I have to say that I'm starting to feel that I may not come back to this forum. I'm so incredibly disappointed by the "anonymous" posters who wish to say something in response to what I wrote in another thread about being upset that a person I know constantly compares her loss at 9 weeks to my own (which was very different). These people (and you may be reading this) choose to post anonymously because they don't have the guts to say something they feel outright, with courage, and to my face. I just want to say that a little courage goes a long way, I think it's important not to hide. If you disagree, great, explain why and tell me (or anyone else) nicely, and not snidely. There is no reason to tear eachother down here, only to build one another up in an atmosphere of safety and respect.

Well said Mindy. Maddie x

Mindy, please don't be deterred from posting in this forum. I agree with what you said on the other thread; I agree with what you're saying here. I was too chickenshit to post what I really wanted for fear of backlash because everyone is in a different "place" with this whole dead baby thing and have unique situations and feelings and emotions. You are right--there are no winners here. We all lost babies; we ALL lose.

I think that's really important, being free to share, even if it's "ugly" or not "politically correct" -- as long as we respect what others have said as well. Rebecca please feel free to share anything, there's no judgment coming from me, and I know so many others feel the same. This whole place we all find ourselves in is so dark and terrible, sometimes I feel like you all are the only people there with me, holding my hand. I wouldn't give you all up without a fight.

Mindy,

I'm new here but wanted to give you support. I'm in both circumstances. I have dear friend who m/c at 11 weeks (we were due only 3 weeks apart)...she often identifies with feeling everything I feel...and I think to myself, 'it's impossible'. Not to minimize her pain, but my situation just feels different from hers to me. I also have a friend (mentioned this before) who lost her 6 year old son...and I know that I dont understand her pain in the same way as losing a baby. Personally, I cannot fathom losing my 3 year old. Like you said, 'we all lose'...but I think it's good to understand that there are differences in the grief of an early m/c vs. a late term pregnancy, vs. an at-term baby, vs. a chiild who lives for several years. No better no or worse, just different.

Mindy, and everyone. I'm not a fan of anonymous posting, of anonymous threads. They make the internet feel like a bench-clearing brawl. If someone walked into my house with a ski mask on and proceeded to tell me how I'm wrong in how I perceive the world, I would ask them to remove the mask if they're going to enjoy the hospitality of my kitchen.

Here's the thing. It's one thing to use 'Anonymous' to express something that would be explosive in your life, or to explore feelings that you haven't yet resolved, and that could have consequences. It's another thing entirely to use 'Anonymous' to feel like you can hurl an opposing opinion more safely, with less recourse available to the person you're countering.

I can understand the hesitation of miscarriage sufferers to post here honestly about their pain, worrying about feeling invalidated or sheepish somehow. They come here because the community they find, the writing and the reflections, resonates with them. That makes me very glad, and they're welcome. But the reality of this space, while it's inclusive, is that it was created for bereaved parents. Early on, we talked about rolling early losses into our mandate, but we felt that such an experience was so vastly different from later or full-term or neonatal losses, we couldn't be all things to all people. And we felt that there was such a large population of women who shared a history of miscarriage, and there were already spaces on the internet for them to heal together in a way that felt right for them. It's so much more common, it's easier, we felt, to find kinship and understanding - whereas when a full-term or premature baby dies, you become one of such a small minority you feel positively leprous in the world.

Yet still, this is a healing space for people who carry all kinds of hurt. All kinds of people absorb this space, quietly and from a distance. Daughters who are motherless. Widows. People facing upheaval and loss of all kinds.

My point is this - if you can't express your opinion with your name attached to it, perhaps reconsider the method of your expression. Speak as though we were all in the same room. With respect. Countering is fine, but if you're going to counter, you need to do it with great care, and openly. I think I can speak for the other writers here when I say that's our goal. I'd not want Glow to become awash in anonymous posters because of this reason, because we want to indulge our need to be incendiary.

