My therapist calls the living siblings "forgotten mourners" and I think it's a perfect fit. Nearly one year out from Max's still birthday, my 4yo daughter E seems to have integrated Max into her everyday life. I'm so very thankful for my therapist and for you Glow mamas who have helped me to help my daughter to grieve. She now fiercely holds the role of reminding the family to say "goodnight" (including hugs to his picture) and has been planning his birthday party for weeks. I no longer flinch at her logical statements blurted out in public for an audience (such as yesterday when she announced to the grocery clerk that she'd need to blow out Max's birthday candles, because he's dead). Instead, now I smile at how E so warmly protects her brother. I cry in silence, of course, at the unfairness of it all. But for the next few days I find comfort in a big sister who celebrates her little brother the only way she can. Thanks, all, again. For helping me to navigate this horrendous puzzle. For sharing your stories. For sharing your wisdom. For sharing your babies...

Carole,

Can you share how you guys have done so well. We lost our second daughter at 35 weeks just four weeks ago and our first just turned 4. We know she is processing it as she drops random questions/comments about the baby. And, our once awesome sleeper is not doing so well in that department. She won't really talk about the baby when we try to bring it up except to say that she isn't sad about it any longer. What did you guys do? Where can I find some guidance?

Many thanks.

Oh my gosh, actually, this year has been hell. I'm sorry if I gave a different impression. But I wanted to acknowledge that a year out (and LOTS of work) it is tolerable. It is soooooo hard to parent a living child through grief. It was almost worse than my own grief. I am particularly lucky in that my psychologist has expertise in child grief. I took my E to see her often & we talked about her in my sessions a lot. I'll ask her if she has any resources to recommend or share. The other thing that helped was sharing with others here at Glow. Feeling like a failure was my typical day- Glow folks helped me to see my behaviors & feelings were normal. I also latched onto baby-loss blogs, one in particular of a woman who had a similar-aged daughter: https://marchisfordaffodils.wordpress.com. I literally stayed up one night reading every entry & highly recommend it.

There were and are still times my daughter E would say she didn't miss Max. There were times she said she didn't want him as a brother & other things that broke my heart. I just always reflected back how hard her situation was (in 4 year old language), that it's ok to not be sad, etc. It was actually after about 4 months, when I wasn't crying everyday, that my daughter started showing her sadness. I posted several times on this board, as have others. You should feel free to read those & of course post anytime. I honestly can't believe how much I relied upon the experience of others. Finally, I'm more than happy to talk offline. My email address is cbroderick4@gmail.com. You can do this, mama. Sending love & strength...

Our only living child was two and a half when his baby brother died. I wasn't sure how he would take it. He talks about him. On occasion, he calls his stuffed animals by his brother's name and "takes naps with him." Last night he was telling me his brother likes some of the same things he does: playing on piles of blankets, etc.
I might have only thought these things were touching and sad but I am happy I read "Finding Hope When a Chilld Dies" by Sukie Miller because now I think maybe my toddler understands death better than I do.
People say toddlers have trouble understanding death as permanent but maybe it's not permanent. Maybe there is an afterlife and maybe the living can communicate with the dead. Even if we can only give his brother a pretend hug because it's really a stuffed animal, maybe somewhere, somehow, he feels it and knows we care.
Or maybe not, but I can see little point to life at all if death is a complete void.

My son is 2.5 and my daughter died a little over three months ago during birth. All he knows is that his mom and dad when to the hospital to have his sister and when they came back, everything was different. It breaks my heart to parent him sometimes. It hurts to look at baby pictures of him, remembering his milestones, remembering the joy I felt rocking him, nursing him and knowing that I can't do that with her. It hurt the other day when he played with his infant cousin, making him smile, knowing that he will never do that with his sister. It kills me to see brothers and sisters playing together. I was so looking forward to being there when they met for the first time. Instead she died and he never saw her. He never held her. He never got to make her smile. This was stolen from us. So fucking sad.

It breaks my heart to know that I am a different mom, less patient, more sad and angry. Sometimes it takes every ounce of energy I have to play with him or read him a story or even just smile at him. I am so worried about how this will affect him. He really doesn't understand what he has lost yet. I'm sure it will happen soon. He knows his sister's name, can point to her picture, goes in her room sometimes, but I think it is way too abstract for him. For my son, his pain is my pain and vice versa. When I am pulling it together, he is ok, when I'm a mess, he is too. I hate that I am the one causing him sadness. His new thing is to ask me, "Are you good today mom?" He never did that before. He also started stuttering, which worries me that he is being really stressed. Ahhh this is so hard. It is still hard, but I will say easier then when I was in the raw beginning stages of grief. Still sometimes it hits me. Really, I am pushing myself to get better so that I don't screw him up worse.

I don’t know… Love and strength to you all. We WILL get through this, we don’t have a choice do we?

Margaret - Your post is so similar to how I feel. I know my patience is not like it used to be and I feel so guilty about that. I feel like I need to treasure every single second with my living child because she is all I have. Like I'm supposed to make the most of every single second with her because my next chid was taken from me. I worry I'm going to screw her up. So, thanks for being honest as it makes me not feel alone in my feelings!

Em and Carole - thanks for your words.

