This is going to be more questions than experiences, let alone answers, i"m afraid. Has anyone any insights into how to speak to a little pre-school-age child whose sibling died as a newborn baby? Any resources? The only thing I have is a small paperback book called "We were gonna have a baby but we had an angel instead". If there were any choice at all, I wouldn't have got it, because of the confusing angel stuff; we don't read the words and the pictures are actually mostly okay and fit our family fairly well. But it is the only book I have found for 2- to 4-year-olds whose baby sibling dies at or around the time of birth. And looking at it every so often is the only thing I really do to address my living child's grief (if I can call it that). I would like to do more to encourage their sibling relationship too, but it would need to be age-appropriate and I'm unsure how to do that. It all makes me so very distraught. He is missing his little brother, his chance to be a big brother, but he doesn't really know it. How can i start to introduce the idea of having a dead baby sibling, when he has no idea about so much of life, let alone death?

Hi Ruby,

I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. We have the book you mention, along with one called "Something Happened." I might be wrong, but I don't think the "Something Happened" book has the angel theme - maybe look into that one? I liked it.

My daughter Christine was stillborn this past March. We just try to talk about her openly with our living children, so that they know about her and know that she is their sister and that she was, and still is, very loved. We made a special book of photos of her, cards we received after she died, and other items like that, which they like to look at. They also like to visit her grave on occasion and take special things to her, even if it's just looking around the grass to see any tiny flowers they can pick and set on her grave.

I think that children grasp just what they need to depending on how old they are - for our five year old, it enough to know that our baby's heart stopped beating, which is why she died and is not here. He is very aware of her and talks about her when he feels comfortable doing so, which always makes me happy. I also love to hear him tell people that he has two sisters - one here in his family and one who is buried in the cemetery.

In short, while she is not here, we try to make her a part of our family such that our children know who she is and feel comfortable talking about here. We try not to force anything on them, and instead try to follow their lead. I also think it is nice to have a special place, whether a grave, a place where ashes are spread, a memorial garden, etc., for us to go and visit on occasion to remember her together.

It's not fun to have to deal with this. I wish my children didn't know death so immediately at such a young age. I wish more than anything their sister were here, and I am sure you wish that too, about your little boy.

Hi Ruby,

I just wanted to give an update on my previous comment. I went back and looked at the book I mentioned ("Something Happened" by Cathy Blanford) and there is no mention of angels. And though it says on the front that it is "a book for children and parents who have experienced pregnancy loss," the way it is written, I think it would also be appropriate for a baby who died as a newborn because it doesn't specifically say the baby died inside the mother.

Here are the first few lines, to give you an idea:

On the day it happened, everyone woke up happy.
We were all happy about the new baby that was coming to be in our family.
Mommy was happy because she really loved me
And now she was going to have a new baby, too.
Daddy was happy because one kid was great, and two would be even better!
I was happy because I knoew that Mommy and Daddy loved me.
I loved them and my dog, Rusty, but...
I had always wanted a baby sister or brother.
But that night...
Something really bad happened.
Instead of going to the hospital to say hello,
...we had to go to the hospital to say goodbye.
Mommy and Daddy told me our baby had died,
...but I didn't even know about that.
Our baby died...
because something happened.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. And wow, typing it out, how depressing! The illustrations are lovely and the end of the book is good because it reinforces the parents' love for the child and the fact that life, while different, goes on.

Hope that helps!

Okay, last comment on this, I promise...I just don't have my head screwed on tight enough to get it all in one post, I guess. The other thing I liked about this book is that there are blurbs throughout the book for the parents which talk about how to discuss the various aspects of losing a baby with the baby's living sibling(s). As you mentioned you were looking for resources to help you in helping your child understand the grief surrounding losing your baby, this part of the book may be especially helpful.

I would second the recommendation for "Something Happened". Our older son was 3 years old when our second was stillborn. I found the book very helpful in talking about what happened to his brother, why he didn't come from the hospital, and why Mommy and Daddy were so sad. I also really liked "Lifetimes: The Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children" by Bryan Mellonie. The illustrations are really beautiful and the words are simple and straight-forward, which is important for preschoolers.

I am so sorry for the loss of your son, I hope you are able to find some peace in the quiet moments in between grieving and parenting. It it so difficult in the beginning but it does get easier as time goes on.

Hi Ruby,
I second the comment made above by Christine's Mom. When Ethan died one year ago we had a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old and an 11-month-old baby at home. In general, we tried to be very open with them about what happened, in general terms, not too much detail (Ethan died at 4 days old in the NICU and they never had the chance to meet him). My husband happens to be a minister, so our children probably have heard more about death than most at such young ages. With that said, they didn't grasp the depth of it until it happened to their family so intimately. And still, they are too young to understand it fully.