Does that makes sense? It's a long-winded way of saying that I'm sorry you had that experience, Mindy. And that I want anonymous posters to know that it's alright that they speak their mind, as long as they do it kindly and earnestly - and with respect for the mandate of Glow, which is to be a place to speak freely about this path.

The reason I posted on that thread as anon (and do so again here) was because I didn't want to hurt the people who have offered me support online. I have found a great deal of comfort and support in this website, and I don't want to make it feel unsafe for others.

I'm really sorry if that was what I did. I am really sorry if I was one of the ones whose words hurt you. I hope you understand though why I don't want to put my name to this.

I'm still jealous of those who lost babies later in pregnancy than me. Maybe that means that the distinction people make between late miscarriage and stillbirth is more valid than I choose to admit to myself. But I still lost a baby, and I find it hard to know whether or not I can consider myself to be a mother. Glow is one of the few places where I feel that I am, and that other people accept me as one.

But I wouldn't ever say that my experience was the same as someone who lost a full term baby. I will say I can understand some of the pain that you feel. I hope you can understand some of mine.

I will go back to my name now (and I think people who've posted here regularly might still know who I am. I hope you can understand some of what I mean, and that you can forgive me if I've hurt you).

"I'm still jealous of those who lost babies later in pregnancy than me."

I'm genuinely puzzled by this, anon. Why? Is it because your loss would then be considered more 'seen' or more 'valid' (note the quotes) by people in your life? Do you think that had it been a later loss, that people would have been more gentle with you? More willing to let you grieve?

I don't want to make assumptions or put words in your mouth, but I didn't want to just say, "Huh? Why?" lest you think I'm being snarky. I'm truly interested.

Because I never got a chance to hold my baby.

Because all I have is a strip of photos in my wallet that consists of two scan photos (one alive, one dead, and one of the coffin my child shared with five other lost babies) - no photos of my actual child.

Because I don't think my husband thinks of our loss as a really-real child, not really.

Because I never felt my baby move.

Because some days even I doubt the pain I feel. Some days I feel I'm being ridiculous, grieving a miscarriage. People around me are far more understanding of my pain than I am.

Because we went to a communal ceremony with other parents rather than a funeral for our own baby that family and friends could have attended, if we'd wanted them to.

Because if it was later on, we would have been able to find out if it was a boy or a girl.

Because if it was even one week later, our loss would have been investigated, rather than us just being told 'bad luck, it'll probably be OK next time'.

Hell even because if the loss had happened a few weeks later I would still have got maternity leave and maternity pay rather than a really shitty sickness record in work.

Basically, every reason under the sun other than my loss being seen as more valid. The only reason that I can in any way be described as grateful that this happened *after* we told everyone is that everyone in our lives seems to accept this loss as valid (which isn't to say people aren't still trying to rush our grief, but that's a different matter).

And the one thing I forgot to say before (and the most important thing of all...) - Mindy, I sincerely hope you don't leave this place.

I hope this makes some kind of sense.

I am sorry for what you've gone through. WIth respect for that, I have to say that it both makes sense, and doesn't make sense.

Envy is usually reserved for people we perceive as having been more fortunate than ourselves. For someone who's suffered a miscarriage to declare that I am more fortunate than she is - that I am to be envied because my baby died in pain at six weeks old after heart surgery and brain surgery - please understand how difficult this is to accept.

You are not ridiculous to grieve a miscarriage. Not at all. But with all kindness and the best of intents, it *is* ridiculous to envy someone whose full-term baby died because you think they benefited from being able to hold a dying or dead baby, or have pictures of a dying or dead child covered in tubes and wires, and suffering in an NICU.

That you missed the public recognition of a funeral... that you missed out on maternity pay... that you wanted to know if it were a boy or a girl ... for all this, you would have preferred to hold a dead baby in your arms over a miscarriage? I'm speechless. I don't know what to say to that. I can't possibly educate you as to the pain of holding a dying child as he struggles to breathe. This experience is never, ever to be envied. You do not want to know the pain of it.

