Today is October 1st and it kicks off Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month in the US. I never thought I would care about this month. I never thought I would care about October 15th, the day set aside for remembrance of the children who didn't stay on earth very long.
After having 3 beautiful daughters with no complications during pregnancy or birth, miscarriage was the furthest thing from my mind. It was something that happened to other women. Or at least women who hadn't had children yet. I probably thought that I was immune.
Then starting in August of 2013, I lost 3 babies in a row and now I have lots of dates to remember. I started this blog in the hopes that it will encourage other women to speak about their miscarriages. I never felt the need to keep quiet and I never was encouraged to. I had a wonderful support system which came out in force during my first miscarriage and stayed with me for the other two. I was surprised to hear how many women I knew felt like they could never speak about their losses. Everyone grieves in their own way and perhaps some women are more comfortable keeping their grief private. No one should feel like they SHOULDN'T talk about it though.
If you have experienced a pregnancy or infant loss recently or even if it hasn't been recent and you are still trying to cope with the grief, I hope that you will seek out a local support group. They all have special events going on through out the month and have the resources that you need!
To start out the month and this blog, I have chosen to name all 3 of my babies. I love each of them deeply and can't wait to meet them in heaven!
Jean-Yves: August 4th, 2013
Reed and I like to wait until the bitter end to find out the gender of our babies and it wasn't going to be any different with this one. During that first ultrasound my OB let out an exclamation "Whoa, is that a penis?!" Usually genitalia doesn't develop so early but she was so convinced that is what she saw. I just laughed it off and figured we would find out when the baby was born. Now I think that was a tender mercy of the Lord, giving me something to look back at later and feel some connection to our baby again. I lost Jean-Yves at 14 weeks. I have always loved the French male name "Yves" and we thought it would never work in the states. I wanted to have a son named Jean-Luc and Reed thought that it was a little nerdy of me. :) So we came up with this compromise! (a look at the next name will tell you the rest of the negotiation).
Luc James: November 22nd, 2013
I don't have any pictures of Luc because he died at 6-8 weeks or, as I sometimes think of, as a "regular" miscarriage. So I have just guessed as to gender and I decided on a boy. Maybe because I don't have any living sons yet so I might as well have some waiting in heaven! Star Trek nerds will get his name :)
Henrietta Jeanette: August 21st, 2014
Henrietta's ultrasound pictures do not give justice to her beautiful soul so I am not posting them. We know this one was a girl because we had the micro-array testing completed. I lost her at 16 weeks. She is named after a Swiss ancestor of Reed's. A few weeks after the miscarriage and subsequent DNC, we were visiting with his aunt and she was showing us some old portraits of his ancestors. This name came up which is one of his great-great-great-grandmother (I might be off on how many greats there are) and at once I knew that would be my baby's name. Jeanette is pronounced the Swiss/French way with an "uh" at the end.
So....when people ask me how many grandkids I have, would you prefer I go with the easy, "six", or more complicated, "nine"?
ReplyDeleteI was similarly thinking of relating it to Kaelyn. She is deeply interested in babies and was affected by your miscarriages.
ReplyDeleteI haven't figured that out completely yet. Lately, if it's a person who I don't know very well then I just give the short answer. If it's someone who I'm catching up with or someone who I might be working with closely in the future, I give the long answer.
ReplyDeleteKaelyn is a sweetheart :)