Oct 15 - Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I recently posted here about my pregnancy and subsequent loss at 8 weeks. Since it’s happened, many women have been sharing their stories with me and I was stunned to see just how common it is. It’s this secret club that nobody learns about until they find themselves a new member.

Since October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I thought I should open up a thread for anyone who would like to share a story and find some support.

I’ve written a long piece for my blog (some of it grew out of my posts here), but I don’t have the strength to “come out” that publicly yet. I think I may share it here, as long as I’m not the only one with anything to say in this thread. I don’t want to come off as a whiny attention-seeker… I just want to share, if anyone else would like to join me.

2

I personally haven’t lost any pregnancies, but:

My grandmother lost her eldest daughter at age 3, to a “flu” which turned out to be pneumonia. Two years later, her second daughter got the exact same symptoms: the doctors handwaved it away, but she did not stop looking for second, third, ninth opinions until she found one who did not. My future mother spent some time in an oxygen tent (in post-war Spain, with a war waging next door, that can’t have been easy to obtain) set over her parents’ bed. The doctor was in ill health as a consequence of a childhood illness himself, which is why he’d gone into pediatrics. He could not make any strenous efforts, and while the house had a lift it was disabled (postwar restrictions): my grandfather, a tall, wiry-strong guy, would bring this thankfully-small man up five flights of stairs in his arms :eek:

My mother was sterile, or so the best obgyns said. She lost several pregnancies before I, the “miracle single child”, was born; at least two more between me and Middlebro. Several of my classmates had gone through similar things by the time I was told I’d be getting a little sibling, so my reaction to the news was “when?” “ok then” and that was it, as far as my parents could tell. I simply refused to get excited until I had that promised little sibling in my arms, period.

When he was 3, we were driving back from picking up our Christmas presents and I thought it was strange that he was slumped and silent, rather than bubbly and excited like he’d been in the morning. Littlebro wasn’t there: he was only 14 months old (15 minus 1 day exactly), so we’d left him with friends for the day. I touched Middlebro’s brow and said, as calmly as I could, “I don’t want anybody to get nervous but Dad, stop as soon as you can and we may have to turn around; Mom, Middlebro is BURNING.” We did indeed drive back; when we got to the ER, someone recognized us and said to call BestPediatricianInTown. Someone said “but he’s not on duty, it’s…” “it’s Don Julio’s nephew! You want to explain to Don Julio why we let the duty roster get in the way of getting the best?” Middlebro got the best, family having its privileges. Uncle Julio (a GP who was a surgeon in the war before getting back the grades from his first year in medical school) has been dead for more than 25 years, but he’s still a local legend both for his ability for diagnosis and for having a nuclear-grade temper; Middlebro is The Nephews’ Proud Daddy. The diagnosis? Pneumonia.

My father’s sister lost several pregnancies. All the pregnancies she lost and which were old enough to identify sex were girls. This includes one dead at birth and one which died just before birth (and those beastly doctors made her give birth! :smack: :smack: :smack:). She has three sons.

3

My maternal grandmother had multiple miscarriages and two stillbirths. The stories just break my heart.

Her pregnancy was healthy and happy, and she was due to deliver in mid-winter. She and Grandpa were farmers - dirt poor, hard working, and proud to contribute to their community. There was blizzard, and the cows had to be brought into the barn, or they’d freeze. There was no one else to do the work - just Grandpa and Grandma.

While Grandma was bringing a cow in, she tripped and landed on her stomach. A few days later, she delivered a stillborn son. His back had been broken when she fell. Grandma and Grandpa named their little boy for his father, and he was buried in the church cemetary. The second stillbirth, another boy, happened between Grandma’s third and fourth living child. I don’t know what went wrong, if there was anything they could point to. I have no doubt it was just as heartbreaking as the first.

I was only eight when Grandma died, and I didn’t get to attend her funeral. When my grandfather died, the names of both little boys were included in the list of their children.

I think it was better back then - not easier, but better - when a child was stillborn. Everyone knew the parents were expecting, and everyone hurt alongside them. I asked, and my mom told me that no one faulted my grandmother for going out in such terrible weather. It was understood that you got up and you got that work done, because if you didn’t, your family went hungry and you lost the farm.

My mom tells other stories of family members who lost babies or small children. It happened far too often. I’m glad fewer people suffer such a terrible loss, but I wish we, as a society, were better at helping them grieve.

4

I can’t imagine how much more terrible it must be, to lose a baby so much later, when you’re that much more attached, that much more in love with the little life inside you.

I only knew I was pregnant for 4 weeks, but it was enough for me to start imagining fingers and toes, kisses and tantrums, soccer and homework. It’s going to take a while for me to move on.

My husband’s taking it pretty hard, too, and I think it’s harder for men to find support for something like this.

Thank you for sharing your stories.

5

I don’t believe you’re a “whiny attention seeker” at all. hugs

As I said elsewhere, I just lost a very early pregnancy in August, which I don’t mind talking about.

