I’m Carly Dudley and I’m a mother of four. 

When I think of my childhood, I do think of times at Trigg Beach in the ocean. Probably around the age of nine or ten, you know, before high school started, and when I think of those times, I don’t remember the winters. I remember the summers. Rottnest Island, and holidays by the sea, and Dunsborough, and that time brings me a lot of joy when I think back to it. 

We were young, we fell pregnant before we were married. Our first daughter Scarlett, she was a surprise. I mean, I felt like a very young 24 year old. I probably felt like 19 years old. And so, the thought of being a mother was very daunting to me. Just even the physical changes that I was going through my pregnancy, I just couldn’t really look forward to anything. I found the whole thing very frightening.  

So, we fell pregnant six months later. At that time, we were like, oh, my goodness, how can we have another baby now, and that wasn’t until we were told that we were losing the baby that we really, really wanted it. Just after halfway through the pregnancy, we were just at a scheduled appointment. And she gave me an ultrasound, and thought something didn’t look quite right. And we were referred on to a fetal medicine specialist, who diagnosed our son with a condition called hydrocephalus and it wasn’t compatible with life.  

So, we were given the option to, they call it interrupting the pregnancy, which is basically inducing labour. Or we could go home and kind of wait it out. I remember, it was 11 o’clock on I pretty sure it was the 25th of January. It was the 24th, the 24th of January at 11 o’clock. I was standing in my bathroom, and I was brushing my hair and I felt him move. And it was such a surreal moment because I was looking at myself as I was brushing my hair and I felt him move and I just knew that that would be his last movement. I don’t know why, I just knew and I told my husband I said ‘I just felt him move,’ and it’d been a day, and I said ‘I don’t think he’s going to move again. I have this feeling that that was his last movement.’  

And it was. It was the last time I felt him move.  

So, we went into the hospital the next morning, the 25th, and we were induced and he was born, on Australia Day at two o’clock in the morning.  

It was a 42 degree day. I remember that because I remember leaving the hospital. It was so hot, and overwhelming. But he was, you know, if I didn’t see the back of his head, I would have thought he was a perfectly healthy baby. He was pink. He had a button nose. He had hair he had strong shoulders like his dad. He just wasn’t breathing. And it just felt so unreal and unbelievable that I just couldn’t believe he was alive. You know, I couldn’t believe this was happening to us. And screaming, I remember screaming my lungs out, I was so devastated. And my husband was silent. You know, he was very … He just held me, and held us, and it was just … I can’t decipher, can’t put that kind of experience into words. It’s more of a feeling, I guess. So, it’s very difficult to describe how I felt. But we were able to spend around ten hours with him, and it was a beautiful quiet ten hours. The midwives and the staff at King Edward Memorial Hospital were so respectful, and they gave us that time, they didn’t rush us, and they knew how sacred that time was it was the only time we were going to have with him. 

But he did change. There was a time where, because when babies aren’t alive, their bodies deteriorate very quickly. And so thankfully, you know when I still think of him, I see his beautiful pink body. I don’t see how we left him which was grey, you know, all the colour had gone. And I remember at one point it was probably a few hours before we gave him to the midwife the last time, that I said to my husband, ‘We can’t hold on to him for too much longer. Otherwise, this is how we’re going to remember him.’ And that’s a really horrible kind of vision to have of your child.  

So, we made the decision to give him back to the midwife around ten hours after he was born and she was so beautiful. She took him from us and she wrapped him in a blanket, and she put him on her chest and she walked out of the room holding him like this. So that’s the last time we saw him. So, I’m forever grateful for her because then it was Carol. And she cried with us, you know she he felt all of that with us and she didn’t even know who we were, you know, she didn’t know who he was. She never carried him. But she was the person that cared for us in the most devastating time of our lives. And she was just an angel to us really.  

It was 18 months after Christian had died, it was probably almost one of the lowest points I was at because I had shut myself off from my world. This wasn’t really grief anymore. This is depression. And I went to bed and I had this dream that I was walking along, it was actually Burns Beach, I could see where I used to go. And up ahead of me were these three very young children and they were by themselves and they were playing on the beach. And I felt really concerned because I thought, where their parents? This is not this is not right. And I kind of hurried towards them and they saw me coming, and I could see that they were had these big sticks and they were drawing pictures in the sand. They spotted me and when they saw me, they laughed and they were giggling and they ran off and they ran off into the sand dunes. And I couldn’t get to them quick enough, but I got to where they were drawing and I realised that they weren’t drawing, they weren’t drawing pictures, they had written their names in the sand. And one of the names was Christian.  

And so, I kind of felt like I’d had this vision of him as this beautiful little boy who was healthy and whole and happy and with friends. He was not alone. And so, I woke up from that dream feeling, I guess, revived almost, because my life had come to a halt at least. I felt my blood running through my body again, and I wanted to get out of bed and I wanted to go outside, and so I left for the beach and it was in the middle of winter. And so, it was cold and windy, but there was the most magnificent sunset and I’d forgotten what a sunset looked like. I hadn’t seen one in so long and it was these beautiful peaches and pinks and blues. And I wrote Christian’s name in the sand, and I took a photo of it with the water and the sun in the background. And I looked at the photo on my little point and shoot camera at that time. And I thought ‘Oh, that looks beautiful. Like, maybe I could do this for families in Perth who have experienced a loss like mine.’ 

Initially, I wanted to just help people in Perth, but this kind of reached out internationally. And I had asked people to send in messages for their babies and I’d put the photograph up on the website and they would leave like a kind of like a tribute to their child. And so now that was in 2008 and we’ve written over 24,000 names since then. For people all over the world. 

I think there is something magical about the sun setting. I think it’s very fitting that I write the name and the wave takes the name out very, very quickly. So, it symbolises that short life. And I just think water, like the water is healing for people. A lot of the requests that I receive are from people who have never visited a beach before. And I think because someone on the other side of the world cares enough to do this for a stranger, I think that is what speaks to people. And not only that, I think because the beach is sacred now, it’s had over 24,000 names written there. And the sea whole holds all those names, and so I think people get a lot of comfort out of that.