Hold Fast Project with Andy Jackman

Were have I been for the last 3 years? I’ve been riding some of the highest highs with the girl of my dreams. I’ve sold my house, bought another house that we are currently in the middle of a full Reno. I’m back taking photos full time after barley touching my camera for 3 years. But as we all know with the highs comes the lows, and we hit the lowest in November 2022.

I got home one afternoon and Shanny was up in the bedroom, as I walked in she told me she had some news that she needed to tell me… she was pregnant. 

(we where still pretty early into our relationship)

This news kinda hit both of us for a six! But within a couple days the shock of it turned into an excitement and love for our little baby that I’d never felt before. Over the next few months everything got so real we were out shopping and planning everything.

I sold my truck to get Shanny a new family car and planned on getting my first house that I had bought with my brother and sister in law sold to go buy our own.

Everything was full steam ahead. We found out we were having a little boy, we already had his name picked out, Teddy Jackman. Everything was on track and running perfect, it was all becoming so real. 

I had just got back to my work depot after being out in the field for the day, it would of been around 1pm and my phone rang. As I picked it up I thought ‘this is a weird time for Shanny to be calling’, I answered it and I instantly heard the most heart breaking cry followed by ‘he is gone, he is gone, Teddy’s gone’. Shanny had gone in for a scan at her work on her lunch break to see our little boy but the scan showed no heart beat.

I knew what I had heard but it didn’t make sense, we had just had a scan the week before and everything was perfect. It was such a surreal moment, the feeling of hearing that felt like I was in a nightmare but I was well aware I was awake. I rushed back inside where my brother was in his office and in a state of shock told him we have lost Teddy. I grabbed the Ute keys and tried to hold my shit together to make it home to meet Shanny for when one of the ladies from her work dropped her off. The next couple of days were an absolute blur of the gnarliest lows we have ever felt. Besides the fact that we had just lost our son, I had a million thoughts going through my head one of the main ones was is this gonna ruin us, how the fuck do we deal with this?

We had a few appointments and meetings with Shannys GP and doctors at the hospital and that’s when we got the news that Teddy was far enough along that we had to be admitted and she had to go through a full birth with him. I remembered years ago I read a article in a magazine about an AFL player and his wife that had gone through what we were about to and I remember thinking how the hell does someone deal with something like that. Fuck I was about to find out. We had a full day in the hostpital getting everything sorted and the nurses had all their prep work with Shanny to do. I felt like a shell of a human just sitting there trying to comprehend what had happened over the last 72 odd hours and wondering how we where gonna handle the events that where about to get handed to us that night. I still can’t imagine that if I felt the way I did how did Shanny feel, how the fuck does a mother deal with this. As the medication kicked in and the labour started I knew I needed to be strong for her, I knew I needed to keep my shit together. To be honest I have never been so scared in my life. In between the midwife and nurses coming in we were talking about how scared we were and how this was the most intense feeling of sickening sadness and disbelief we had ever felt. It’s hard to even explain how fucked the feeling was knowing that your son is about to be born but he isn’t alive. As the contractions started getting closer, everything started happening real fast and just before our little Teddy was born the most crazy sense of calmness and peace came over both of us. All the anxious sickening sadness just lifted. We got to spend the night with him in the room with us in a special cold cot. There is no doubt in my mind that the feeling that came over the whole room that night was our son’s spirit leaving his tiny little body and protecting us from what we had just been through. We are so grateful that we got that night, it gave us so much peace… I got to meet my son. I know that he has never left me from that day. It helps me deal with it still to this day that I’ll see him in different little things each day. There are days and nights where I’m not good, the days I can deal with I can keep my mind busy at work but the nights get me, I try to not let it affect the way I am with Shanny and the kids but some nights just get too much and I shut off. On those nights I talk to him in my head, I know I’ll never hear his voice talking back but I do feel him around me. There are mornings where I’ll get up for work still in the dark, I’ll get ready kiss Shanny good bye, get in my car and get 100m down the street and it hits me like a tonne of bricks and I cry like you wouldn’t believe. It is something that we will never get over it doesn’t get easier, it hurts the same now as it did the day it happened you just learn to deal with the pain and accept that there are going to be days and nights where it gets too much for you. Throughout the whole nightmare we went through we made a promise to each other that we wouldn’t let this break us and we would always talk about Teddy. We didn’t want it to be a secret and if what we went through could ever help anyone else get through their battles we would want to be able to be that help. It’s taken me over two years of wanting to write this to actually get it done, way back when I first started and told my story on holdfast I know how many people that helped and how many conversations that started. I hope this can do the same.