That happened to me, too. My mother miscarried a late term fetus between my older brother and me after falling down a flight of stairs. Doubtful I would have been born if he survived. Although my brother and sister claim I looked more like our next door neighbor (an ugly cuss). They’re kidding…I think.
My father’s only sibling, Gordon, died at age 13 from an infection he acquired after scraping his head diving into a lake. Effective antibiotics would have saved him.
My mother’s father died before she was born from tularemia acquired from skinning rabbits in the British army during WWI. Effective antibiotics would have saved him, too.
My mother’s little sister is sometimes called “Lolita the Youngest”. Their eldest sister, Lolita the First, died at 9mo; my mother later got the same “flu” and Grandma didn’t stop until she found a doctor who took her seriously. Future-Navamom spent a couple of weeks in an oxygen tent set up in her parent’s bedroom (this in postwar Spain, when anything you can think of was scarce). The doctor was a tiny man who was not allowed to make any physical efforts such as climb up to their fifth-floor flat: Grandpa would take him upstairs in his arms.
People telling that grandma “ah you have two daughters” would get “yep” and an accounting of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. People telling her “ah you had two daughters” would get “no, I had three, but one died”.
My other aunt had five pregnancies that we know of: three sons, all healthy and well nowadays, and two daughters, both stillborn. María Teresa and Ana María.
I just found out recently my maternal grandmother had a late-term miscarriage (before the rest of her three kids were born), and that her biggest regret was not giving the baby a name before they buried him/her. This would’ve been in the mid- to late-40s.
I’m not sure how many more siblings my maternal Grandpa should have had; his parents probably had some kind of blood group incompatibility and all but their first child were premature. The oldest son held the county record for smallest surviving preemie at the time, but there were certainly several who didn’t make it, though how many I don’t know. GG-ma died either during or shortly after birth of the last, non surviving baby, that much I do know. 5 of her kids survived to adulthood.
More recently, my sorta Aunt (unofficially adopted by said Grandpa) lost her first child, Solomon, within a few hours of his birth. Premature again, and his lungs were not fully developed. He’d be in his early 50s now. Even 5 years later, he would have had a decent chance of survival.
On the other side of the family, I only heard stories from my Great Uncle of his Great Uncle and Aunt, one of whom set his pyjamas on fire and burnt to death accidentally age 5, and another whose nurse accidentally let go of her pram at the top of a hill, which then rolled down into the street right in front of a horse and cart. The same Great Uncle once mentioned that ‘his family never bothered naming the stillbirths’, so I’m guessing that set of GG-parents had more than one, especially as my Grandma, his only living sibling (whom I never actually knew), was much older.
My mother’s sister had five living children. Her second child, Mary, was stillborn at full term. The sixth, Edward, was was a late miscarriage after she fell downstairs. It shouldn’t have happened. She was in temporary housing after her army husband was unexpectedly rebilletted. They thought it was OK to put a mother of four young children on the fourth floor. She fell, six months pregnant whilst wrangling the youngest’s pushchair and her shopping up all those stairs.
My father’s sister lost her only child, full term. The doctor and the midwife were both attending other births when my aunt went into labour. Mary was born with the cord around her neck. An ambulance was called but the drivers were untrained in those days and no one knew what to do. My poor Aunt went on to suffer complications and had a hysterectomy. This affected me personally more than the loss of my other cousins. Mary would have been just three years older than me and lived only a hundred yards away. Growing up I often wondered what it would have been like to have her to play with.
I should have had an Uncle Jesse, my dad’s youngest brother, born around 1941. He lived only a few days. Unfortunately, his birth also caused my grandmother to die. My dad talked about holding Jesse the day he was born, how little he was. Sadly, their deaths caused my grandfather to crawl into a bottle and make very bad choices.
In working on my mom’s family tree, I discovered her mother had a sister that she had never heard of. Mom knew her mother’s twin sister only lived a few months, but had never heard of this older sister. She was in the 1910 census, then was gone. I’ve tried reaching out to the Chicago parish where they attended, but have never received a response. They resided in the Polish area, and not many deaths were actually recorded with Cook County.