Thank you all for your posts. I have a 21 month old living son, Henry, and i just lost my other son, Francis, at 17 weeks. The day after Francis was born we were told my Grandma was dying so we drove to see her. I was able to tell her I loved her but she didnt open her eyes so I am not sure she heard me. She passed away 2 days after I gave birth to my son. I feel like I was robbed of the opportunity to tell my baby boy that I loved him before he passed as the MD said that there is no way to know when he passed. I find myself full of questions and no answers, full of pain and anger. And I have this wonderful little boy that is full of energy and joy that I should be cherishing and spending as much time with as I possibly can. But all I want to do is hide away by myself and cry. How do you teach a little boy that it is okay to be sad sometimes without taking away his joy? When I am sad, frustrated, angry and impatient he visibly feels that and gets upset too. I feel like I am toxic to him. I feel guilty. I fear I am going to look back at what I missed out on with him and have regrets. How am I supposed to manage all of this? I am feeling a bit like a failure and that all the confidence I had that I was a good mama is gone. Any advice on how to get through this would be appreciated.

I can only tell you that from my experience, I relied on help a LOT during the first month. I needed time to cry and grieve. I would have my dad, mom, husband take care of him while I went upstairs to cry. I did cry in front of him too, that was impossible to avoid. As you know, its much deeper than just crying. I felt toxic too. I felt like I was just going through the motions, I felt so disconnected from him. I was sharp and harsh at times, and I still feel guilty. I relied on my husband and parents to have fun and play with him, because it was so damn hard to do and he needed it.

I hate to say it like this, but to some degree, we have to just go through the motions and that just has to be enough, especially in the beginning. I have to, for lack of a better word, "suck it up" because he still needs me to be his mom. I would watch him playing, and his play would revolve around a character 'looking for his mom.' That breaks my heart. I haven't seen that kind of play for a while, so hopefully that means I am doing better.

So practically speaking, I made myself try to put aside my grief and play, read, and even force a laugh with him, for short periods during the day. I made sure to explain why I am sad, so he didn't think it was him. I am still doing this, you know- forcing myself at times, and it is easier than right after she died.

Guilt, though, man, that guilt just kills me. I am so guilty that I was pregnant and grouchy- which I was, I couldn't get on the floor and play, I was tired, and I relied on family for help instead of doing it myself. Then my daughter died, and it got even worse... Now I'm thinking about being pregnant again, and I am terrified of doing this all to him again! It is so complicated having a child to take care of.... I am so grateful to have him, I am so grateful to hold him and rock him and have someone to sing to, but I HATE that this is going to affect him negatively.

Here's a tough, awful feeling i had. I resented my son for living, for surviving when my daughter died. It's twisted, but I felt it and I had to talk about it. I think it caused me to have less patience with him, be a little sharper, harsher. And then there came a moment when I really thought, 'he didn't do this, he didn't ask for this, if I had never been pregnant, he would have been fine.' This is something that I wanted for him, not the other way around. So I can't let him lose his mom too. I need to fight, sometimes with every ounce of energy I have to be the mom I want to be.

Damn, parenting is so very hard, I had no idea when I decided to have kids that it would be like this, but it is, so I feel like I just have to acknowledge that. Please have compassion for yourself. I know it is hard, but you need to have compassion for what you all are going through. Also, I didn't get to say, "I love you either." I am so sad about that too- but I really believe that our babies felt that love, that the words don't matter. Every time I thought about her, was excited about her coming, talked about her- I really do believe she felt that, she KNEW she was loved. I believe your son knew this too. If the depth of our sadness reflects the depth of our love, how could our babies not know they were loved?

I have been reading along with this post but staying out of it. I have been very honest since my second daughter died about how hard it was to parent my living child in the depths of that grief, and I have sometimes felt like I should not be so honest. There is a powerful code of conduct in place for bereaved parents that requires us to be constantly grateful for the living children we have. I don't think any of us would say we weren't grateful or recognize how fortunate we are in having those living children, but it is also so incredibly difficult to be a good parent when you are grieving hard, and when those living children are also grieving hard, too. I was a shitty mom to my living daughter for a while. I wanted to be by myself and I never could be. I wanted her to be quiet so I could think and remember and not lose any detail of her sister's short life and of my memories of her beautiful body. I did not want to play. I wanted to cry all day long. I fantasized about running away. And then one day I realized how badly she was hurting too. And though I resented it, I started to fake it. I faked it all day long. I loved her with all my heart and I wanted to be a good mother to her, but I was absolutely incapable of it. I worried so much about the damage I was inflicting on her. So much.

She was 3 then and is 6 now and she is lovely. She is mature, she can talk about her feelings, she cares for other people and is considerate. She is funny as hell. We have such a good time together. And we talk about her sister all the time. She misses her very much, too. She is a forgotten mourner - outside of me, my husband and my mother, no one ever seems to wonder how she is doing or expect her to be grieiving and working through things. Even in babyloss circles it sometimes seems to me that siblings' grief is downplayed. Sometimes, I wonder if we are so afraid of hurting people with no living children that we forget that the living children are people too. Stillbirth or neonatal death or baby death of any kind is not just something that happens to mothers - it happens to the whole family.

All this to say that you are all doing a good job even if you don't think you are because you are there. You are doing your best. It is so fucking hard. I am sending you all lots of love and strength, and I want you to know that it does get better.

Wow, thank you all for your thoughts. I just discovered this website a few hours ago... My son is nearly 6, and we lost his little sister just 2 months ago. (Missed mc. I/she/we were about 17 weeks when her body was born.) When we told him that the baby was no longer going to come, that her heart had stopped beating, he literally fell over (we were all sitting on our bed) in his display of dismay... and that's been about it. That's been all that's obvious, anyways. There are little comments here and there, little behaviors, that make me suspect he's still processing in some ways.... and yet it's all I can do to get through the day on my own, let alone find energy and space for his emotions. Losing our little girl made me hyper-aware of how precious and fleeting life is -- and yet at the end of the day when we get home, I have no energy left for the nearly-6-year-old life that's right there, 10 feet away from me, clearly wanting my attention but also avoiding me... So good to know I'm not alone.