086b - not so much the picture of patience

Yep, I've had my son referred to as an "it" straight to my face. Actually not too long ago. Pretty ugly thing to say. I corrected her and took it as an opportunity to tell the woman about George's life and death. Then I shrugged it off. This particular person is incredibly insensitive and for her it was just normal behavior so I was able to ignore it pretty well.

Sorry you had to be audience to that. Perhaps her "spirituality" was clouding her sensibility. I actually often find that the insensitive things people say almost always tend to be clouded in pseudo-spirituality.

088 - let's try this again...without the sucky title

I am sorry for your loss. I lost my child 2 years nine months and 15 days ago. The rage and pain is still with me. I have my wife most of the time to vent with. She has the same pain as i do. I also went bowling at lot (my hobby) i was able to release a tone of tention by flinging the ball down the lane as fast as i could for several hours. I always have to remind myself now and then that people are stupid. They only think about themselves for the most part. i still would love to make them digest their tongues once i a while but i don't. I try had to keep in control for my family and my wife because they still need me, no matter how hard it is form me. i am the man and i have to pick up and carry on. no one can understand until they have to go through it. it is different for men, women, grandparents, brothers, sisters and so on, but we all have to go through it. there is no way around the pain and the billions of stupid people out there. I have also found myself a little closer to God. So i say God bless you and your family my you continue to grow and strengthen during this time.

Just a note to let you know you are still being thought of and prayed for. God bless

June 5, 2012 | BEAR

 

090a - prayers needed for Auggie

I am so thankful to everyone here on Glow. I've lurked on boards for heart babies but I can't relate to the relentless optimism and "god has a plan" attitude, which I get in real life too. One of the nurse supervisors, trying to comfort me, said "don't be scared, he will be ok." wtf?! I snapped back at her "you don't know that, you can't say that"--really, what a riduculous thing for her to say. How was she ever made a supervisor? I'm so sick of hearing it will all be ok when things just keep getting worse and worse. I know everyone here on Glow understands all too well that you don't always get your miracle.

Auggie has a facebook page where I've been trying to keep friends and family updated. I posted the link for anyone who is interested--it is public. I'm not sure how we will get through this and we need all the support we can get. (and Steph if you see this I am thinking of you and your Henry. I don't know why our boys have to endure this.)

090c - caught off guard

Sincere thanks to everyone for your kind words and advice. I am feeling MUCH better today. I will definitely have to work on letting others know what I need from them. My husband has said the same thing. And we do have friends and family who have been very supportive.

Sarah your friend who had the dinner party sounds wonderful. We have received very few invitations to socialize. I'm sure people assume (rightly) that we aren't aren't up for a "party," but it still stings to feel abandoned--especially over the holidays. I decided today to host our own dinner party for my hubby's b-day next week, and two couples have already rsvp'd yes. I was SO afraid no one would want to come. I was afraid we'd become the scary dead baby people.

And Susan, I think it's interesting that people at church have been been the worst at knowing what to do. I personally am not religious, but we have several friends and family members who are deeply religous. They were very supportive when our daughter's heart defect was first diagnosed at 22 weeks, calling to see how we were doing, saying they were praying for us, sending inspirational messages, etc. But when she died, silence. Not even an acknowledgement. The contrast was jarring. And confusing. I'm trying my best to be gentle and understanding with others. I don't doubt that I would be one of the clueless if the situation were reversed. But I'm pretty sure I would know enough to at least send a sympathy card(!!)

Thank you all again. I'm so sorry that we are all here. I have been lurking since November but was too shy to introduce myself. It must be sad for those of you who have been here a while, to constantly see the "new here" posts. I hope that I will be able to help others, too.