I'll say it again: you are normal to grieve a miscarriage. But to express here that we're all luckier than you are?

...
...

Baffled, utterly. With respect, there's nothing else I can say.

OK.

I'm sorry.

If my posts can be deleted please do.

It's not that I meant to make you feel badly. That wasn't meant to be a scolding of any kind, and I was abrupt there at the end. I'm sorry about that. We all need this space to vent sometimes - to process feelings that we haven't yet found the shape of. Sometimes, finding that shape requires bumping up against other experiences. Sometimes that comparative view helps, and sometimes, it's doesn't.

Something about your post, about the sentiment of jealousy - it compelled me to address it. Just knowing that you're out there feeling this way made me sad.

You're carrying the pain of your miscarriage, the pain of all the loss that it represents, and at the same time you're carrying that feeling that at least other people had the experience - any experience - of a baby, at any expense. And that's heartbreaking.

The reason I replied to you as I did was not to make you feel like you had to apologize. Had you been in my living room and sharing it, I would have embraced you and heard all of it and I would have wanted to say "Oh sweetie, no. You don't want that. You were spared that. What you experienced is such a hurt, and it's so sad. But you don't want that."

By saying "you were spared" I don't mean to give you a platitude. I literally mean to say that by not carrying the memory of babyloss, you can be lighter of foot. Please hear that as it's said - with love, with wishing for you that you can see this.

It's important that we work through this... you're not the first person to wade into these waters here. I nod emphatically at the pain you feel. Not because I understand it, as I've never had a miscarriage. But because it's natural and it's yours to wade through.

If you'd like me to delete your posts I can, but I'd rather not - because I know there are others out there for whom your words resonate. It serves all of us to think it through. It helps all of us to refine the shapes of our stories.

With love and respect, sincerely. xo

I can understand the sentiment of "anon" wanting her loss to be validated in some way, by having it deemed "important" enough to grieve, but I echo the sentiments of Kate when I say that you do not wish, truly, that you had ever held your dead or dying newborn (or older) baby in your arms. I cannot (for myself or anyone else) begin to describe the utter crushing loneliness and devastation (and even now these words seem inadequate) of holding my son as he took his last breath on the third day after his full term birth (at 41 weeks). One iota of envy of that experience is born of ignorance and folly.
That said I understand that all you want is understanding, to grieve, and to be loved, and that is certainly offered here.

I've been away from this forum for a few days (broken laptop) and what I'm picking up from these two threads is a whole lot of unneccessary hurt. Collateral damage. Messages taken up that weren't actually issued.. and this is the nature of the beast. Words are imperfect signifiers because the thought is always completed by the person hearing it. Now that an avalanche of pain and grief has crashed separately on each of us, there's a further filter between us and the world we're gazing upon.

Through my own filter, of course, and because at the moment I'm concerned that 'another anon' will want to leave this forum too: I get you, I get what you're saying, and I get that you were talking about yourself and no-one else. Jealousy is a theme in many posts throughout this forum - most often directed at the outside world, a place many of us only gingerly inhabit right now. In that context we all seem to be comfortable with it. It's a real emotion which I frequently feel, and it's perfectly valid for me and not at all valid for the person on whom my ugliness lands. But it isn't about that person. If my baby hadn't died, I wouldn't be feeling it. It's about me.

I, too, at times, am grateful that my baby lived as long as 33 weeks, and jealous of anyone whose baby lived longer. That is the truth, and it's about me, me, me and - every now and then - just a little bit about me. I'm even, at times, jealous of me - I have these brief disconnects, sometimes, where I'm looking down on my own melodrama and find it attractive and romantic, and I'm jealous of it. (I alluded to this elsewhere, and some of you will remember that I was struggling with self-hate at the absurdity of it.) An example of an action that can bring on this disconnect: looking at a photo of me with Max and forgetting how I felt when that photo was taken - seeing, instead, just a mother holding her baby. Well, this mess did happen to me and it isn't remotely attractive from the inside, but there you have it - I do feel these feelings sometimes.

