Infant/child mortality rates have dropped dramatically in just the last 100 years. In 1920, globally, only 67.9% of all children survived to be 5 years old. In 2017 that figure was 96.09%.
My mother has three older sisters, and all four of them were born between the mid-1920s and the 40s. Somewhere in there, they had a brother who didn’t make it. He lived about 3 months, I’m told. He would have been “Uncle James,” who I got my middle name from.
Tell me about your “relatives that should have been.”
When my father’s mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s, she would often see a couple of children whom she would call by name. But Dad’s family didn’t know anyone by those names, at least not anyone whom she’d be likely to think of as children. Their best guess is that she had a couple of miscarriages or infancy deaths before the four who survived (or at least, before the oldest of the four was old enough to remember), but that those two lost siblings were just Not Talked About.
EDIT: By “see”, I mean “hallucinate”. She wasn’t just applying the wrong names to real children.
I’ve never spoken much to my mum about the miscarriage she had between her first son and me - not really my business. But it’s odd to ponder that if they hadn’t died, I wouldn’t exist. So I don’t consider them a relative who ‘should’ have existed - kind of glad they didn’t make it, really…
I’ve been researching my family tree and just found out that my great-uncle, who died before I was born, and his wife had a baby girl who only lived 9 days. They didn’t have any other children; he would die two years after the baby of a brain tumor. My great aunts would talk about him, but I never heard any of them mention a child. The baby was born premature and died of lung failure; they can treat that in preemies now, so it’s quite possible she would have survived if she had been born today. She’d be in her 70s now if she’d made it.
My Aunt Debby. There was some sort of complication involving the umbilical cord (umbilical strangulation, perhaps?) at her birth and she didn’t survive. I’ve heard about her all my life from my mother and her other sisters, since it happened when they were children and they’ve never forgotten the baby who didn’t live. One of my aunts named her own daughter Deborah after her.
My Grandfather was number eight of twelve sons, and the youngest one to survive the trip over from Ireland.
Growing up I was told (by my brother) that I was born with a twin, who died just a few weeks old. I was further told that I was the smaller of the two, and the one who was expected not to live. My Mother refused to discuss it when I asked her about it.
My mother’s family lost the only son/brother to pneumonia when he was two. My ninety-year-old aunt still mourns him. In fact, her daughter is in hospice and unable to convey her wishes; my aunt wants my cousin’s ashes sprinkled over the grave of the uncle she never knew. (Weird, I know.)
My grandmother (same side of the family) lost two - or maybe three - siblings. Five sisters survived. I heard about the boy my entire life, but didn’t know about another sister until I went to visit the family plot with Granny and saw her headstone. My cousin, the keeper of the family history, mentioned another child death in the family - another girl - who is the possible third sibling. That was the first I’d heard of her.
Notice the pattern? As Lin-Manuel Miranda put it, who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Cousin Elaine, thank goodness.
My grandmother had a large family of 12 children. The second and third children were twins born in 1918–one died that year at 6 months old, and the timing makes me suspect the flu pandemic. Numbers 10 and 12 were stillbirths in 1938 and 1940. (The remaining nine lived from their 60s to their 90s.) Of my grandmother’s siblings’ children, there were a couple of more stillbirths, one that died at around a week old, and an accidental drowning of an 18-month old in a slop bucket. My grandmother lost twins to an ectopic pregnancy–don’t know the year for that, at least late 1940s, probably no later than mid-50s.
My wife had an older sister who was a blue baby, died the next day. Today she would have lived but not over 60 years ago. If she hadn’t died I am sure my wife would never have been born as my MIL was pregnant with my wife less then 6 months later and almost assuredly they would have waited a bit if older sis had lived. My life would have been a lot different.
My maternal grandmother (1898-1990) was the youngest of 4 girls. Only when I was a young adult did I find out that they all had an older brother, who died when he was 16.
I didn’t know why until recently, when a cousin who’s on Facebook told me that he perished in a coal-mining accident.
My paternal grandmother (1915-2007) had a brother who died at age 8 from whooping cough.
Both of these are things that kids wouldn’t die from nowadays.
I’m exactly in the middle of 6 others. We are 7. I have what would’ve been my oldest female sib. She died of meningitis at 18mos. I would have liked to have had her here.
Also, my Daddy was a twin. His twin sister was born blind. She died very early. Months old. My Daddy spent 20years looking for her grave. He remembered going to the cemetery at an early age. He never found it.
My mother was one of eleven. She had a brother, Timmy, who died from a brain tumor (or post-op complications) when he was 4. That would’ve been in about 1936.
I should’ve been one of 7 (born within 6 years of each other), but my mother had one set of twins (between the older 4 and me) born prematurely who died.
My sister (one of the surviving set of twins) was pregnant with twins and also gave birth prematurely and lost them.
Twins in every generation going back at least 3 generations.
My Aunt. She died in childhood. My dad was certainly old enough to remember her, and she was around for … 3? 7? years, but the only reason I knew she existed is because my mother told me that my dad had a sister who died.
Aunt Vivian, my dad’s younger sister. Died circa age 4 1/2 of a strep infection. Also his younger brother, Uncle Bill Jr., died age 2 months. And unnamed baby boy uncle, stillborn. As the family told it, losing some kids was almost normal, but still heartbreaking back in the 1920’s into the 40’s.
I had an uncle who died in 1937 at about 10 years old from complications after appendix surgery, another would have been about 7 at the time. The advise of the doctor was to have another baby right away, my mother was born about 10 months later.
I would have had another aunt, Mary. She was the third of four girls born to my maternal grandmother. She died at birth, or just before. My grandmother never even saw her, being advised by the doctor not to. Grandma thought Grandpa saw her, he was the only family at the burial… Quite the mystery.
Grandma had a brother who was a twin. My great uncle George lived, although he was supposed to have been small and scrawny. His brother, we are told, looked like a fine, healthy baby and died within 24 hours. My great grandmother had measles, or scarlet fever, while carrying the babies, probably something was wrong inside with the twin who died.
I should have an Aunt Lucille and Uncle Paul in their 80s; both passed from suspected scarlet fever before age 2 and were my grandmother’s 3rd and 5th children (my mom’s #9 of 10 total kids, 4 still living).
I should also have a cousin Paul who died at a week old in 1981 when he was born over a month premature. Those are just the born babies I know about; considering the size of my family there are almost certainly dozens of miscarriages. I wish m/c was a thing more easily talked about in families so people would know they’re still loved, they’re not alone in losing a pregnancy, they’re not to blame and their future is not ruined if they don’t want it to be. That goes for both men and women, btw.