Perhaps my biggest pet peeve is the people who seem to make infant loss a contest, either by invalidating their own experiences or invalidating mine.
“Oh, I only had a miscarriage so it’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through.”
“My child was stillborn. You’re lucky you had her for six days.”
Um, I’m sorry, but did we each not lose our babies? Is this a competition?
Can we fucking not?
Do I know it would be harder on me to lose Natalie at 2.5 years old than it was to lose Marie at six days? Yeah, for me, it would, because I’ve bonded with her for so long.
I’ve even thought in the past that I’d rather have a miscarriage than a stillbirth, because the emotional connection — theoretically — may have been stronger the longer I’d been pregnant.
But I also wouldn’t trade my six days with Marie for a n y t h i n g.
The fact is that infant loss, in all its forms, affects everyone differently.
It’s not about who “has it worse” or who got off easier. No, miscarriage and stillbirth and infant loss are not all the same. But others’ experiences are not relevant to yours and the emotions your loss has caused you. We shouldn’t stack our losses up against each other.
Instead, remember that what connects us in this shitty club is that we lost our babies, and ideally they should still be here with us.
Each of us has a hollowness in our souls that can’t be patched or filled with anything other than the babies we can’t get back.
And that should be enough.
Missing Marie 