An Australian mother thought a zombie-themed photoshoot for her son’s first birthday would be a cute idea, since he almost died at birth. But she faced a backlash on Facebook and was even kicked out of groups thanks to the photos of her “zombie baby.”
In October 2015, Amy Louise needed an emergency c-section 36 weeks into her pregnancy because she was experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum.
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“I don’t even have the words to explain what it feels like, but the nausea was so violently overwhelming, I couldn’t move, you couldn’t even open my eyes,” Louise told CafeMom. “Lifting my arms was a struggle, my throat was torn and my gums were so weak I could suck mouthfuls of blood out of them with ease.”
After the c-section, which took place on Halloween, she heard doctors say they could not hear her son Phoenix’s heartbeat. Doctors thought he was dead for 13 minutes, but he miraculously came back to life.
“There was so much going on I barely heard it, but from over near my son, a nurse cried out, ‘Thank you! He’s come back! He’s come back,’” she told Cafemom. “Did I just find out I’d lost my son but he came back? My little soldier, after 13 minutes of no heart beat, he was alive. My little baby had come back from the dead on Halloween.”
Four days after his birth, Louise finally got to hold Phoenix. She nicknamed him “zombie baby” and the name has stuck. She told CafeMom she had actually given Phoenix the nickname before his birth, since she was planning to use her makeup talent to have a baby pop out of her baby bump on Halloween. Then, that happened in real life.
On his first birthday, Louise decided to take pictures of Phoenix made up like a zombie. She even made a brain-shaped cake for him to eat in the adorable photos, which were taken by Amanda Queen Photography.
Louise told Kidspot.com.au that she was bombarded by negative comments on social media from other mothers.
“The comments were like, ‘That’s absolutely disgusting to put your baby in a theme like that,’ ‘What kind of a mother dresses their son as a dead baby’ and ‘This is so offensive to all the women who have lost their children.’ I was removed from mums groups on Facebook because of my ‘obscene and offensive’ pictures,” Louise said. “I was, in all honesty, slaughtered by these mothers – but they didn’t know our story. They didn’t even bother to learn it, and we didn’t care.”
Louise told CafeMom that she does not care what other people have to say about the photos. After all, the critics did not know the whole story.
“They didn’t know our story,” she said. “They didn’t even bother to learn, and we didn’t care.”
Photo credit: Amanda Queen Photography