091b - Christmas

093 - baby showers

So, in the last couple of months, I have had to face something that I had not yet faced. Baby showers! Yes, it has been five years since I lost my last baby and I have managed to escape all baby showers. I have lost three babies. Ones I miscarried at one month and two at five. I did go to one after I lost my first and second one, but by that time I was pregnant with my third one so it was not bad because I was looking forward to mine. In the last three months, I have been invited to three. I went to the first one because I knew it was really important to her that I go and show my love and support. It was the first one since losing Josh and it was tough. I was happy for her, but, could not help having some emotions thinking about what I missed with all three of mine and would never get to experience. It was a new mom glowing with expectation and joy so sweet. But, bitter-sweet for me and it really took a lot out of me. The following week I was invited to go to another one, but it was two hours out-of-town so I respectfully declined and sent my best wishes to the mom to be. This week they had a baby shower at work, for a coworker, and I just could not do it. I gave my money for the office gift, but went to lunch with my husband during the party. I think many people didn't understand why I left, but one of my coworkers actually got it. She came to my office before the party and asked me if I was okay with everything. She was so nice to check on me, it meant a lot.

These events got me to thinking "am I really ready to help others?" After some prayer and thought the answer is no "I" am not and "I" will never be ready or able to help anyone. If I wait till "I" am ready, then I will never do anything and all my hurts will be wasted. God however does not waste a hurt and if I will put "me, myself' and I" aside and just let Him have control of my life then He can do great things. I can be comfortable just taking care of me and dealing with my hurts living in my bubble of safety or I can get uncomfortable and stop thinking about am "I" ready. God has such great timing for His messages because yesterday was the baby shower at work and I was so focused on myself and can "I" do this. Last night we went to dinner with some friends and my husband and my friend's husband were having a bit of a theological discussion. They really did know what I was thinking about all day, they were just talking. God, however, in all his awesomeness used that as and opportunity to speak directly to me. They got to talking about how too many people are caught up in thinking about themselves. They were talking about the fact that if we focus on just fixing ourselves we can't be doing God's work and that is not how God intended us to work. One of them even said something like "if we wait until we are okay and ready we will never do anything because we will never be ready this side of heaven." This was spot on, exactly what I needed to hear. God is amazing and speaks to us in simple ways. He spoke very clearly to me and here I am today ready to continue working on what He has called me to do. I know in time even baby showers will get more and more easy.

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Blessings to You all,

Mary
www.wounded-healer.org

095a - random walk

Why are we here? All of us, I mean, humanity? Philosophers have been at this for millennia. So have uncounted and uncountable others. What we call regular people. Happy, unhappy, kind, lonely, content, brilliant, sad, successful, lovely, mean-- all kinds of people.

I found my answer long ago. I would like to say that I found it in my freshman biology class, but I would probably be lying. I certainly met the concept there, but it wasn't until a few years later, when my work in the lab required me to consider its moving parts, or maybe not even fully until I started teaching, that the idea blossomed and made itself a home right in the center of my brain. It wasn't a particularly painful process, as major mental model reconstruction projects sometimes tend to be-- I must've been ready for it, ready for this unifying idea to bring together life and science. And even still I find this understanding, this answer to be both astonishingly simple and just a little bit subversive. Not in the sense that it challenges rules and order, but in the sense that it comes back to shift the question itself.

This. This sea green thing is my answer. A molecule, or, rather, a type of molecule. DNA Polymerase-- an enzyme, an incredible, precise machine, modeled here hard at work. What DNA Polymerase does is replicate (copy) DNA (there is a bunch of related molecules in the cell performing various components of this function, from straight up copying, to fixing particular types of errors that occur due to impact of specific elements of the environment, like for example UV rays from the sun; but since they all share the central feature I am talking about, I am going to talk about it here as if it's all one molecule). In the picture, DNA is the tightly wound thing in coral tones. In reality, it's the sourse of heritable information in the cell. In (almost) every cell in our bodies. In every living organism on Earth. (Viruses don't count-- they are not technically alive, since they need a host to proliferate. Viruses carry their genetic information either in DNA or in RNA, a closely related and most likely older molecule.)

