As very few people know, October 15th is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day.
This is of course a relatively rough estimate from the CDC:
The number of Infant Deaths from January 2007- January 2008 was 33,300. Infant deaths include SIDS, & Stillbirth (babies who die in utero), I'm not sure if miscarriages (before 24 weeks gestation) are included but I doubt that since they give death certificates to parents of stillborn babies.
I personally have 4 babies who play in heaven. My son was 32w3d gestation, I miscarried at 6 weeks, Had a "late miscarriage" at 19 weeks gestation (My daughter) & another early miscarriage at 7w5d (another daughter, found out gender through genetic testing).
Some things you might not realize:
Unless a mother is in harm, the OB will make you deliver the baby the natural way, unless you have a really nice doctor, but I didn't have one.
These babies have heartbeats, I saw my child's heartbeats at 6 weeks gestation. They are living beings, they aren't just something you can forget about easily.
People are really careful about asking what happened with babies that pass away. Some people are very touchy about it & it brings back the really strong feelings that they felt at the time. I however could talk about them all day long if I had a chance to.
I think the thing that irritates me the most about the whole thing, is 1. There are SO many people that have gone through what we have & 2. It isn't really "recognized" as much as say breast cancer and other very important awareness topics. I think they think its more of a thing that's best NOT discussed because of either making people put themselves in our situations, or just the whole idea of losing a baby is too traumatic for them to grasp and no one wants to "feel bad" (all I have to say to that is cry me a river, build a bridge & get over it to those who haven't experienced it & can't "handle it").
There are very tiny steps being made, but nothing compared to what it really should be. A small paragraph in a pregnancy book isn't an adequate preparation for something like this. I'm not sure what is, but I think that someone should make a step in the right direction to make people realize that this is happening every day, and that making people push their babies back as an afterthought in their minds is wrong.
I think there should be "Do's & Dont's" for the people who haven't experienced it, where it outlines what to do & say and what not to do & say such as "You can always have another" or "Your baby didn't make it because he/she wasn't genetically perfect" etc. There are some, but not anything on a major website where people could find it easily. I don't think anyone wants to hear any of those things but people still say them. I'm not sure why I personally could NEVER say that to someone, even if I hadn't lost my children.
Anyone who has something nasty to say should go research the term "Pregnancy & Infant Loss awareness" before stating ANYTHING. Read how its psychologically destroys a person & their family. Think twice about what YOU would say or do in a situation & shut your mouth
&& On another note, Yes we will consider adoption eventually, No to Surrogacy & I am getting my tubes tied. Yes I am young, no I will not try again, & no they don't know why this is happening other then a hunch that I have a blood clotting disorder. The reason my babies passed were Placental abruption, lack of progesterone, pre-term labor & Placenta previa, & we don't know why the last baby passed but I was having problems at 5-6 weeks gestation. All but 1 had genetic testing that came out fine, no abnormalities.