But I also lost a born child, at 12 days old (he’d been born prematurely, at just past 34 weeks), which I’m still not able to talk much about. It was in 2008, and it’s still too soon, still too raw.

For some reason I got really angry when a well-meaning friend sent me a facebook invite for the public virtual event to “light a candle” at 7pm. Do they really think I need reminding? That we forget the rest of the time? I know it’s meant to be “raising awareness” of the cause, and presumably educating people on what to watch out for, and how to act around the bereaved, but that just smacked of personal attention seeking to me.

Apologies to anyone in this thread who is dealing with it their way publicly, and joining the FB events. I’m coping by the “keep smiling, don’t think about it, and keep moving” technique, if someone shows me sympathy I’d probably crack up and lose it. And now I’ve got a toddler to chase around, I can’t wallow anymore, like I did between 2008 and 2010 when she was born.

6

I’ve lost two pregnancies. One was at about 14 weeks, three days after I crossed over into my second trimester and told friends/family that I was pregnant. I went for my routine checkup, only to find out that the fetus had died. After the D&E, analysis showed that it had had trisomy 18, i.e. from the moment of conception, a random event meant that it had no chance of a normal, healthy life. I was actually happy with the diagnosis, because it said nothing about our chances of conceiving again in the future, and reinforced that it wasn’t anything that I had done (not that I had been self-blaming). It took me a bunch of months to emotionally recover, but I found that the fact that everybody knew already turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We weren’t alone, and people were lovely.

It would be turning 1 next month had all gone well and had it been healthy. I have the results of the tissue analysis in an envelope in my desk, but I’ve never wanted to check if it was XX or XY. Keeping it as abstract as possible has been helpful.

The second was very early. I only knew I was pregnant for 11 days. We were very disappointed, in that we’d been trying to conceive for three years at that point and were thrilled about the pregnancy, especially since we’d managed it on our own while on a break from fertility treatments. But that one wasn’t as terribly sad as the first.

I have PCOS, making it both difficult for me to conceive, and more likely to have a miscarriage if I manage to get pregnant.

I can’t imagine losing a full term pregnancy, or a baby.

7

I’ve lost one pregnancy, at six weeks. Would have been our second child. We’d been hoping to conceive, and knew when I got pregnant. We were very excited and happy, and I was waiting for morning sickness to hit, and then started to bleed and cramp. It was three years ago, and I got pregnant again soon after, and have since had three more children, but we remember, and still mourn the one we lost.

8

I lost a pregnancy at 18 weeks. By some standards it was a stillbirth as opposed to a miscarriage. I went through about a day or two of labor, most of it in extreme pain. My doctor at the time said it was actually safer at that point to simply permit labor to ensue. Doing a D & C on an expanded uterus carriers a risk of uterine perforation.

9

Lost 1 child in the womb and also a older sister sibling who was never born, glad to know there is such a day.

10

I lost my first child during the 24th week of pregnancy. He would have been 20 this year. I was a teen, and hadn’t told my parents I was even pregnant yet when I lost him. It was a terrible time in my life, but looking back it was probably for the best. Still, I can’t help thinking of him and what might have been.

11

I’m so sorry for your loss.

I’ve never had your experience, but my daughter-in -law did. I was at work when I got the news. I spend most of my shift in the bathroom, crying. I lost a grandchild.
My only child, her husband, passed away shortly after, so I remain grandchildless.

12

It’s crushing to the expectant father as well. I had developed an internal narrative as to what our life with that child was going to be like, how much fun it was gong to be to tell people we were expecting, where the child was going to fit in the age range of the neighborhood kids, any number of father-child moments together. And then all that was gone, and fertility concerns had us inevitably frightened that it would never come our way again. While my wife and I had excellent communication and mutual support, I had other family telling me, “Stop crying; your job now is to be strong for her.”

Certainly, our connection to the pregnancy is not as deep as the mother’s, and I’m not trying to one-up anyone; I’m just offering one more perspective.

13

Thank you for this. My husband was very excited about the pregnancy, and he’s taking it hard while trying to be the tough guy for me. It’s very difficult for me to see him hurting and there’s not much I can do to help him. We’re doing ok so far, but there’s little support out there for him. Most websites about miscarriage barely mention anything about the father’s perspective, which bugs me. We got pregnant as a team, after all.

14

Only, in my aunt’s case, by the time the baby’s death was detected labor hadn’t even started. They didn’t even induce it.

15

We lost a pregnancy in 1998. She would have been our first. It was devastating. We were blessed in 2000, but to this day, if I dwell on the matter too long, I will tear up. Like now. Peace to strength to all members of a club no one wants to be in.

16

I haven’t tried having any kids yet myself, but if things had worked out differently, I might have been the oldest of five, not two. I was only 20 months old when Mom lost the first one, but eight and ten when she lost the last two, and so for those I still remember how happy everyone was about the new babies - until they weren’t anymore. I don’t talk to my mother about it because she finds the subject painful, but sometimes I think back to “you’re going to have a little brother or sister!” and wonder what it would have been like, and if it really would have been a slightly younger sister followed by three much younger brothers like I’ve always assumed…