To make a new cell, whether to grow and develop, heal a wound, or create a gamete for procreation, we need to replicate our DNA. Cells, you see, come from other cells. And the way they do it, roughly, is to copy DNA, segreagate it evenly to the future daughter cells, and pinch off the membrane in the middle to make two from one.

DNA is a double stranded molecule. But the beauty is that the information on how to make each strand is stored right in its partner strand. So if you separate the two (and there are enzymes to do that part as well), you can create two copies of the original by following the instructions in each of the single strands. Which is what DNA Polymerase, that sea green thing in the figure, is doing. You can see the single strand being single in brighter pinkish tones towards the top of the figure, continuing in the same color towards the bottom. But you can also see the new strand that the polymerase is making in duller orangish tones below the position where the polymerase is holding onto the strand the closest.

One last bit of science before I get to my point. The information on how to make the new strand is stored in the old strand very locally-- for each position polymerase is to fill in, the information on what piece needs to be put in is stored right across, in the corresponding postion on the old strand. This means that if it accidentally inserts a wrong piece, it should be able to sense it, delete it (via a different part of the molecule than the one that puts the pieces in), and try again. This is one of the mechanisms that makes the machine so accurate.

So here's the thing. DNA Polymerase is very very very accurate. Mindblowingly accurate. But it does make mistakes. Like once in a blue moon. But, our genome is about one third of a blue moon long. So it makes a mistake about every other time a cell's genome is replicated (because it makes two copies every time it replicates one cell's genome-- a new strand for each of the old strands).

These mistakes are not necessarily bad things. Sure, some of them cause cancer and other diseases, and some cause miscarriage. But a lot of them are entirely harmless, occuring in a region that doesn't seem to have a function, or changing only the way the instruction is written in the DNA, and not the instruction itself. And some of them are actually beneficial.

In fact, my answer to that first question, the reason we are here at all is "because of that very low rate of errors of DNA Polymerase."

For example, a long time ago there was no oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. Mostly sulfur. So first, due to some of these errors (and maybe other genome-changing variations, such as copy/paste of whole sections), some bacteria developed a system to use the energy from the sun to change carbon into the form that can be used for growth, using a sulfur compound to make the system go. Later, another bunch of copying errors allowed some bacteria to start using water instead of the sulfur compound in that system. That process produced oxygen. And since water was even more abundant than the sulfur compound, slowly, very slowly, the oxygen-making organisms occupied more and more space, making more and more oxygen, eventually changing our atmosphere into what it is today.

Many-many other changes occurred through the billions of years Earth has been around, both before and after the events I described above. Diversity of organisms populating the planet today, diversity within organisms, difference in the types of organisms living in one type of environment versus the other-- ultimately all of this is down to DNA Polymerase making those very few mistakes every couple of blue moons. If it wasn't for it making mistakes, there would be no humanity. To be fair, there might not even have been yeast. But very definitely no humanity.

And this is where I jump to the dead baby thing. Because while some of these errors allow new traits and whole new species to emerge, some of them cause miscarriage. Some of them cause birth defects, some extremely challenging and some fatal. This is why I am so very comfortable saying that there is no reason for why my baby died. It was random, shitty piece of luck. I don't know whether the particular things ruled to be the cause of his death were due to the actions of DNA Polymerase, some other part of cellular machinery, or environment interacting with otherwise ok parts of his or my biology that caused it, and in this sense it doesn't matter to me.

This is why I never ask "why us?" The scientific answer to "why us?" is, I know, "because of random events that occurred sometime during gamete production, fertilization, implantation, or development." The answer to "why me?" (if someone asks me to differentiate that from the "why us?" question) is "because he died, and I am his mother."