We spoke (still do) openly about their brother, assuring them that he was real and will remain their little brother always. We told them that it was OK to be sad, or angry, or none of the above. And that they can always come to us if they are having one of those feelings about their brother's death. We tried to model in healthy ways how to grieve (it's ok to see mom cry while making dinner, she is sad but always loves you and she will be ok too). our oldest was 4 when ethan died, and art became a big outlet for her. she loved to draw pictures for the family, and would often include ethan in them. sometimes she would draw things for ethan. other times she would draw me crying (healthy for her, though it stung quite a bit to see myself through my daughter's eyes while in the raw grief). also, ethan's closest sibling in age has now just turned 2. i tell him regularly about ethan, and encourage him to try to say ethan's name. which he doesn't do quite yet, and that is ok. but i tell ryan that he is a big brother, thanks to his little brother, who he never had the chance to meet. we also put up pictures of ethan where we display the photos of our other children.

one other thing, we tried to assure our other children that nobody else in our family was sick, and that mom and dad, and their other siblings, weren't going to die anytime soon. i recognize that this isn't a guarantee - but we didn't want our kids, given that they were so very young, to overly worry that anyone else in our family was going to become so sick and die quickly.

more recently we have discussed having a special place in our yard/garden to include memorial stones for ethan. (they had been around a tree we planted his ashes with, though for various reasons they had to be removed from that special place) our now 4-year-old son wants to select a special stone or seashell from our family travels and place them in ethan's special spot at our home. that was all his idea. i think if we, as parents, do our best to normalize the love and grief that comes from such an abnormal tragedy, then our other children will find their way, find their relationships with their siblings gone all too soon.

lots of love to you. it sounds like you are doing amazingly well as a parent, in such an impossible situation. hope you are able see that. it's a blessing to parent our other living children, though a challenge too.

It took us a while to explain to our daughter (now 4) that her baby brother died. She was a few months shy of four when it happened, and her other brother (now 3) still doesn't really comprehend it.

When Rhys first died, and all of a sudden the baby that had overtaken our house was gone, Sami asked about him a lot. We told her that he was gone, simple as that, and would not be coming back. We told her we are sad and we miss him, and its ok to be sad. We just didn't say "He died. He is dead." We didn't want her to repeat those words without understanding them. You know how kids are, they sing and mimic the things you say. My sister told my four year old niece that her cousin died and she would just state that matter of factly, unemotionally... and it was so hard to bear.

We let the kids look at a photo album we made of Rhys. We talk about how we love him and we miss him. He is their baby brother. A few months after he died, we talked to Sami before bed, and explained that Rhys didn't just go away, but he stopped being... he stopped living. He died. We did our best to explain that dying is when someones body stops working and they can't be with us anymore, but that their memory and their love is still in our hearts. She cried, and showed so much more understanding than I expected. When we had the same conversation with Rowan, he didn't show the same understanding, but appreciated the talk. He is sensitive and I think he feels much more than he understands. He sees when I am sad and hugs me. Sometimes we just talk about Rhys, how cute he was, how he was such a nice little baby brother.

It is really hard. I hate having to expose my babies to something so horrible, to death, to the pain we all feel at that loss. It is one of those things I would have loved to protect them from forever.

We used the Remembering our Baby workbook http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Our-Baby-Patti-Keough/dp/1561231401 to work through with our 4 and 9 year old which they really liked. They were so looking forward to having their new baby and really struggled with their loss and also with our pain.

We did use the word dead and our kids did and do use it often and have less reticence around using it than adults but I like the way that brings the truth of our loss into the public arena. No one can pretend he didn't exist in the face of my now five year old talking about him.

My children lost their uncle four years before so the elder ones not the preschooler had knowledge of death and it is a commonly discussed concept in our home. I hate that they have lost the innocence I carried till age 17 but am aware they have a gift of truly appreciating the beauty that is this life we have and that they also know death is part of life and there are rituals and remembrances that keep our love alive.

It was really hard explaining to my four year old when Zia died. As little as he is, he was so involved in my pregnancy, he was colouring and painting a little wooden house for her and at Easter, he saved his favourite egg for her. We told him that Zia wanted to go to heaven and be an angel baby, that she is now flying around and watches over him. We showed him a picture of a ceherud for analogy purposes but its tough. We told him some babies sometimes have to go. If we say she was taken, he could lose faith, saying she was sick is a lie. He still says from time to time that he wants 'his baby' as he refers to her. He cried when his dad told him while I was in hospital, we had to prepare him before he saw me, with an obviously smaller tummy. Its the saddest thing, he wanted, needed and should have got her.

Oh my typos, we showed him a cherub picture :-)

Oh my typos, we showed him a cherub picture :-)