Three Little Birds is the raw and inspiring personal account of what it’s like to experience the devastation of infant loss. Written at the time of her experience and after, the book is based on Liana Stemp, whose life through pregnancy, birth and babies has been anything but easy. Opening with telling the story of the past seven years, it includes what it’s like to experience difficult pregnancies, unimaginable miscarriages, and the hell of going through birth trauma, including the consequences thereafter, which ultimately led to PTSD and post-natal depression. We experience the pregnancy with Liana, which turns out to be a nine-month emotional rollercoaster, from experiencing sudden prenatal epilepsy which results in a car crash with her daughter, to find out her unborn child had CDH, a serious health complication. Not only this but also the back and forth as to whether the pregnancy could continue as the baby continued to grow. The relief that it could continue, only then to discover the extent of baby Brandon’s condition and the subsequent ups and downs of the neonatal intensive care unit. Finally, this ends in the shattering experience of watching your baby slip away. We then glimpse the ‘after’ – brutally honest, it’s an eye-opening look into the world of grief and how others’ kindness can be beautiful and difficult at the same time. All in all, the book covers a lot of subjects surrounding pregnancy, miscarriage, birth trauma, baby loss and a year in the life of a mother living with grief, with the spiral of Covid-19 happening to fall amidst it all. Three Little Birds is ultimately an inspirational, yet a harrowing journey through infant loss and beyond.