My philosophical/religious answer is also grounded in this scientific reality. "Why not us?" is that answer. Why should we be exempt from the luck of genetic, developmental, or environmental draw? I just can't see a Higher Being intervening in cellular processes. When my rabbi tried to say something about God calling A home for God's own reasons, I asked her not to say that again. Followed by "if God interferes in DNA replication or chromosome segregation, God needs a hobby."

Though this measured and cerebral part is not all of my answer, it is a lot of it. But there is also an incredibly strong emotional part. So strong in fact, that this is one of the extremely few topics associated with bereavement that is guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. (Not in the bereavement police kind of way, where I wish for everyone to share my perception-- I strongly believe in to each her own. But in the don't tell me how to see this kind of way, where I react strongly to anyone implying that the existence of reasons is an undisputed point of agreement among the bereaved, even if one doesn't know what those reasons are in each particular case.)

I could hardly talk to my mother about A's death for months after because she would inevitably end up at "why us?" again. When I finally turned on her to ask why the hell not us, she had nothing coherent. "Because we are such a good close family" is what she came up with. I laughed a long bitter laugh before asking her to please tell me what kind of a family did deserve to have a child die.

When Monkey was born, conceived after more than two years of trying, and after an early miscarriage, I decided that it is impossible to do anything to deserve having a baby. The happiness brought into our lives by finally getting a chance to love and care for and watch grow this tiny being, it was overwhelming. If you asked me then, I probably would've come up with the inverse, that there is nothing (or nearly nothing) one can do to deserve to have their child die. As is, I don't remember actually articulating this last part until after A's death.

Either way, that's where I am-- it's impossible to deserve to have a healthy child, and it's impossible to deserve to have your child die. And, to me, there is no reason. There is no reason good enough for a Higher Being to take your child. And any Higher Being who would disagree is not a Higher Being I want to have anything to do with.

And my final point. Human beings want explanations. And when we don't have them, we make them up. One thing we tend to do a lot is look at a sequence of events, like X happened, and then Y happened, and turn it into X had to happen so that Y could happen, an explanation. And sometimes, if you control for all other moving parts in the system, it is even true. But most of the time it's nothing but a logical fallacy. So I differentiate the things we do after our children die from anything having to do with a reason for why our children had to die. I see what we do after as things we do to learn to live with our tragedies or as we learn to live with our tragedies. Some of these things may be healing, some may be revolutionary and helpful to countless others, and many (most?) are just things we do to get through the days. But to me, none of these things are a good reason. To me, none of them are worth a baby's life.

The way I see it is we move forward because we have to. Putting one foot in front of the other. And sometimes what we do with the shitty hand we are dealt is incredible. Sometimes what we become in the aftermath is stronger and more beautiful than before. But to me, it's not a reason. And not an obligation, either. Just surviving is amazing. Early on, eating and doing laundry, and occasionally showering. Later, engaging in community, real life or virtual, caring about one's job, about politics, books, crafts, anything really. It's all amazing. And, to me, none of it an answer to "why us?"

095c - two sons

We baked cupcakes here last night. It was Monkey's half birthday, and I promised her last year, after spontaneously doing one for JD, that we would start doing half birthdays as a matter of policy. Of course, we then equally spontaneously skipped mine, but who's counting. It was a lovely affair, the half-birthday, and it made my daughter happy way out of proportion to the effort required. But I am not so much talking about her half-birthday as the fact that it was sandwiched, not unexpectedly, between two other days.

The day before yesterday was our youngest son's due date, according to me (based on the blood test for ovulation) and the early ultrasound dating. Today is eighteen months since A's due date, and his younger brother's due date by LMP. All of this feels thoroughly surreal. How did we even get here? How is it that I now worry about reflux as opposed to, you know, whether he is still alive inside of me?

He just passed his due date(s), and yet he has been out in the world for almost four weeks. Eventful, strange almost four weeks. Time when I have thought and felt a whole lot, but written only a little. With a notable exception of that one night thirteen days ago, the night before the circumcision.

