Remembering pregnancy loss - Trigger warning

Trigger warning: please don’t read this if you feel this would really hurt. I am in a place now where I can talk a bit more about pregnancy loss, but not everybody is.

My beautiful son was born in February 2014. I love my almost 14 month old. Yet I still remember the anticipation, and joy and excitement I had during my first pregnancy that was abrubtly too short, ending at 5 weeks. I remember how it hurt so bad, I cried for the three days that the miscarriage lasted. I told family and friends that our good news turned to bad news. I went the hospital twice for testing and got pain medications. I was fortunate enough to avoid a D&C.

I feel grateful but still want to do something more to memorialize my little angel child. A baby I never saw, but felt inside me. A baby I never heard but knew was mine.

I was thinking of a plaque. I had handmade one but it broke during our move. I still have the pieces I put in the shadow box but I want something a little more solid so I was considering the plaque.

Something that says: Our [name_u]Angel[/name_u] in [name_f]Heaven[/name_f], [name_u]Winter[/name_u] [name_f]Noelani[/name_f] [name_u]December[/name_u] 2012. “A persons a person no matter how small. - Dr. Seuss”

[name_m]How[/name_m] have you remembered your pregnancy loss?

I think that is a great idea to have a plaque. I have not experienced a pregnancy loss, but my cousin-in-law, who is also my very close friend experienced on about 5 years ago. They named the baby and she wears a
birthstone ring to have a daily reminder.

I think you should do whatever feels right and appropriate for you and your own feelings. I miscarried my first pregnancy and it was traumatic at the time. Sometimes I think about the baby that never was in a ‘what if…’ sort of way, but for me it doesn’t really feel like I ever had a baby to lose. The pregnancy was so abstract for me at that stage - we were excited but we knew that things don’t always work out and hadn’t told anyone about it yet. Although it will always stay with me as an experience that I have had, I am quite happy to forget the details to be honest. I don’t mind talking frankly about it now if the subject comes up, and I think it’s important that such a thing is not a taboo at all, but I still don’t feel that it’s something that other people need to know about me and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t feel all that important anymore. In a way, I feel like this pregnancy is my first pregnancy, because now I can feel my baby inside me, I’ve seen her and she looked like a little human, I can see my belly moving when she kicks. I have a strong emotional connection to her, she feels like a real person to me in a way that I never felt about the actual first pregnancy. That feels almost like a technicality now.

The point is that miscarriage is an extremely personal and subjective experience, and I’m quite sure that no two miscarriages are the same, even if one woman is unlucky enough to go through more than one. Different people have different feelings on what has happened, and they are all valid. The important thing is to recognise your own feelings and honour them, which it sounds like you are doing. Your plaque sounds like a beautiful way for you to remember your baby.

I’m not pregnant, trying, and I haven’t suffered any miscarriages but my mom has had 4. Two of them came in the second trimester and, since that is not as common, they had genetic testing done and knew both babies were girls. She told me that she was considering getting a tattoo of a plant with three blooming flowers (representing me and my sisters) and four flower bulbs (representing the four she lost). I thought that was sweet.