Paige sent us an email with this question and I simply had to send it out to our fledgling community here for a wider set of answers - also for myself, a few days away from my own first anniversary of the birth of Liam and Ben. Paige, I hope you don't mind.... :)

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My daughter's "would be" 1st birthday is in 2 days. It is looming over me like some dreaded disease I can't run from. I am having a hard time facing the fact that it been a year and I still am not doing well. I need ideas of things to do to remember her on this day. Her death date is 8 days later and I need ideas for that day as well. I want to start a special tradition with my family or by myself to do every year on those days but I am stuck on ideas. Got any?

We are barely a month out, but I can answer at least by telling what we plan to do. We intend to spend each "birthday" of our Doodles "visiting" them, alone together, without the distractions of family, friends or everyday life (apologies for the egregious use of quotations, but obviously I didn't mean the literal sense of either of those words).

We aren't sure where we will go yet. We let our babies be buried by the hospital - they won't have individual graves or markers, but will be buried in an area of a cemetery devoted to other premature/stillborn infants. In addition, some wonderful women in an online community to which I belong have donated to have trees planted for each of them, which will be specifically designated as their trees, in a public park. We will visit one or both of these places each year.

Hi....Janis posted about this blog today, and I came to read and the first thing I see is "anniversaries"...and today is an anniversary. ANOTHER anniversary. Today would have been the day I birthed my baby. She/he was due May 8th, but I would have had her/him today via csection. And nobody remembered, except me, of course. So today, I have been suffering silently because although I want to scream, " I should be having a baby today!" at the top of the mountains, I can't seem to open my mouth to even say the words. It's almost as if I by saying the words it will become MORE true. And I don't know how that could be. I look down at my body and instead of a swelling, full belly I see a lumpy post pregnancy looking belly. But...I have no baby to go with those lumps. I want to grab people and say, I JUST had a baby 20 weeks ago.

The same amount of time has passed since I had the baby that I was actually pregnant with our baby.

And so....ANOTHER anniversary. I wish it was the only one. But it seems my life is filling up with dates of babies born still, due dates, conception dates. It's as if I'm walking through a mind field on the calendar that is my life.....

Thank you Janis for posting this blog....apparently I needed to speak my voice today. Thank you.

It has been 4 years since we lost Matty, and every year the anniversary has been different. I guess it is the kind of person that I am, but every year I feel the need to to do something different, so I do. I tend to think about it a lot in the days leading up to it (obviously) and ask myself what feels "right" at that time, based on where I am at emotionally. The anticipation of the anniversary for me is ALWAYS worse than the actual day. The first year I just cleared my calendar of any commitments, holed up in my house and brought out the memory box. The next year was better and the next year better still. The anniversary to me though, is my due date, April 27, rather than March 8 when he was born and died, I think because that is what should have been, and also because I am the only one who remembers that day and I like that intimacy. Although, as the years go on increasingly I am the only one who remembers his birthday too. Do what your soul tells you too, even if that is nothing but remembering.

The 1st anniversary of Walker's death was 2/16/08. We had a memorial service, because we had no energy for one at the time of his death. On his birthday, 2/11, we drove out to a beautiful spot in the desert and let some of his ashes go and drank some of the champagne that I'd bought for after the birth and cried and held each other and laughed and spoke to him and celebrated and grieved. I think we'll do that on his birthday next year also.

I learned that my baby's heart had stopped beating on Aug. 5th, 1998, & delivered her on Aug. 7th. Depending on how the weekdays fall, I usually try to take at least the 7th off work, possibly both. (Dh usually prefers to go to work & stay busy.) I used to belong to an e-mail list for loss moms & I would re-post my story there every year... I take out Katie's box & go through her things, all the cards we received, etc. I arrange to have an "In Memoriam" published in the local paper that day, & send a donation to our pregnancy loss support group in Katie's name.

When dh gets home, we order in Chinese food, since that's what we did the night we got home from the hospital (nobody wanted to cook!), then take pink roses to the cemetery. And sometimes we stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home, since we did a lot of that as a way to get out of the house in the days after our loss.

I've actually been away on holiday in August two of the last three years. It felt strange to be away on such an important date, but we carried out our rituals before we left, & spent some time as couple remembering our daughter on that day, so it all worked out OK. This year will mark the 10th "anniversary" of our loss, & we've already arranged to take that week off to be at home. I agree with the above poster that the anticipation is usually worse than the day itself.

