He Was Completely Silent

After the scan, Anne Marie Gillooley held on to one thought all through labour: they were wrong.

Her son Max was born at forty-one and a half weeks, in 2014. Stillborn. Her world, she says, "changes in an instant."

"Everything that you thought you knew and could expect and could rely on, just is swept out from under your feet."

She was afraid of what she might see. She didn't know if she'd be able to hold him.

Then Max was there.

"He was just so beautiful and so perfect and completely silent."

They had a few days with him in hospital. "We were parents and we were so proud of him," she said. A midwife told them about Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, a charity that photographs babies who have died, so the family can hold proof of a child when their arms are empty. Those pictures of Max are "the most precious photos that we have." Twelve years on, she chairs that charity.

"This road that is ahead of you is extremely difficult," she tells other parents now, "but you will find joy again."

Nina Doyle went through IVF and miscarriages before she became pregnant with twins in 2018. Just short of twenty-three weeks, labour began. "While they were inside me, they were kicking."

Liam was stillborn. Grace lived for thirty-one minutes.

"I couldn't believe we were finally parents." She brought them home, "making memories, but it's heartbreaking to fit a lifetime into such a short amount of time." In 2019 she started the Wave of Light so that Liam and Grace's lives would "really matter."

Róisín Moriarty, from Cork, lost her second pregnancy at about ten weeks. She and her husband named their baby Dessie. "You definitely feel less isolated when you know you're not alone."

Tonight at seven, candles were lit across Ireland for every baby who didn't come home. That includes Max in his mother's arms, Grace's thirty-one minutes, and Dessie's name said out loud.

What does a country owe the smallest lives it loses?

Max was beautiful. Max was perfect. Max was completely silent.

And still, he was here.

Sources: The Irish Times, 15 October 2026, and the HSE.