All my children were born not breathing, and 2 didn't survive birth. I buried myself in work to avoid my grief and it backfired.

• Mark Hopkins lost two babies, both late in the third trimester.
• As a man, he didn't know how to deal with grief or get support, so he buried himself in his career.
• He wants to help other men who lose children to cope with their loss by talking about it.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mark Hopkins. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Both times I lost a child, both stillborn, I went back to work after 10 days. As a father of one and Director of Strategy at a major overseas insurance firm, I had plenty of places to hide from my grief. Eventually, it caught up with me.  

Our first child wasn't breathing when he was born

"Let's get married and have a christening at the same time!" my fiancee said. That's how we decided to have our first baby, getting pregnant easily enough and planning the celebrations. But Seth, a large baby, was born blue with the cord wrapped around his neck during a home birth in London that went wrong.

The midwife and paramedics managed to resuscitate him, but we were told the only sense he would have would be hearing. Maybe they were wrong, or maybe Seth's devoted mother, used every kind of developmental technique she could find, meant that, by age 2, Seth was hitting every milestone.

It had been hard, but there was no reason to think it would happen again, we thought. So we started trying for a brother or sister for Seth.

We had to make a terrible choice with our second baby

By the time he was 3, we were living in Vietnam because of my job, and on our way to having the family we'd planned. Until, at 34 weeks, we were told our unborn baby boy wouldn't survive outside the womb. They gave us two choices: put him to sleep in utero or give birth to him and watch him die. We couldn't bear for him to suffer, unprepared for the terrifying size of the needle that would end his life or that Toby would look just like Seth as a baby.

Despite the shock and pain, we decided to give Toby's body to medical science to salvage something from his life and maybe stop it from happening to another family. After the birth, we spent two hours holding him, saying goodbye. When the nurse came to take him away, she brought a polystyrene DHL box to put him in. I lost it, grabbed the box, and smashed it to pieces outside. The anger, just like the loss, and, later, guilt, were feelings I failed to process or even acknowledge for years.

I went straight back to work, just like I would do two years later when my unborn daughter Miah died from the same genetic condition as Toby. The doctors told us at 28 weeks, with me dialing into the appointment by phone from abroad. I was on the next flight and, just as quickly, my wife was induced, and our third child died during the labor. This time we were spared the choice because she was too premature to survive the birth. I buried myself in work again, getting promoted to a Director of Operations role. 

I buried my guilt with career and travel

My job and success were a distraction but also fed into the guilt. When 5-year-old Seth would ask where was the brother or sister he'd been expecting, I'd remember how much fun I'd had with my sister growing up, and he never would. If I hadn't swept us off to Vietnam, maybe the London doctors would have saved Toby and Miah like they did Seth. I didn't understand that the guilt was grief but I piled more and more of it on.

My wife dealt with her grief by isolating herself, moving back to her home in South Africa to nest with Seth, and then seeking therapy. Because she had physically been pregnant and given birth to three babies who weren't breathing, she had to face it in a way that I didn't. Even when I quit my job to join her in South Africa a month later to be more supportive, my instincts were to take us all off traveling around the country to stay busy and distracted. 

I dealt with pain in ways that weren't helpful, and my friends didn't know how to support me

My friendships suffered because we couldn't even have normal conversations. I was used to friends coming to me with problems and loved solving them. But, after Toby and Miah died, they'd get three-quarters of the way through their problem and suddenly apologize. They couldn't talk about their problems because they were too small, or mine because they were too big and unsolvable.

You can't fix grief, and my male friends didn't know what to say without practical steps to take. They'd take me out and get me drunk instead, all of us pretending there was anything to forget. 

I put a lot of my grief on Seth's 5-year-old shoulders, overparenting him, suffocating him with hugs, and even having him sleep in my bed. I was using him as a crutch because I didn't know I needed to talk to someone, let alone how to talk about it. I didn't realize what I was doing until, when he was 6, I overheard him say, "I feel so safe when I sleep in Daddy's bed." He was picking up my need to feel safe with him in my bed. I immediately got an actual therapist instead of my son.

It took four years of therapy, and the breakdown of my marriage, to come to terms with the loss of my children. I remember the surreal moment the guilt left my body as I was standing on a bridge on a holiday to Spain, watching the flow of the river. I felt as if Toby and Miah gave me a good talking, telling me it wasn't my fault.

If I could do it differently, I'd give myself space and time to heal

If I could do it all differently, I'd take time off work instead of using it as a distraction. And I'd talk and talk and talk and get emotional support and relationship counseling sooner. As a society, we're not looking out for the non-birthing partner, especially if that's a man following birth trauma, miscarriage, or stillbirth. And, as men, we're not listening out for our own needs either.

Today, I run coaching programs for high-achieving parents who suddenly find parenting even more challenging than their careers. My dream is to work with dads who have lost children, taking them out hiking in nature and asking questions. I wouldn't try to fix their grief, but I'd listen to them talking about it because that's what I needed, even if I didn't know it.