Rob Delaney has confirmed his wife gave birth to their fourth child in August, just months after the death of their son Henry.
The 41-year-old American actor and comedian told the Sunday Times Magazine that his wife Leah fell pregnant before Henry died in January and their son was the first person they told.
Delaney, who stars in ‘Catastrophe’, announced the death of his two-year-old son on Twitter in February and confirmed Leah was pregnant again in June.
He said in the interview: “Having another child in no way, shape or form eases the grief of Henry dying,” adding, “But also having Henry dying doesn’t make our new son any less magical.”
Delaney said that he was touched by the fact his new son grew in the same womb as Henry and that he deserved their full attention and love despite the circumstances of his arrival.
“It’s sort of like they touch each other a little bit, but they almost exist in separate lanes,” he said.
Discussing whether the decision to have another child was conflicted, he told the magazine: “We likely would’ve had a fourth anyway. But I mean, there’s mixed feelings.”
The father also said he is working hard to battle paranoia about his children’s health and said he feels as if he is suffering with PTSD.
″[I am] terrified of anyone vomiting. If anyone vomits, I think, ‘Oh, that must be a brain tumour,’ and I have to calm down.”
The first time Delaney and his wife noticed their son was ill was when he vomited at his older brother’s 5th birthday party.
Delaney compared the grief he feels over the loss of his child to his previous battle with alcoholism.
He says: “For me, getting sober some years ago, and then dealing with depression after being sober for a while, those were kicking around the football on a dusty pitch that was the warm-up for the f****** world cup of losing a child.
“So I am grateful that I had been tenderised and slapped around by some other things, yes. Because I’m barely surviving this, and I think those things might be making the difference. So thank goodness they happened.”
On 26 December he reflected on his first Christmas without Henry on Twitter.
He explained why he chose to talk to publicly about the occasion: “I speak publicly about Henry in an effort to destigmatise grief. My family is sad and in pain because our beautiful 2 yr old boy died after a long illness. Why wouldn’t we be sad? Why wouldn’t we be angry and confused?”
In September, eight months after the death of his son, Delaney penned an essay about his son’s brain tumour. He explained he had started writing the post as a book for parents of sick children, but decided to stop writing when he saw his son’s last bad MRI scan.
He wrote. “I would try not to cry in front of his older brothers and fail and they’d ask why, and I would say it was because I was scared.”
The post ended quite abruptly, where Delaney explained he stopped writing so he could focus on spending as much time as possible in the last few months with his son.