My grandmother gave birth to a seventh child in 1944 but she died 3 days later. Her son survived fierce fighting in WW2 only to be shot to death over a radio in 1946. So I never knew my aunt Lucy or Uncle Joe
Then my mom gave birth to a girl in 1952 and gave the baby up for adoption. I never knew I had a sister until I was 51 and she was 59.
My mother had a brother who died before she was born, living only three weeks. She didn’t even know his name, though I managed to stumble upon it in my genealogy research. My grandmother didn’t talk about it.
Her other brother died during the Normandy invasion in WWII, killed by mortar fire.
Her father died before I was born, so I never knew my grandfather, who evidently was an important name in the Brooklyn dental community.
My father’s brother died at age 8 of appendicitis.
Uncle Jack was born in 1948 and lived for 4 days. Between his older sister (my mom) and his younger brother, there is a gap of 10 years. There were numerous miscarriages as well.
I am told I was blue at birth due to oxygen deprivation. I lived.
Interestingly enough, my grandmother found a great-aunt of mine with my, rather unusual, name some years after I was born. I don’t remember if she got married or not, but she also did not have children.
AFAIK, infant mortality hasn’t been a thing in my family since 1920, with the exception of miscarriages, of which there have been several.
But there were some early-ish deaths that did change the complexion of the family. I had a great uncle who died in a car accident when he was 22. He was about six years older than my father, and I suspect had he lived, I’d have known him pretty well- he’d have probably been more of a straight-up uncle, and not the typical old geezer great uncle.
There have been plenty of miscarriages in my family. The last one I know of was my cousin a while ago (maybe about, oh, a little over 10 years?) between her second and third child. It was early in the pregnancy, but it was right after they announced it, on Xmas Day, too.
I’ve mentioned this before in anti-vax threads, but my grandmother had two brothers who died when they were children. One, Johnny of whooping cough when he was three, and the other, Karl, of tetanus when he was seven. He was playing in the barn at their grandparents farm and stepped on a nail. I think this would’ve been in the 1920s or 30s?
My dad knows where they’re buried, but my great-grandparents couldn’t afford headstones, sadly. Nor can we find any pictures so far.
Also, one of my great-aunts on his fathers’ side, her first husband died a year after they were married.
My great-grandmother’s first child was a girl born around 1900. The family story is that she kept the baby spotlessly clean and never allowed her to touch the ground. She died around her first birthday. I don’t know what the official cause was. The moral of the story was “let those kids get dirty!”. G-GM had four more children after that and apparently let them crawl around. They all survived until adulthood.
I would have had an extra aunt and uncle on my father’s side, who both died in infancy (1920s). Two first cousins died in infancy on my mother’s side (1950s). There might have been some others on my father’s side, but I’ve never heard anything mentioned.
I was always told about a great great great uncle who died from an accident on a cattle drive to the stockyards in San Antonio as a teenager. According to old family history records he was buried in the Medio Creek on the west side of SA. I drive over that same creek on highway 90 often and always think of him.
My paternal grandfather was born in 1912. I was born in 1963, and my family and I would visit him and my grandmother in the seventies. There was this old-time portrait of a little child hanging on their wall, two or so years old. Maybe you are familiar with the type: the ones with the big oval frame and the convex glass, and the colors of the picture are washed out and there is a dull sepia tone. I never thought too much about it at the time, nor ever asked anyone about it, until much later when I had grown up. They say it’s the hardest thing for a parent to bury a child, and my grandparents did just that when their daughter died at the age of 40. The picture, though, was of my grandfather’s long, lost brother Harless, and he had carried that picture around for fifty years and more. I cannot even fathom what it’s like to live with the memory of a long lost brother for all those years, only to have the cruelty of life come around once again.
My father’s older brother died at the age of 9 in 1923. He was run over by a coal delivery truck while “skitching” as they call it today. I don’t know what they called it back then. He was holding on to the side of the truck while riding a bicycle and fell under the back wheels. My father was only about eighteen months old at the time.
I went my entire life thinking my father was an only child. A few years ago I learned that he had a younger sister who died in infancy. I think it was meningitis. This would have been in the '50s.
I don’t know her name or any details. It slipped out in conversation and it was clear that my father knew very little about her either (he was only 2 or 3 at the time) and that my grandparents had maybe mentioned her once to him and that they had dealt with the tragedy by trying to completely bury it. Questions not welcome, not going to try.