It all comes from wanting to have spent more time with our babies, to feel more like mothers, and to know that our pain is - objectively - legitimate. We all need these things, no matter where we were on the 'stork ticker'. (Always hated those stupid things - I think, even then, I was jealous of people who were further along, even when I figured I'd get there soon enough myself.) To reach this elusive ideal of 'fulfilled legitimate mother' we are perhaps compelled to rank our loss against someone else's - secretly, momentarily, barely consciously, hypothetically, and not even necessarily within the category of pregnancy. Otherwise, what are we, but wallowers with a tenuous grip on reality? It's self-preservation, all of it, and it's inherently reasonable and natural - just ugly, viewed from anyone else's vantage point. But it's never about their vantage point.

Love to you all. This discussion is healthy and necessary. I don't want any of us to leave. And I sign my name, because it is the consistent me, but still an anonymous me, and it's all this introverted self-doubter could offer an imperfect internet. xxx

I can also sort of understand anon's point. I was told point blank that my loss wasn't real because I was only 21 weeks and the baby wasn't viable. Never mind he was perfect and healthy and named and loved. Never mind that he was born alive (which is not meant to be a slight on stillbirth, though I always fear it may be seen that way) and died in his father's arms. Nope, just a later miscarriage. And after all, we can always have more (insert snort of disbelief here).

The wish for validation sometimes leads to more longing. Of course, as Kate points out, the logical line that walks is not one we would truly wish for.

I do know that in my fantasies of more time, they rarely end with his death though. It's a refrain that if we'd just had more time, he might have lived. We might have discovered the problems, there might have been a chance.

It's also because of how much regret I feel in having wasted so much of the time we did have in worry and fear. I feel like I only really loved him perfectly for four days, when I was swept away and just couldn't hold back anymore. I have so many regrets about the time we spent together. I don't think I let him know how loved he was and I wish for more time to change that.

I certainly don't wish for that at the expense of experiencing the hell that others have gone through - indeed I have been thankful to have escaped that pain and to have known we were saying goodbye and pouring it all in while we could rather than be stabbed in the heart by hope. But it's pretty rare that the logic extends so far into that longing or wish, you know?

Thank you all for trying to understand, even though I accept that what I say makes no sense. I never meant to imply that this was something I decided or reasoned out. If only logic came into it...

Moops says 'It all comes from wanting to have spent more time with our babies, to feel more like mothers, and to know that our pain is - objectively - legitimate.'

Yes. I can't say it any better than that.

Mindy - 'One iota of envy of that experience is born of ignorance and folly.'
I can accept that. It's how I feel but yes, I can absolutely understand that it's born of not having walked there.

I have been too scared to log on all day. I wish I had been brave enough to log on sooner. I shouldn't have been so scared.

I wish I was brave enough to sign my name.

Thank you all.

another anon, I like to think - no, I love to think - that this is a wee corner of the internet that isn't like all the rest of it. I doubt we've ever made anyone afraid or nervous to express or vent in any way they need to, for fear of being torn to shreds or ridiculed in any way.

We've had debates and disagreements on all manner of topics... but it never fails to make me feel grateful, how gentle and thoughtful those conversations are. It doesn't matter where we come from, from what angle, with what experiential history. We all know what it is to be turned inside-out, and to be talking and writing through it. We've all been - and still are - illogical and reactionary and incendiary. We all have our triggers and our strange rationales that, in turn, disrupt our days and help us survive them.

And so know that you're welcome here, and embraced here. We're all in various stages of the very hard work of recovery. We need those insensible days as much as the pulled-together ones. It's just a part of the work that must be done, and everyone knows this, and so we are patient with one another.

Thank you so much for continuing to be here, and to everyone else for making me feel so blessed to be a part of this. xo

I'm a little late to this discussion but I thought I would add my tuppence worth. And I'm posting, quite possibly rashly, under my own name.

