Her son died after one day, but her love is for life

The death of a baby is treated far differently now than in times past when mums were often kept away from the burial, says Helen O’Callaghan

BRIAN and Mary Sexton’s seventh child, also Brian, was born and died on the same day — March 6, 2010. “He was born prematurely, at eight months. Within an hour, he died. My waters broke the day previous. I was in hospital all that day. The doctors had picked up, at that stage, that he could live a few months or he could die within a month. They said to make the most of the minutes, the hours, the days — what we got,” says Mary, from West Cork.

“He was tiny — I couldn’t get over that a baby could be so small. All my others were fine, big children. He didn’t cry. He was just limp. You’d lift his hand and it would fall down. Brian and I both held him, back and forth between us. It was devastating — we knew what was ahead of us.