As a Jewish rite, circumcision, the bris, is kind of a mixed bag. The guest of honor is not usually thrilled with his designated role, though sweet wine they get after tends to help. The food is usually good, and the words, typically, heartfelt. Ah, the words. There are the required parts, but not many. The rest is free form. You don't even need a rabbi to be present, though we did. Our rabbi was supposed to be there for A's bris. Instead, she was there for his funeral. Now she was going to officiate at his little brother's bris. Is your head spinning yet?

I will spare you the play by play of how we thought we would stay up an hour or two to finish the bris program and ended up with JD getting a grand total of an hour of sleep. I will just say that the part I want to share here took me half the night to write and then a whole lot to read outloud.

And so now I bring it here, the one thing I had to but struggled to write. Forged over the many months before and during our younger son's gestation, and written, finally, on the day he was about to go through a milestone we first imagined for his brother.

L is a wonderful new person all his own. And yet, because of when he came to us, his story is inextricably connected to that of his brother A. We do not believe in a God who would use children as reward or punishment, a lesson, or a test. For us there is no rhyme or reason to why children die, no higher purpose. For us the only part that is imbued with meaning is what we choose to do with our broken hearts, how we choose to live after, what we choose to articulate and remember.

In the past nineteen months we learned that grief is the price we pay for love, love’s mirror image. We learned that for us it is not a one-time fee—we will always love and miss our son and Monkey's and L's brother A.G. We learned, too, that grief brings with it fear, for the knowledge of how much there is to lose is both fresh and visceral.

And yet we learned that not taking a chance would be worse. For ourselves and for Monkey, we learned that we were willing to risk our hearts again, in hopes of one day having them expand along with our family. This is the day we couldn’t even imagine only a few short weeks ago. We lived day to day, hour to hour. Today, the enormity of how lucky we got this time and of how far we have come is before us, and we are grateful, as we are grateful to all of you for sharing the day and its meaning with us.

Untimely death is always a tragedy. Yet parents of dead babies have a special loss uniquely ours. We grieve our children. But we also grieve how little we got to know about our children. We know that A had long fingers, but we do not know whether he would’ve used them to play piano, basketball, or neither. We don’t know what color his eyes would’ve been, or what his favorite kasha would have turned out to be. Tiny things that are the stuff of family stories and big things that define one’s character and life paths—we know none of these about our middle son, and we grieve that too.

We know a lot about our daughter, and are looking forward to learning more every day. And we are starting to learn things about our younger son. He loved his first bath. He likes to suck on his hands, and not so much on a pacifier. He is not big on patience, at least for now, but he relaxes and quiets with his mother’s voice and touch.

L is L, his own person. He will not replace his brother, nor should he be expected to. He is not a cosmic payback for the loss of his brother, nor is it possible to make up for that. He is just a boy who makes us feel incredibly lucky to be his parents. We are grateful to all of you for your love and support, and for being here today, and as we are looking forward to continuing to get to know L, we hope and trust that you will regard and treat him as we do—as a unique individual.

097 - random walk (comment)

I don't have any great insight on this subject but I just wanted to let you know that this post really struck a chord with me. As a longtime believer in randomness above all it's nice to know other folks see things similarly.

A side note that I suppose counts as life experience. The priest who arrived at the hospital to baptize Rosemary before we took her off of the vent made a comment about her going to see Jesus and becoming a little angel. Then he doubled back, corrected himself, and informed us that she would actually always just be a little baby since all of the angels had already been created and heaven worked a certain way. It reminded me of the difference between faith and theology. I'm can appreciate faith (even if I don't really have any of my own). It's all of the theory with no basis in observable phenomena that doesn't go down as smoothly.

Thanks for writing this and jogging my memory.

