Before Keilah was born, we had already loved a child we called Kairo. He was our son, and we had imagined the life that would unfold around him. Sher was about four months pregnant when the pregnancy ended. His absence belongs in our story because he was part of the family we intended to raise together.

Our early prenatal care had been with a private doctor in Montego Bay. We remember the examinations, the baby’s sex and the expectation of seeing him grow. Sher’s mother encouraged us to change care to a medical centre in Westmoreland. After beginning treatment there and attending a later appointment, Sher was told that the baby had died and arrangements would be made to remove him. The shock arrived with the full force of losing a son whose name we already knew.

In the years that followed, we came to mistrust the circumstances surrounding the change of care, the prescribed medication and the relationships involved. We have serious questions about how Kairo died and the influences that surrounded his mother’s treatment. We carry that history as parents. It became part of why we insisted on protecting Sher’s later pregnancy and why the safety of our marriage and children became inseparable from our plans for the future.

I remember Kairo when we design Tideechi. Sher considers the way a mother moves while labouring, how a husband can support her, how the midwife has equipment within reach, how the family remains close and how help can arrive quickly when the birth requires it. The room bodies, the care team, DeMassa emergency support and the family accommodation are authored around the mother and baby as living people. Our desire for excellent maternity care has joy in it too: we love babies, births, fathers seeing children arrive, mothers being comfortable and families welcoming another life.

Kairo never had to grow old for his life to matter. He became part of our responsibility to make childbirth and childhood better for families who will never know his name.