What It's Like... To Be Widowed At 19-Weeks Pregnant: One Mum's Story

Sinéad Hingston is a widowed mother of one gorgeous little girl. Her husband died suddenly while they were on holidays in Portugal in 2011 – she was 19 weeks pregnant. They had been married just seven months.

Sinead has shared with us her incredibly brave story:

“So many people ask me this… “How do you do it, being a widow?” I guess at 30, married seven months, with a 19-week-old alien growing in my belly, the question would never have entered my head. I didn’t know any young widows. I had no experience of it or no book to read. It’s quite a hard thing to explain, to be honest. I hate the word widow for starters. People just think of black clothes (never liked black), take to the bed for a year (erm, I had a baby to feed), look sad all the time, (well there’s conflicting feedback on this!) sit by your spouse’s grave and cry (okay, fine I do that, but very, very rarely now). I am the exact contradiction of what the traditional widow is.

But being a young widow (or old one) can be exhausting. Instantly you start to consider everyone around you.

My biggest struggle is trying to consider everyone’s feelings, taking every possible outcome into consideration.

What will people think? How will they treat me? What are they saying behind my back? His family, my family? How do I keep everyone happy? Is this or that the right thing to do?! Sadly, it’s caused the breakdown of new relationships. I focus on doing the right thing by everyone else so much that I neglect to enjoy what’s right in front of my eyes. The judgement is real. You get into another relationship and all you hear is “it’s too soon,” “she’s not ready,” “she mustn’t have loved her husband very much.” If that relationship breaks down, for whatever reason, all you get is “it was too soon,” “she wasn’t ready,” “she obviously loved her husband so much she can’t move on.”

Why does anyone feel the need to comment on someone else’s life, or how they do things? I am fully capable of loving another human being with my whole heart. It may be the same feeling as I had before, it may not, but how is that different to any other relationship? I am the only one who knows (well maybe my counsellor too) if I am ‘ready.’

I have learned in the last few weeks that it’s time I stopped caring so much and start doing what I know is going to make me smile.

My next struggle, and it’s a massive one for me, is feeling like I can’t talk about my husband.

If I bring him up, people get all weird and awkward.

If I write a blog about him, it’s unfair to other people. I honestly don’t understand why.

When he was breathing, I talked about him all the time, now if I post a picture of him, it’s too upsetting for people?! (I do get that, but consider for a second having his mini-me, living and breathing and following you around all day? A pic doesn’t seem so bad now does it?!)

He was my husband. He is the father of my little girl.

I am literally incapable of pretending that he never existed, and it’s so tiring feeling like you can’t post a memory that once made you smile. People do it all the time on Facebook now, but I feel like I shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean I am dwelling, or not able to move on; it simply means he was a huge part of my life, as much as any possible husband will be in the future, and I’d like to be able to share a wonderful moment we had together without feeling conscious about it. Just like this one…

I have one, very delicious tiny human. She is the centre of my universe, and to be quite honest, my reason for doing everything I do. It was bloody hard at the beginning. Even being pregnant and not having him around towards the end when he should have been here rubbing my feet.

Delivering her without him was one of the worst experiences of my life when it should have been exciting.

I had never been a Mommy before and had zero intention of ever having to raise a child alone. I was absolutely petrified, but I have a serious support network around me, and with my mother, father, siblings, and incredible friends, we literally raised her together.

She is almost five and has turned out to be quite the perfect tiny human so far. Yes she’s a diva, yes she screams at me when things don’t go her way (I swear she doesn’t get that from me) but overall, I am so lucky that she is so placid, just like…. her father.

I have a new found dependance on people. It has made me realise that asking people for help isn’t as shameful as I once believed. I depend on my brothers to do some of the ‘man’ bits. I depend on my friends and cousins to hang out with me and ask me to do things, so I don’t feel so lonely all the time and to continue to keep me sane and glued together (and to listen to my worries and moans). I depend on my sister to get to Dublin from Belfast so Lily can hang out with her three cousins, and to come on holidays with me every year, so I don’t feel so alone. I depend on my Hockey girls, the ones who just accept me for who I am, and treat me no different to every other team mate; they make me feel ‘normal.’

And I depend on my mom. My incredible, wonderfully understanding, supportive mom. She has let me shout, cry, laugh inappropriately… without her, life would be a real struggle. All of these people together, make life bearable.

So how do I do it? I just do. I take each day as it comes.

I take pictures, lots and lots of pictures, so when I’m feeling sad I can look back on the days that made me smile! I am so lucky in so many ways. We (thanks, mom and dad) have a roof over our heads and food in our mouths, and I get to make amazing new memories with a very beautiful tiny person. No, life isn’t or will never be the same, it can’t be. Yes, there are days when I literally feel a pain in my chest because of the new life I’ve had to embrace. I hate what happened to us, but when I take a step back and think of how much worse things could have been, I feel…. content.

I’m still breathing and getting to enjoy (most of) my life, which is something a lot of people never get the chance to do.