We Don’t Need Your Platitudes, Just Your Company
I don’t think these people realise the enormity that encapsulates the loss of a baby

by Merryn Lane

“But look at the beautiful child you already have – is this not a time to be really grateful for her?”

Those who are going through the stages of such intense and raw grief cannot stop people from sharing their ‘two pennies worth’ –

but we can educate them on the raw realities and truth that surrounds such a traumatic event.

Perhaps they will begin to understand that we don’t need their platitudes, we just need their company.

I don’t think these people realise the enormity that encapsulates the loss of a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal deaths.

It’s not a stomach ache that disappears entirely over time.

We will forever look at our friends with children who were pregnant at the same time as us and think ‘my child would be doing that now’… ‘my child would be the same age as him/her.’

The stomach aches forever, returning through pursed lips and a lingering breath held for an extra heartbeat.

We will forever have a hole in our hearts, yet still be guilted by existing Motherhood feelings, to give entirely to the needs of our little people who we are already blessed to have and hold.

Not wanting them to gain a scar from an event that has turned our souls upside down.

We will forever be chasing time.

Time for personal healing, time for relationship healing, time for our children, time for family, time to cook, time to clean.

I guess we are all ignorant in some way, to the many paths, roadblocks, and detours that life has in store for each one of us.

I guess we never really know the full extent of pain that other people live with or the weight in which such events can have on people.

Just because someone carries it all so well… doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.