Moving on from National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day -- Guest Post

One week ago, I logged into Facebook to check on my friends for the day.  After spending only five seconds on the page, I logged out with the realization that I would be unable to cope with myself if I stayed online.  While that sounds a bit over the top, I had forgotten that it was a day of observance, and status messages and articles about the day took me by surprise.    It was either get off the computer, or begin flogging myself over events that were beyond my control. 

In the United States, October 15^th marks ‘National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day,’ and it’s the one-day that everyone is cordially required to come forward, and share their stories and feelings about it.  Last week, however, I had no interest in remembering, sharing, or even commiserating with anyone.   I have survived multiple miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy, and a complicated pregnancy that resulted in a traumatic emergency cesarean section procedure- one that could have been prevented if my doctor hadn’t jumped the gun.   The whole ordeal of pregnancy and loss hits where it counts already.  I don’t want a designated day of observance to remind me of every detail yet again.

Don’t get me wrong.   Loss is a very serious issue that affects over 10% of women trying to conceive, or carry a pregnancy to term.  Miscarriage is more common than you think.  More, despite advances in medicine, thousands of babies die unexpectedly in the first year.  As for healthy babies, we are in the middle of a spectacular boom, and there’s no sign of it slowing any time soon.  So a day like October 15^th should be a call for solidarity to those celebrating life, those mourning a loss, and those undergoing fertility treatments. 

But what happens on October 16^th?  Or January 1^st?  Or on the day your best friend gives birth to a healthy baby?  When your cousin’s son dies from SIDS? Or the fourth time you miscarry? If it’s not on October 15^th, or not during Infertility Awareness Week, which occurs in April, no one wants to discuss any of it. 

When I came to the conclusion that I would no longer try for another child a few months ago, I was saddened by the decision at first.  I felt angry at my infertility.  Then I realized that I was okay with that decision, and my heart felt lighter.   I was no longer angry when people announced pregnancies, but genuinely happy for them.   When I met my sister’s newborn last month, I was relaxed, because the baton had been passed to someone else.   I was happy about joining the “No more kids” club, and I began to remember that I am more than a parent, more than a statistic, and much more than what I represented to the medical establishment.   I felt empowered and ready to move on with life.

Yet when October 15^th arrived, I suddenly became reminded of the complete loser I was for suffering those many miscarriages.  Worse, I felt like a jerk for not wanting to feel like a loser anymore. I felt like a bad person for wanting to focus on parenting the child I have, rather than grieve the loss of the children I didn’t have.   Then it hit me.  What was supposed to be a day of solidarity and awareness had become a spectacle.  It was as if the world had decided to single us out to point out our shortcomings, our imperfections, our losses, and we were on parade.  Like it or not, it’s ‘Happy Look At Your Faults’ Day!  Step right up, and give us a show!

I get the idea that women everywhere should bond.  However, limiting that show of solidarity to one day, week or month can do more harm than good overall.   While the rest of the world moves on to observe other “National Days” without so much as a blink, the rest of us have to pick up the pieces and start the healing process again. 

My little epiphany from months earlier?  It’s actually somewhat in tact, but only because I decided that self-preservation was better than reopening old wounds.   Logging off and shutting my computer down was the best way for coping that day.   Because of that decision, things hurt a whole lot less on the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th. 

Perhaps instead of remaining tacit about pregnancy, and infant loss, save for one day, we should consider moving beyond reserving that token day of observance in favor of just talking about it whenever we need to.   For those of us who have lost, let us commiserate when we’re sad, and let’s applaud when we move forward toward acceptance.  For those who celebrate their pregnancy?   Celebrate it daily!  Why not?  

Let’s talk about these things on October 16^th, January 1^st, whenever!   Let us be happy for those who have healed from their loss, and let us offer support to those who haven’t.  Let’s do it any day, any time.  Not just when we’re obliged to on October 15^th.

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Jill Redding blogs at Pianissamma.

A Day

Today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day - an incredibly hard and painful day for millions.  The loss of a little one, born or unborn, is something I hope never to experience.  Having never experienced it, I feel I have no right to write about it.  I will not speculate about how those women feel, where their babies are, what they look like.  I will not tell those women that everything will be okay.  I will not give them an acceptable way to mourn or tell them the way they are mourning is unacceptable.  This is a personal day, not for me or anyone else to encroach upon.  And it's not just this day.  It's every day.

A website devoted to the commemoration of this day states its mission as follows: "To diligently work with local, state and national leaders to obtain a National Day of Remembrance recognizing the need for community education and awareness when a family loses a child to miscarriage, stillbirth, and/or neonatal death. While promoting the need for openness, understanding and compassion during a family's time of grief and most importantly, allowing those who wish, to remember these children who we now hold dear." [sic]

This is a mission statement I cannot argue - until its end.  For whether or not a day was ever designated to commemorate these experiences, those children and those fetuses were always held dear. 

Whether you believe they are waiting in heaven or hold no hope of ever seeing them, if you lost a child - planned or unplanned, during pregnancy or after birth - you are the only one who knows how you feel about it.  Your pain is not less or more than anyone else's.  It's simply more personal.  It is a day set aside for women and families to mourn, but many of those women and families mourn everyday.  There is no way to quantify a sadness such as this, for it is different for everybody, and everybody is entitled to remember today in their own way, even if that way is not remembering.  As we all take a moment today to recognize the bravery of those who have lost a little one, we must remember not to intrude on their personal feelings, mourning style, or loss.

There is no competition here for whose story is saddest.  There is no requirement to imagine a lost baby as an angel any more than there is to remember him or her as a heartbeat on an ultrasound.

To everyone who has lost a child in any way, I am so sorry for your loss, but not just today, everyday.  And I will never claim to understand.

There is very little we know about these children, but we know they are loved.  And that is more powerful than any candle.