Liverpool striker Cody Gakpo and his girlfriend Noa van der Bij have announced the loss of their unborn son, whom they had named Elijah Raphael Gakpo. The couple, who had joyfully revealed they were expecting their second child together on May 30, 2026, tragically lost their baby before birth. While Gakpo remained with the Dutch national team during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, van der Bij shared the devastating news through an emotional Instagram post, opening their private grief to their extended community of supporters and followers.
The loss marks a profound moment for the family, who are already parents to their son Samuel Seth, born in 2018. In the immediate aftermath of learning about their son’s death, the family turned to their Christian faith for comfort, visiting a church to light a candle as a way to honor Elijah Raphael’s brief existence. They later took Samuel to a nearby playground, finding solace in familiar routines and the presence of their living child.
Table of Contents
- How a Public Figure’s Grief Became a Shared Family Journey
- The Reality of Pregnancy Loss and the Importance of Acknowledging Grief
- Faith, Ritual, and Finding Meaning in Loss
- Communicating About Loss With Children in Your Care
- The Emotional Toll of Public Grief and Privacy Boundaries
- Supporting Bereaved Families in Your Community
- The Ongoing Reality of Grief Alongside Daily Life
How a Public Figure’s Grief Became a Shared Family Journey
When Noa van der Bij chose to announce the loss publicly rather than keeping it private, she made a decision that countless families face when experiencing pregnancy loss—how much to share, with whom, and through which channels. Her decision to use Instagram, a platform where she had previously shared their joy about the pregnancy announcement, transformed a deeply personal tragedy into a moment of public mourning. This choice to speak openly about Elijah Raphael’s death reflects a broader cultural shift toward discussing pregnancy loss and infant death more openly, rather than suffering in silence.
For families who experience similar losses, the question of how to communicate with extended family, friends, and the wider community can feel overwhelming. Some parents choose private grief, while others find that sharing helps them process the loss and allows their community to provide genuine support. Van der Bij’s decision to announce publicly while Gakpo was away at the World Cup meant she carried the weight of that first announcement alone—a reality that many bereaved mothers face when their partner is unavailable due to work, travel, or other obligations. This geographic separation, while temporary, added another layer of challenge to an already heartbreaking situation.
The Reality of Pregnancy Loss and the Importance of Acknowledging Grief
Pregnancy loss is far more common than many people realize, affecting somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of known pregnancies, depending on age and other factors. Yet despite this prevalence, many families report feeling isolated after experiencing miscarriage or stillbirth, as if they are the only ones facing this particular tragedy. When someone like Cody Gakpo’s family speaks openly about their loss, it serves an important function: it normalizes grief and reminds other families that they are not alone in their devastation. One crucial limitation of public announcements about pregnancy loss is that they cannot capture the full depth of individual family experiences.
Some families experience their loss early in pregnancy; others, much later. Some losses are expected after medical complications; others come as shocking surprises. Elijah Raphael’s parents will navigate their grief in ways unique to their circumstances, their faith, and their family structure. What they share publicly—the Instagram announcement, the church visit, the trip to the playground with their older son—represents only the moments they chose to make visible. Their full experience of grief, processing, and healing will unfold largely behind closed doors.
Faith, Ritual, and Finding Meaning in Loss
The family’s response to their loss reveals how deeply their Christian faith informs their approach to grief. By visiting a church to light a candle for Elijah Raphael, they engaged in a ritual that honors the brief existence of their son and acknowledges their spiritual beliefs about death and the afterlife. For many families, these kinds of rituals—whether lighting candles, planting trees, creating memory boxes, or writing letters to their lost child—provide a tangible way to acknowledge the realness of their child and their love for him.
Taking their older son Samuel to a playground afterward served a different but equally important purpose: maintaining normalcy and presence for the child who remains. Parents grieving a pregnancy loss must hold two experiences simultaneously—their profound sadness about the child they will not know, and their continued responsibility to their living children. For Samuel Seth, now seven years old, understanding that his parents are grieving while also remaining his parents requires a delicate balance. The playground trip suggests that Gakpo’s family is attempting to hold both grief and continued life together, a task that many bereaved families describe as exhausting but necessary.
Communicating About Loss With Children in Your Care
For families who work in education, childcare, or who are parenting multiple children of different ages, the announcement of a pregnancy loss raises practical questions about how and what to communicate with the children in their care. Parents often worry about whether to tell young children about a miscarriage or stillbirth, fearing that they will cause unnecessary sadness or confusion. However, child development experts generally agree that age-appropriate honesty serves children better than silence or vague explanations.
When explaining pregnancy loss to a young child like Samuel Seth, parents might say something like: “We were going to have another baby, but the baby died before he was born. His name was Elijah Raphael, and we loved him very much, even though we didn’t get to meet him. It’s okay to feel sad about this.” Young children often need reassurance that the loss was not their fault and that their parents’ grief does not mean they love the living child less. They also benefit from concrete actions—like the candle-lighting ritual the Gakpo family used—that give them a way to participate in honoring their lost sibling.
The Emotional Toll of Public Grief and Privacy Boundaries
One significant limitation of sharing grief publicly is that it opens a family’s most intimate pain to public commentary, speculation, and sometimes cruelty. While many people respond to such announcements with compassion and support, others may offer unsolicited advice, religious judgments, or questions that feel invasive. Bereaved parents often report that after publicly announcing their loss, they must expend emotional energy managing others’ responses to their grief rather than simply grieving themselves.
Additionally, the public nature of modern life means that Cody Gakpo and Noa van der Bij will forever have a digital record of this loss—their Instagram announcement, media coverage, and public discussion. Their son Elijah Raphael exists in the world’s collective memory only through this shared announcement. While this can be meaningful for some families, as it ensures their child is acknowledged and remembered, it also means their private grief has become part of a public narrative they cannot fully control. This is a unique challenge of celebrity and public life, one that extends even to deeply personal losses that families might prefer to process privately.
Supporting Bereaved Families in Your Community
When families experience pregnancy loss, practical support often matters more than elaborate words. Bereaved parents consistently report that what helped them most was when friends or community members brought meals, helped with childcare for living children, or simply sat with them in their sadness without trying to “fix” their grief or move them past it quickly.
For the Gakpo family, this support has come through their faith community and through the millions of people who have responded to their announcement with compassion. For anyone who knows someone experiencing pregnancy loss or infant death, showing up can look like offering specific help: “I’m bringing dinner on Tuesday” rather than “let me know if you need anything”; acknowledging the lost child by name if the parents have named them; and understanding that grief after pregnancy loss does not follow a linear timeline. Some days will be harder than others, and the arrival of difficult dates—the due date, the birthday of their lost child, the anniversary of the loss—will inevitably resurface acute sadness.
The Ongoing Reality of Grief Alongside Daily Life
Cody Gakpo faced the particular challenge of processing his family’s loss while playing in one of the world’s most high-pressure sporting events. He was separated from his partner and unable to be physically present in the immediate hours and days after learning of their son’s death. This separation illustrates a hard truth about grief: it does not pause for work obligations, professional commitments, or even extraordinary circumstances like a World Cup.
Parents must find ways to grieve while continuing to show up for their jobs, their other children, and their partners. The family’s deliberate choice to engage in rituals—the church visit, the playground trip—suggests they are not waiting for their grief to feel “acceptable” before returning to normal activities. Instead, they are weaving grief and normalcy together, honoring Elijah Raphael’s memory while also continuing to live with their son Samuel and manage the demands of their public lives. This is the actual work of bereaved families: not moving past the loss, but learning to carry it forward into whatever comes next.