I just "celebrated" my 11th year anniversary since Ciena's birth and death date. For me I used to do the balloon release too... but now I don't. 2 years ago my son was born on my daughter's birth/death date. They are exactly 9 years apart to the day. This year I welcomed another little boy into my life 4 days after my daughter's birth/death date. I have decided that this is the way Ciena would have wanted me to celebrate her life. Enjoy their lives as much as possible. I make it a point to speak her name to anyone I can that day.. as a reminder to me and to her that she has not been forgotten.. because now 11 years out.. sometimes I might go months and months with out uttering her name but I think about her every day.

I do something different every year.

Matthew's birthday is on June 7th and on that day I do go to the cemetery. My boy had red hair and I loved dressing him in orange. So? We plant orange flowers on his grave that will last through the summer.

BUT. The focus is not on loss on that day. I want to celebrate the joy that he was on that day so we usually do something "Fun" with our boys.

On his death date (Sept 23) It just depends on my need. Every year I think "THIS year it will be easier" but it isn't.

I always visit his grave, and the day usually involves going fetal in my bed at some point with a vat of Ben & Jerry's and a couple of packages of Double Stuffed Oreos.

Not very healthy, I know. You do what you've got to do, though.

My son Andrew was born on May 5, 2006 and died on July 9, 2006. We buried him on July 14, 2006. (His due date was July 30, 2006.) Each of these days are painful in its own way. I always want to mark the occasion in some special, extraordinary way to honor my wonderful little guy. But I never actually do. Whenever one of these days rolls around, I get overwhelmed by my grief. I usually just look through the scrapbook I made documenting his life and death, have a good, hard cry, and wake up the next day with a terrible headache because of all the crying.

My son's second "birthday" was a few days ago. The most my husband and I could accomplish was buying a balloon and flowers and taking them to Andrew's grave. While I'm glad we did this, it actually made me feel worse. It didn't seem grand enough or special enough. It felt like one more way I failed my son.

I don't know if these anniversary days are ever going to get any easier. Part of me hopes they won't because the pain is a tangible reminder of my son, and I don't want to forget him.

My sons' unfulfilled due date is this Monday, 5/19/08. I don't know what we're going to do, if anything. Saturday the local hospital is having a memorial service for babies who died there. It's Wednesday and I still don't know if I want to go.

Nothing seems enough, or right. Maybe I'll just stay in bed.

Charlotte's birthday has gotten better with time. We always all stay at home, together. We walk together to the stone down by the river that is her memorial. We plant flowers, we throw rocks in the river, and we sing.
This year was a little different. Our son, Liam, is four now. He has expectations about what a birthday should be like. When he awoke on the morning of his sister's fifth birthday, he raced downstairs to see the presents. He was crestfallen, and disappointed for Charlotte, when there weren't any laid out on the couch, as their had been on his birthday and his little sister Aoife's birthday.
We did have a few things to open, but they weren't toys. I made a point to imagine that next year we might get a few things and wrap them up for the kids, to make the day seem more like a birthday.
I always bake a cake. I make it beautiful, with flowers, and nice icing. My sweet husband and I have a lovely, alternative birthday song that we sing each year. It's to the tune of the skater's waltz, and we sing:
It's your birthday, it's your birthday, we love you
It's your birthday, and you were a dream come true
When we blow out the candles
One light stays aglow
That's because you're in our hearts
Where ever we go.

So this year, we sang this, and the children looked at us, bewildered. We asked them, "Did you want to sing the regular birthday song?"
They nodded, enthusiastically. Then broke into song, the two of them, joyously singing for their sister who they've never met, who they love somehow, and Greg and I just burst into tears.
It was beautiful.

My daughter was born on Christmas day. I have no idea how it's going to go down. I want to make it special, but not morbid. And I want privacy... but it's Christmas and family will want to see my surviving son. It's going to be a challenge.

I had planned on doing the balloons like we did at her funeral. My son seemed to think this was very special. I am trying very hard not to think of the damage to the environment.

Why did it have to be Christmas? And other day would have been so less complicated. Christmas makes it harder. And absolutely impossible to forget.

That 'first birthday" is coming up. We had originally planned to have a memorial/funeral service but there is still no cemetery (can't get the land surveyed & marked) and nobody seems to want to plan anything, I need a place to go be with her and I still can't "find" her anywhere, so it's muddling about in my head, do I do something or not?