I fall under these. I’ve made artworks for each losses.
Many women suffer in silence from such a traumatic event.
You are not alone. Break the stigma.
Spread the word.
Remember us.
Pregnancy loss isn’t “oversharing”. We’ve lost a part of us and family. Such a traumatic event in our lives that other people could share about their loved ones dying.
Our babies died, too. They’re valid to us.
Let’s stop shaming women for sharing their stories.
The Supreme Court’s draft had commented that there’s a “low domestic supply of infants” but yet there’s simultaneously an active push to distract from our stillbirth rates in the US.
1 out of 160 babies are stillborn in the US. That’s 47,000 infants a year. For black mothers/gestational parents, that rate increases to 1 in 80. Stillborn babies are wanted and their parents face insurmountable grief from these losses.
Parents like me who have lost children to stillbirth had presented a bill called the Shine for Autumn Act to Congress last year that would require monitoring of stillbirth statistics in the US in hopes to reduce the rate of preventable stillbirth, and all of the dissenting votes in the House were Republican, including big name pro-lifers:
As well as the Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act of 2022, which was introduced on March 9, 2022 and aims to add stillbirth and stillbirth prevention to the language of Title V, the largest piece of gestational health legislation in US history- which is likely to face the same dissent when it comes to a vote.
Let these facts continue to radicalize you. There aren’t any protections currently in place for infants transitioning earthside from the womb, and there isn’t any intention from these extremists to put them in place. Parents who have lost babies to TFMR and/or stillbirth are screaming from the rooftops, begging the government to save our wanted children and they’re clutching their pearls over some embryos smaller than an eraser head.
This has never been about babies. It’s about control.
Trigger warning: stillbirth, loss of a child, death, pregnancy, etc.
A couple months ago, a friend reached out because a relative of hers had just lost a pregnancy at 22 weeks. She knew my history (I lost a baby girl and was induced at 23 weeks due to a chromosomal abnormality, little bit about it here) and asked if I would be willing to share some thoughts with her relative… anything I found helpful or that I thought she might find helpful to deal with this situation. Apparently I had a few things to say. I’m going to insert what I wrote for her bellow in hopes that maybe someone else dealing with a similar loss might stumble across this post and find one or two things that could help.
Thoughts Disclaimer: this is all 100% me-specific. Literally nothing she’s doing right now is wrong. (Even if she wants to send me a big F.U. for any of this “advice” that’s also 100% ok!!)
- I got a tattoo. It felt weird that nothing was physically different in the world, so I Made something physically different.
- Held on to something of “hers”. When I delivered they put a small hat on her and we brought a blanket for her. Depending on her delivery circumstance she may have a physical memento like this, or an ultrasound picture or something. I carried her hat around in my pocket for quite awhile after we lost her. And actually still on hard days I occasionally carry it with me. I’d hold on to it when I was falling asleep, etc.
- I went to therapy. I was already in therapy, but it was helpful to have a place to just talk about it. It’s a big part of what helped me be OK talking about it eventually.. Practice.
- That said: I Couldn’t talk about it for awhile. I found a short sentence I memorized and could say when people noticed or asked or something. For me this was some version of: Them: “How’s the pregnancy going?” “What happened?” Me: Actually we lost her at 23 weeks, she had a fatal chromosomal abnormality. I’m Ok’ish, but can’t really talk about it yet. Them: I’m sorry (me: thank you), or sometimes people would say stupid stuff (eg. oh well maybe it’s for the best, or maybe next time you’ll be more ready to be parents.)
ESSENTIALLY: I stopped listening after I said my sentence… it didn’t matter what they said in response, I’d just fill it in with “they’re saying something they feel might be helpful and let me know they care” and then I’d say “thank you” kind of no matter what helped me deal with some dumb (but well intentioned) comments. (one of the only things that actually “helped” felt right was when people would just say some versions of “God that sucks” etc… because yes, yes it does, that’s true.)
- Another thing that helped with the talking to other people thing is reminding myself that they don’t know what this feels like and (importantly) that *I don’t Want them to know what this feels like*… it’s good they don’t know what to say, because they don’t know.
- I found a mantra / attitude that I found super helpful. For me this was the sentiment that This… the pain and hurting and horribleness is Part Of Loving Her… it hurts Because she was important and hurting after losing her is just the same as loving her if she were here, it all stems from the same place.. That she was important.
- This is also one of the reasons I am able to / actually enjoy when I get to talk about her now. Because she was important and I want people to know about her.
Thoughts on future pregnancies bellow, ignore for now if she needs to
- For me, being pregnant again was terrifying. I was around 32 weeks along before I would/could say “WHEN he gets here” instead of “IF he gets here”.
- I had gotten really good at talking about my loss before I got pregnant again, but somewhat unexpectedly after I got pregnant I was right back in structured sentence because apparently I can’t talk about this again (??). Which, by the way, is completely ok! It felt like my son during my second pregnancy was proving me wrong at every appointment. I didn’t expect him to be ok, but he was… every time.
A quick proposal to change the name from “Mother’s Day” to “Mothering Day.” To ‘mother’ is a verb, and it can be done by anyone, not just the cis woman who gave birth to an individual. Mothering is caring, loving, nursing, and nurturing others. So Happy Mothering Day to:
✺ People who step in to mother others, whatever their connection is. Thank you for making the world better one person at a time.
✺ Women who don’t want to give birth to their own children because they’re nurturing themselves, their careers, their animals, and their friendships instead. Thank you for being true to yourself and filling the people around you with love.
✺ People who’s bio-mothers weren’t the best, whether they were neglectful, self-involved, abusive, or just absent, and they ended up having to learn how to mother themselves. Thank you for being strong, for working on your own healing, and for moving forward.
✺ People who’ve had miscarriages or can’t become pregnant or have a stillbirth - the attention and energy and love and hoping and giving that you do each time for that little person that’s trying to come into this world is earth-shattering. Thank you.
✺ People who have abortions because they know that it’s the best way to be a mother to that potential child, or to their existing children, thank you for making those hard decisions. No one can know the difficulty of that choice but you.
✺ People who do everything for their children, who work, who fight, who challenge themselves to be radical parents, who offer love and compassion and activism as the scaffolding that their parenting relationship is built on. Thank you for making the world a better place.
✺ People who adopt, no matter the reasoning, and remember that adoption is not about themselves or “saving” a child or replacing that child’s parents, but about making more love and giving that child more parents and more opportunities to learn and feel comforted by the world around them.
✺ People who aren’t cis women but who birth babies anyway, who say fuck the hetero-patriarchy and make beautiful, new, unusual families that are based on more than obligation and expectation. Trans women who teach their bodies to lactate, who impregnate their wives and husbands, who carefully instruct their existing children on how to call them “mom.” Trans men who show up to the pregnancy clinic each week looking more and more pregnant and ignoring the looks from the other patients, who teach the hospital staff how to refer to them as “dad”, who birth a child out of their own flesh. Nonbinary parents who come up with new, amazing terms for themselves as parents, who teach their children the intricacies of gender. Trans and Gender Nonconforming parents who adopt since they have no interest in giving birth.
Thank you. You make the world a better, more loving, more inclusive, more tender, more compassionate place. We owe you.
