cherry blossom, miscarriage, memorial tree
Children, Health, Miscarriage

Baby Loss Awareness Week 2020

Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

It’s Baby Loss Awareness Week. On Thursday 15th October 2020, it’s a special day to remember our babies we didn’t get to keep and raise awareness. I’ll either be taking the day off social media or muting some topics.

It’s vitally important that we raise awareness of baby and infant loss and miscarriage. Families that go through it  need support and recognition of their short and long term pain. Everyone reacts differently when they’re supporting a friend of family member through loss. Each one of those reactions can help those grieving, but many of them can cause pain too. I can’t tell anyone how to react because every grieving family deals with loss differently, we all need different things.

For me, I remember it every day. I don’t need a special day and I don’t want to be pushed to remember at times when I’m keeping myself busy with other things. I remember on my own terms and that’s important to my mental health.

So, I’m going to write a bit about our situation, how I feel and then do my first ever scheduled blog post.

Baby boy3

Baby boy3 should have been born in June 2019. Instead, he arrived on the last day of January, far too early to be healthy and four weeks too early to have a chance of survival. The pain of that day was so much worse than the previous two pregnancies that had ended too early for us. We will always love boy3 tenderly and with deep sadness that he couldn’t stay with us. How much fun we’d be having with a 15 month old terror if he’d been born at the right time. We miss him every day and there will always be a hole where he isn’t.

Before him, I’d had a missed miscarriage before 12 weeks between large boy and small boy and then a disastrous pregnancy with an errant coil almost 4 years ago. Both of those were heart breaking too, with very difficult decisions. Not least because my body has never once laboured naturally in 5 pregnancies, it just doesn’t do that and so each time I’ve needed lots of medical intervention all the way to general anaesthetic for the miscarriages and C sections for the boys’ births.

Recovery

Part of the reason I find BLAW so hard is that it falls exactly on the anniversary of the week that we found out we were pregnant with boy3, now 2 years ago. Last year, I somehow didn’t notice but this year I knew the anniversary was coming up and when I realised it was BLAW coincided it was just magnified.

I’ll probably write something different next year, because grief evolves. We change and the way we feel about our loss changes with us and with time and distance.

Sometimes its raw and I want to scream in frustration and anger.

Sometimes the pain of missing boy3 is sharp and I feel like my heart is going to rip open.

Sometimes it’s just a dull ache in the background.

We’ve come a long way in the last 18 months or more. Getting out of bed isn’t the wrench it was in those first few weeks. Seeing babies doesn’t break my heart anymore. Even holding my friends’ babies is OK. But looking at the 12 week scan of himself’s colleague was too much a couple of weeks ago.

We’re recovering, slowly but surely. But, for me, BLAW is just too much this year.

Published by Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

Rants, rambles, loss, gin, guests, recipes, funny kids, occasional poems, and a bit of running.

32 thoughts on “Baby Loss Awareness Week 2020”

  1. Pingback: No more babies – Smelly Socks and Garden Peas
  2. Pingback: BLAW: What does coping look like? – Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

  3. Thank you for sharing such an intimate and life changing experience with the world. It is a tragically beautiful thing to be transparent in your grief and on the road to healing.

    My favorite quote is this:

    ” I’ll probably write something different next year, because grief evolves. We change and the way we feel about our loss changes with us and with time and distance.”

    It reminds me that there is hope in healing. Yes there are some wounds that hurt…they itch…and then they heal. And then there are the other hurts that leave deep everlasting scars that may take inordinate amounts of time to heal if they really ever do. And that’s ok. Because grief, like wounds do evolve.

    I can’t wait to hear how you progress in the years to come. And thank you again for sharing.

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  4. so sorry for your loss, And yes It really hurts, I had an ectopic pregnancy. Coming out of the pain seemed impossible, but we have to do it

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  5. So sorry for your loss, I just wrote a couple things on my page if you’d like to read. I lost my baby two days ago. 💔 you’re welcome to share them. I also have two older ones on my blog I can find for you if you’d like

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  7. Pingback: The week gone by — Oct. 18 – A Silly Place

  9. I’m so sorry for what you went through. I can only imagine how painfully sad it must be to lose a child. I do think grief evolves and that it’s so important to recognise how everyone experiences everything in their own way. There should be no comparison or judgement whatsoever. Each story matters and you’re helping to bring awareness to that and to help others who may have gone through similar to feel less alone, so thank you for sharing  ♥

    Caz xxxx

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  12. I am so sorry for your loss and can’t imagine the pain of losing a child. These awareness days, weeks and months are difficult for those who have been through it. I feel the same about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Never a day goes by that I don’t think about it. Why do I need to see it everywhere and see trite and impersonal expressions of support? Writing helps.

    Sending you a big virtual hug from Canada. XOX

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  16. Thank you for sharing this. I am very sorry for your loss. I don’t have the right words because every loss is different and personal. I lost my first baby very early on in the pregnancy. I got pregnant again soon after so I’m sure that helped me to heal, also because it had been an early loss. But I do remember this baby and (though it was too soon to find out the sex) I imagine the daughter I never had.

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      1. So many people do but there’s a kind of taboo around it: I think this makes it worse because you need to be able to talk about these things! I xxx

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