T

099a - just sayin' hello

Amanda, you are correct. People say just about the stupidest things to hurt a babylost parent's feeling. One of my cousin had a baby and it is struggling as well, but still alive. Almost everyday, she posts about how God is good and it's because she still has her baby. By definition does that make God bad because we don't have ours? Or how she knows that God exists because of her miracle baby... God doesn't exist because yours and mine are dead? What stupid sentiments to prove that He exists or not.

ss, I'm sorry that there was no support for you when you had your precious daughter 7 years ago. As helpful as Glow has been to us when our friends deserted us and won't talk about Kaleb (heck, even our family doesn't really. The emotional aptitude of a wombat I think...), I couldn't imagine not having like-minded people.

Em, I agree that there is no such thing as a grey-space in between the black and white issues of life. As Ayn Rand put it in Atlas Shrugged- and I'm summarizing here- compromise (grey areas) is treason to truth.

Suzanne, it is considered a partial, translocated trisomy. I'm sad to say that I know exactly what that means in light of the research I did about the possibilities with Kaleb. I'm glad you got to hold your son in your arms before he died... what was his name? We had six days with Kaleb before I had to make the hardest decision of my entire life. To take him off life support. WTF kinda decision is that to have to make for a parent?!?

Thank you all for your kind thoughts on his 3 month birthday... I'm sure if you even only thought of him once it was more than most of our former "friends" did on that day. Sad, but true. Thank you for the welcome to Glow.

100a - dear friend

I'm so sorry you thought of us when your friend's newborn died this week.  I'm sorry for your friends and their lost child most of all, but I'm sad for you, and for us, too, that we are now experts at this.  But fear not, you contacted the right people.  We can help you help them.

First of all, start cooking.  Do laundry, clean the house, take charge.  Keep it up for at least a month, with the help of other friends.  Right away, order her to bed and give him a beer or nine.  Yeah yeah yeah alcohol is dangerous and addictive and all that, but I swear to whatever god is out there, delicious malted barley and fermented hops probably saved my life in those first days.  Way better than the anti-depressants or valium they'll probably want.  But let them have them, too, for a little while.  Obviously, not together.  But a little bit of numb is fine.  They are in shock-panic-disaster-mode.  All their alarms are going off and nothing makes any sense at all right now.  Let them grieve, but help them be calm, too, if you can.

And frankly, yeah they are probably a little suicidal and a little crazy and definitely extremely lost.  Their souls have just been shredded by the Universe itself.  They are fucked up and they need help.  That is why you have to hold them tight and keep them close.  Do it in shifts.  Be with them, but don't overwhelm them with people.  If anyone manages to make either of them laugh no matter how dark and awful the humor, that is an extremely good sign.  Don't bring in clowns, but aim for a little bit of black humor if they are the type that needs that.  I did and my brothers did me right.  Those moments of dark levity were less-awful-spots in a terrible, incomprehensible time.

Don't make them have to make decisions.  In the first days after Silas's death I could only think a few minutes into the future and not all that successfully.  "Should I get up?  Should I eat?  Should I bother even thinking about any of that?"  I felt alien and awful in the outside world.  I'll never forget my first errand out to the bank and a Walgreens after he died.  I returned worn out from a ten minute ride up the street.  I was crazed with grief and overwhelmed by the fact that the world just kept on going even though mine had come to a complete stop.

Do anything you can to make them have less to think about.  Right now they are trying to figure out what the fuck they are supposed to do with their dead child, with their demolished hopes, with their annihilated lives.  Don't make them have to think about chores, too.

And yeah, she's worse off than him right now in a more immediate, physical way.  But then the other way around, that also makes it worse for him, too.  His disconnection from the physical bond mother and child shared is also a loss for him.  Mentally, emotionally, chemically, he was preparing to meet and bond with that child, just like the mother, but now he has even less than what she had, in a way.  Really all I'm saying is he's working hard to stay strong and upright for her, but don't mistake courage for strength.  I always felt like I was on the verge of a bottomless, endless void.  Stand there and face it with him if you can, and don't let that void consume either of them.

