Mom whose baby died at Pretoria creche: "I didn’t even kiss her goodbye”
Chrisma Loudene Hüygen shares the pain of losing her seven-month-old
baby, who died at a Pretoria creche.
Nothing ever prepares a parent to deal with the loss of a child, especially a child who is not even a year old.
Chrisma’s seven-month-old daughter Karliene was found lifeless in her crib at a crèche in Pretoria and was later declared dead in hospital on Monday 10 February.
It is not clear what led to her death. Chrisma and her husband Hendrik say they have been told that the post-mortem results will take at least three months.
The mother says she and her husband miss their daughter terribly and the pain is so severe.
"I’m taking it moment by moment, not even day by day,” says Chrisma.
“We have to manage, there is no two ways about it, but it’s not easy. You will never get over it. You are going to learn to live with it,” says the heartbroken mom.
She says Karliene was such a happy child.
“She was a chatterbox. She was always making noise and chatting. That’s what I miss and that’s why I am saying the silence is getting noisy now, because now all that is gone.
“She was an absolutely friendly baby. She was always a happy child,” says Chrisma.
One other thing that Chrisma says she misses about her daughter is her beautiful eyes.
“She had exceptional eyes. It was these big blue glassy eyes, and when I was in places, people would stop us to actually just have a look at her eyes.
“So that is what I miss. Those eyes looking at me, the laughs and the cuddles and so forth, it is everything,” says the mom.
She adds that her husband Hendrik is not coping well.
“He is taking it very hard, I have to say. He still wants answers and still cries a lot. He is still mad and so forth and he can’t understand,” says the mom.
“The thing that gets to him is that she wasn’t sick. She wasn’t a sick child at all. So it was very sudden. No one saw it coming,” she adds.
She says what has been helping her to deal better with the pain is that her daughter is in heaven.
“I’m more at peace because I know she is in a better place and she is not worse of than she was on earth,” says Chrisma.
But Chrisma says the death of her child has made her realise the importance of prioritising relationships and ensuring we spend time with our loved ones.
“The message that I want to get out about all this is time. We are always doing things quickly. We always rush to get things done quickly. That Monday morning, that is how my world actually stopped and changed. That Monday morning I was in such a rush to miss the Monday morning traffic that I got her dressed quickly. I dropped her off at school quickly. I was in such a rush that I didn’t even kiss and hug and say “I love you” because I just didn’t want to get into traffic that morning,“ says the emotional mom.
“Ever since she passed away, I just thought and I realised what are we doing with our time? Even the times when she was alive, you start to realise there were so many moments where you were busy on your phone scrolling through media crap, spending time in front of the television, where you could have cuddled or played or something like that,” she says.
“Time is very precious and you don’t realise it completely until something like this happens to you. So that is the message that I’m also trying to share,” concludes the mom.