Infertility, miscarriage, and infant loss all hold the power to break you. The weight from each one can often feel too heavy to bear. At times people compare these experiences trying to minimize one experience over another but the truth is they hold far more similarities than differences and the significance and the lasting effects…
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All That Remains: Why I Haven’t Laid My Daughter To Rest
Continue...All that remains of my daughter, Dorothy, rests on my desk. Nestled in between a stack of journals and my pencil cup of felt tip pens, there is a tiny ceramic urn adorned with a floral pattern in purple and ivory. I wish I could give a poignant reason for her being there. But, the…
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The Unknown: How Far Along Are You?
Continue...When pregnant you often get the question ‘how far along are you?’ The answer is rather straightforward. Generally, you can form a good estimate for a gestation period of around 40 weeks. For adoption, it can be more complicated. When adopting, you also often get the same question – how far along are you? It’s often referring…
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Grief On Demand
Continue...I write about grief. Not all the time, of course, but regularly scheduled. Grief on demand is difficult. It forces me to bring forward things that now, seven years after my Luke was stillborn, have been pushed to the hidden places of my mind – never forgotten, but displaced by the mundane and unrelenting beauty…
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Every Pregnancy Loss Is Birth
Continue...The waves of cramps came, then an urge to push. What emerged from my body mere weeks into my pregnancy did not resemble a child. Yet I wailed over the form because it was my child, or at least as much as I would ever know of her. I felt primal, instinctual, animal-like. My womb…
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When Hearing “I Know What You’re Going Through” Hurts
Continue...“I know what you are going through.” I quickly dreaded hearing these words after the death of our infant son. Words like, “I understand how you feel. I too lost a baby/had a miscarriage.” These words pierced my soul like no other. I had dozens of women, and sometimes men, say these words to me…
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They Lost a Baby Too- Part 2
Continue...First Post: They Lost a Baby Too-Part 1 Thursday, August 21, 2014 was the day we all said our final goodbyes. Many came to pay their respects to a little baby they had never seen; they came to support us and cover us with love. That church wasn’t filled with your traditional family, though. It…
