavement room, Blossom Suite, where specialist midwives helped the pair as they read to Teddy, sang to him and took photos and videos with him.

"They made it seem like the most normal and natural thing in the world," Maddie, 28, recalled.

"I think if they weren't doing that, I wouldn't have done it, and I think I would have had so many regrets because I just wouldn't have had things to look back on."

They made casts of Teddy's hands and feet, and also spent time with him in the hospital's baby loss garden, pushing him in a pram donated to the suite along with clothes and keepsakes.

The experience "really hit home" once they'd said their final goodbyes and returned to their home in Maldon, Essex.

"We'd come home without a baby, but we had all these baby things in the house, but we didn't have him.

"I just felt really lost at that point because I didn't know anyone who had gone through it - and I think that's kind of when I took to TikTok."

Maddie's first TikTok video about baby loss - which she posted with a trigger warning - shows her and her husband in the Blossom Suite, gently swaying with Teddy while tears stream down their faces.

"I felt like I was making memories by creating videos," she said.

"It was kind of just my own personal grief diary, and slowly it just turned into more.

"People kind of started to see it and reach out, and that's kind of when I started making my own friends through the community."

As Maddie and her family navigated the weeks and months after losing Teddy, she came to see TikTok as a place she could keep Teddy's memory alive by sharing his story.

Her posts are followed by almost 40,000 people on the platform.

"I wanted to scream his name from the rooftops. I wanted everyone to know that Teddy was here and he exists," she said.

"Some people tell me to grieve privately, but I'm like, why? Why can't we talk about our loved ones? They were here, they matter."

Maddie believes speaking openly about baby loss can still be a "taboo" and that those who do could be considered to be "scaremongering".

"But no-one I've met through social media talking about baby loss has felt like it's scaremongering - it's felt informative, because sometimes you could help someone else realise some signs," she said.

"I think it's just trying to not normalise it because it's not - I wouldn't want anyone to go through it, but just to normalise talking about baby loss is kind of what I'm hoping to get out there a little bit more.

"I've had messages saying it's helped people and that they do feel less alone, but also [it] just makes them feel like it's okay for how they're feeling."

Earlier this year, Maddie and her husband welcomed Teddy's little sister Emilia - or Emmie as she's known - after a pregnancy where she felt "so excited but so terrified".

Maddie's TikTok videos about navigating loss alongside parenting a newborn have also struck a chord with people on the platform.

She said people had messaged her to say "that it's OK to feel joy and grief and how they can coexist together, and that we shouldn't feel guilty about feeling happiness again".

Emmie is nine months old, and the family are getting ready to spend Christmas together - something Maddie describes as "bittersweet".

"I feel like it would have been the first Christmas where Teddy really understood what was going on."

Each year, they encourage family members to send him Christmas cards and, in lieu of any presents they might have sent Teddy, to make a donation to the Blossom Suite "because they've literally done so much for us".

Maddie, Michael and Emmie will also make their annual pilgrimage to Broomfield Hospital's baby loss garden.

"We always go on like our special occasions like birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas. So we'll spend some time with him on Christmas morning.

"Emmie gets to be a part of that this year, which I think is really special."

Tabitha Stuthridge, specialist bereavement midwife at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said she and her team felt "privileged to be able to support grieving parents like Maddie when they need it most".

"Our bereavement suite and the Blossom Garden offer them much-needed comfort and peace during one of the hardest times in their lives," she said.

"We'd like to thank Maddie, Michael and their family in helping raise money for the suite.

"Such kindness means so much when parents want to give something back, and lets us continue to improve our support to others going through such a devastating loss."

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