A death like this can be a poison to their souls.  It will take a great deal of patience and time for either of them to even begin to fake normalcy.  Shower them with love.  Talk about their child, use her name.  Look them in the face and the eyes when you discuss the absurd awfulness of their plight.  Tell them how much you miss her.  Do not be afraid to be direct and honest and clear with them.  The death of their child is like a blazing nova of utter blackness and its awful light reveals everything about their lives, their hopes, and about their friends and their families.  Do not be afraid to stand directly next to them and face directly into that palpable pain if you want to keep them alive and keep them protected and keep them as friends.  Those that cannot handle what they are going through won't stay around long, and they will know very quickly who they can count on.  Be someone they can always count on, because right now they can't count on anything at all.  The Universe itself has turned on them.

Never say that everything happens for a reason.  Never try to mollify them with talk of angels and meant-to-be's.  Never say that God works in mysterious ways.  Never compare a trivial loss in your own life with what they are going through.  Don't talk about babies.  Don't talk about hope and somedays and futures.  Help them deal with the immediate dilemmas of everyday life (ie what show to watch, what time to eat, that it is okay to not shower) and don't even consider trying to tell them anything about the true nature of reality and what good might someday come.  Any of that is just dressing up a shit sandwich with rotten tomatoes and wilted lettuce.

I'm sorry.  I love you.  I miss your child.  I'm here for you.  Let me do that for you.  Those are the only things you need to say right now and each and every one should be followed with a tight and true hug.  Cry with them.  Be silent with them.  Talk with them if they can find any words at all.

Lastly, don't forget to take care of yourself, as well.  Work with your friends to always keep someone close, but make sure to sustain your own life so that you are strong and ready when you are with them.  They will be strange and sad and difficult, but if you love them and are patient you just may keep a flicker of light alive in their souls.  But don't worry about sanity right now, that's a lost cause anyway.  Just leave breadcrumbs on the trail back and help them be a little bit okay for a little bit of one day, each day, every day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

They are on a whole new timescale now.  They are now counting the moments since they lost their child, and nothing will ever be even remotely the same again.  They need company in this new landscape, though, and that means you need to help them find their way step by step.  But don't call them baby-steps, they just might punch you in the face for that one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

101 - dear friend (comment)

A few other things to add:

Support the people who are the front lines of grief, providing support to the bereaved. This is particularly applicable for those who are not in a good position to support the grieving parents, i.e. a hugely pregnant sister-in-law is probably not the most welcome guest in times like these. Not her fault, but it is what it is. She can, however, water the plants and collect the mail for her mother, who is on the front lines comforting and caring for the family members in crisis.

Pop in at four or six weeks and offer to scrape all the dried out, no-longer edible casseroles and gifts of food into the trash. Cleaning out the fridge is an unbelievably daunting process, and remembering each visit and blundering well-intentioned person who brought the food in the first place can be painful reminders.

Seek out others who've been through what you're going through: online, in person, in support groups. I only wanted to be around people who'd been through the kind of grieving I was doing for a while. I make a geeky reference to Harry Potter to try to describe it. In the Harry Potter books, there are magical creatures called thestrels. They are gentle, horselike creatures that are invisible unless you've seen someone die. Some people can see thestrels (Harry, Luna Lovegood, Nevin Longbottom); some can't. I only wanted to be around people who could see thestrels for a while.

Oh, and never say, "Your child is in a better place." There is no better place for a cherished child than with their parents. Even if you fervently believe that God must have needed another angel, just zip it, for now.

And maybe, just maybe, link to this post or sum up the comments and post them on other online parenting forums not dedicted to the babylost. The Bump, Mothering dot Commune, Baby Center, Parenting.com.... You never know who will click on this. The well-meaning friends and family members who need these tips so desperately won't know how to find them when they first get this kind of news. Maybe gently sharing them in other forums will help someone be prepared in ways they can't know when they first click on them there.