Talk about my child!!!!

Do you ever want to scream at people and tell them to talk about your child, to not shy away when they hear his/her/their names? I sure do! It has been 17 years since I last held my son Joshua and daughter Jennifer and I speak their names often! I refuse to pretend that they didn’t exist and I feel it is so important to allow others to say their names as well. By talking about Joshua and Jennifer I hope to make others who have not walked this journey of child loss comfortable in saying the names of our children. When they have someone experience this devastating loss I pray they know the healing and peace it brings to us knowing others have not forgotten about our precious babies.

But what about those babies that were never seen by others? Babies that were lost at birth or in utero and never brought home for others to see them and hold them? My sweet babies that died in utero are hard for me to talk about. Why? Well for me I think it is because people dismiss my loss as if my babies were not real. And I get that to a point. My first miscarriage was at 12 weeks and my second at 9 weeks. I was not showing and for some they didn’t even know I was pregnant. We didn’t even name them so how can I speak about them? For me this brings great guilt and shame. How can I honor my older children by speaking their name but not my babies I never got to hold? How can I not even give them a name to be spoken? I think these a few of the things that make baby loss such a taboo subject but also society tells us that they didn’t matter of they dint live outside of the mother. But the mother knows……..she knows they matter because the moment she found out she was pregnant she mapped out a future with that child. That child mattered! My children mattered.

I have been challenged with naming my babies and my husband and I are praying and working on doing that. I challenge you to do the same if this is your story. Your heart knows the gender, you just follow your heart.

Susan