Amber Lawrence: Multiple-time Golden Guitar winner shares private pain
Amber Lawrence keeps her baby son’s ashes on the mantelpiece at her Sydney home. The country music superstar has spoken of the gut-wrenching pain of having a stillborn baby in the hope of helping others.
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Country singer Amber Lawrence and her husband Martin Newman keep their baby son’s ashes on the mantelpiece at their Sydney home.
A small white urn has Colin Hay lyrics engraved on the side: “Waiting for my real life to begin.”
The couple are still grieving the loss of Edward, who was stillborn halfway through Lawrence’s pregnancy last month, and have shared their story in the hope it will help others.
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“Giving birth and leaving the baby there is the most horrific thing,” four-time Golden Guitar winner Lawrence told The Daily Telegraph.
“Walking out of the hospital while your baby is still there not breathing was so hard. We honoured him and cremated him and had a farewell ceremony. We gave him his time but it was a horrific experience.”
Lawrence and Newman are already parents to two-year-old son Ike, their “shining light” through the trauma.
The couple had been trying for a second child for some time and suffered a miscarriage within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy last year.
“This time the 12-week scan was good and we had told our immediate family as it was looking really positive,” Lawrence, 42, said.
“One of the most alarming things is that most of the messaging around pregnancy is after 12 weeks you would be fine, so we just had no idea that towards 20 weeks that it wasn’t going to be fine. That is what happened to us.”
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare states the rate of stillbirth in Australia has remained relatively stable since 1998 at about seven per 1000 live births.
The couple found out Lawrence was pregnant as coronavirus lockdown restrictions were put in place this year.
They opted not to tell anyone, with the exception of immediate family, as they had hoped to surprise everyone with a healthy baby boy.
An emotional post on social media, with Lawrence and Newman cradling their stillborn son, let friends and fans know of the couple’s loss.
The parents will never know why their son did not survive, only that his heart did not form properly.
“It was too big a grief and too big an impact on our lives to not mention it and talk about it,” Lawrence said.
“I sing mostly happy songs so it was going to be really hard to get back ... out there with this happy face and pretend nothing had happened.
“While I will be singing all my songs again, I couldn’t do it without saying this is now part of who I am.”
Lawrence, who will perform at The Daily Telegraph Bush Summit in Cooma on August 28, said the couple still hoped for another child.
“But we also know that we are so lucky to have Ike and can’t imagine what people who experience this must go through when they don’t have a child yet,” she said.