Another anon, I lurked here for a long time. I didn't want to post because I felt that I had no right to. I lost one of twin girls to prematurity. My daughters were born at 23 weeks, that strange tipping point where there might be a chance of survival with medical interventions galore. One of my girls survived, her sister died at three days old. I sometimes feel that my grief is self-indulgent, less valid somehow, but I don't think that having another child, regardless of how 'miraculous' the survival of said child may be, eliminates the grief that is caused by a loss. I don't feel that losing a child so unprepared for this world eases that grief either. I suspect that grief varies in texture, no doubt it is modulated by a myriad of factors. Such as, in my own case, the survival of her sister. But maybe that is all hair-splitting, grief is grief is grief. Sad is sad is sad.

I was also puzzled by your expression of jealousy towards those whose children had survived for longer. But, I then thought about that situation 'in reverse' as it were. A number of people have suggested to me (and this suggestion is not particularly welcome I might add) that G 'should' have been a so-called vanishing twin. That she should have miscarried at such an early point in my pregnancy that I probably would never have been aware of her existence. If I had the power to wish things into being, which sadly none of us do, would I have wished for that situation? To undo her. To shorten a life already so short. To make it so transient, so brief, that I may never have even known of her existence.

Could I wish that wish? Only if it might have spared her pain. Only if an even briefer existence, slipping from one horizon to the next with barely a flicker, would actually be preferable to three days in intensive care. I don't know.I honestly couldn't make that call. I suppose she might have wished it for herself. I have spent much time in the wee small hours trying to imagine myself into that tiny body, to try and feel the ventilator breathing for me, the lines in my veins, the effect of the drugs, what I would have seen through those blue eyes, through that plastic box.

But, purely on a selfish basis, I couldn't wish her life away. If her life was only ever going to be three days long and painful, I still feel so lucky to have seen her. When she died slowly in my arms when life support was removed, I felt so much love, so much happiness, so much pain, so much sorrow. I felt as though we were both transformed, for dying baby and mother, to something else, something purer. I will be scarred my the experience of losing her forever but I can't wish for that short little life to be any briefer than it was, I would keep those scars and feel honoured to have them. I think I understand what you are saying? Maybe?

Either way, she still dies. And wishing won't change anything. As Rebecca says above 'we all lose.' The only situation any of us would wish for is that our children had been born at appropriate gestation, alive and healthy. I hope you don't leave.

I have lurked for a quite awhile but this is my first time commenting in this forum. I'd like to qualify my comments by saying I have not read both threads in their entirety.

Catherine - Thank you for this: "But, purely on a selfish basis, I couldn't wish her life away. If her life was only ever going to be three days long and painful, I still feel so lucky to have seen her."

I feel the same about my Noah who was born still at 37 weeks due to a cord knot. I feel so deeply blessed to have had him in my life. If this was the only way I could ever know him - a big healthy boy squirming in my womb - a still, beautiful body born painlessly into the his fathers hands - I would not change a thing. If that was all I could have of him - if that was all I could give to him - I thank the universe for the gift.

Another Anon - in my way I hear you. In addition to Noah, I have experienced four first trimester losses and have given birth to three living children. During my pregnancy immediately after Noah's, our daughter developed a very dramatic sounding arrhythmia at 18w5d. As I spent a sleepless night listening to her plodding heartbeat on my home doppler, waiting for my early morning appointment with the mfm, I prayed that if she wasn't going to make it, as I was sure she would not, that she could just make it to 20 weeks so she could have the ridiculously arbitrary distinction of being "stillborn" instead of "miscarried". I wanted her to have a funeral. I wanted her to be buried next to her brother. I wanted her to have a grave marker and a "Certificate of Birth by Stillbirth" with her name on it. I wanted to see her and hold and photograph her. Knowing too well the bitter loneliness of grieving for lives not recognized by the rest of the world, I wanted these things so our daughter’s life and my grief could be validated as real. It wasn’t rational, but at the time I felt it was all I dared hope for.

I hope my words contribute another level of understand to the conversation.

Peace

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