I can’t even see calling the issue a “funeral.” Can you imagine bringing home the body for everyone to hold if the human was any older, either?
Sure, grieve how you want, even if it’s grieving a child who would never come to be. You want a funeral for the potential person? Fine with me. But when you start fetishizing a dead fetus, in a way you never would someone older, I can’t help but think there’s something wrong with you.
The answer to both is yes.
I should add that it was a VERY unplanned 4th child (father not in the picture, among other things) but she did want it from the beginning, and when she started having cramps and bleeding, she was admitted to the hospital. After a few days, she started to run a fever, and an ultrasound revealed that he had died in her womb, so they let nature take its course.
She is DEVASTATED. She has actually threatened suicide on Facebook and I think she’s been admitted to the local psychiatric unit at least once. Her father died (from natural causes) when she was a child, and I, among others, told her that she knows what it’s like to lose a parent too soon, and her kids wouldn’t want her to do that, and the baby wouldn’t want her to do that either.
She also asked about support groups, since she didn’t personally know anyone who had experienced anything like this, so I gave her a referral to Compassionate Friends, an organization for people who have experienced the death of a child or other descendant, and they do have a division for pregnancy loss.
Tonight I attended the first birthday celebration for a stillborn baby. This was the fourth pregnancy for a friend and her longest pregnancy. It was tough for her, but she wanted the celebration, and if she could get through it, the least I could do was attend for her.
As always funerals are for the benefit of the living not the dead, if holding a funeral helps a grieving parent cope with things then I have no problem with it whether it is a still birth, miscarriage or whatever
This is so sad. You’re a good friend for supporting her.
Poor woman. 
Compassionate Friends and a grief counselor helped a former coworker of mine who had a series of miscarriages then an ectopic pregnancy before her doctor told her to not even think of trying to concieve again. She wanted children more than anything and she was just gutted.
A niece had a stillbirth at around 7 months after a very difficult pregnancy and they did have a small funeral, burial, and gravestone. No one was anything but sympathetic.
I don’t think there’s an appropriate age before which a funeral is inappropriate - it really depends upon the parents. However, if I were asked to attend a funeral for a fetus that was six weeks along I’d raise an eyebrow.
Still, some women have a lot of trouble getting pregnant and/or consider babies a gift from god. Having some experience with that (ectopic pregnancy in 2011), I can understand the grief of having that snatched away. I still think about that baby every January 28 even though it never had a chance and wasn’t actually a baby yet, and more a bundle of cells. But I would never, ever, ever think of taking it home to my family, whether it was 6 weeks old or 1 year old.
My parents had two stillborn babies. They held funerals for both.
I don’t think there’s an appropriate cut-off. People should do what they feel is best.
You raised the question, but I don’t see where you offered your opinion. What do you think? Is there too young an age? And if you think so, do you let the parents know that they’ve committed some sort of faux pas?
I also gave a CP referral to a woman at my old church whose planned pregnancy was molar, meaning that she had a defective placenta and no fetus. It does produce pregnancy hormones and symptoms, and must be terminated because obviously, there’s no baby, and a small but significant percentage of these are cancerous. Hers wasn’t, but she had to have her HCG levels monitored for about a year, and was told not to conceive during that time.
She had also mentioned on Facebook that she didn’t know anyone else to whom anything like this had happened. She couldn’t figure out why she was grieving a baby that wasn’t a baby, and other people told her that it was probably the hormones doing it to her.
Funerals are for the grieving. You go to support them so whatever the parents need is ok.
My sister’s fourth child was full-term stillborn. Yes, they had a funeral and a graveside service. When my sister died 50 years later, my brother-in-law had the infant re-interred at my sister’s grave. As far as he and my sister were concerned, that stillborn child is as much their child as the other three.
I probably had an early miscarriage. I never bothered to get a pregnancy test, and while I was a little disappointed not to have made a baby, I certainly didn’t mourn. On the other hand, I’ve held funerals for cats. We all said goodbye and shoveled a little dirt onto the grave. So I’m not going to mock anyone who wants to hold a funeral for a stillborn baby, and certainly not for a baby who was born alive.
Everyone has different emotional reactions and needs, and if a funeral helps you grieve your loss, I support your funeral.
About 16 years ago my wife had preemie twins at 23 weeks. Both about a pound and a half each. They never left the NICU. One died at 11 days and the other 12.
We had a funeral for them that was open casket. They wore some baby doll dresses. Then cremated and buried at the cemetery.
Funerals are not for the dead, but for the living. It is not my place to say that anyone expressing grief is doing it wrong. Would I hold a funeral for a miscarriage? I honestly don’t know, and hope I never find out. Would I ever criticize anyone else for doing so? Absolutely 100% not.