Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

You've made one of the most important decisions in your life- you want to become a parent. You take the necessary steps to try to conceive. You cut out caffeine and alcohol, take pre-natal vitamins, and become a little more concerned with your overall health.

Then it happens. You're late. You get that pregnancy test you've stashed away in the back of your bathroom cabinet and take it out of the box. After three agonizing minutes, you look down to see two lines staring back up at you. Those two beautiful, pink lines. The lines that have your mind racing a million miles a second. The lines that have you planning birthday parties and little league games. The lines that instantly flood your soul with a love so deep that only a parent can know.

There's doctor visits, blood tests. Everything looks perfect. In the end, you'll get to take home a happy, healthy baby who you'll get to watch grow up and live a happy, healthy life.

Or so you thought. 

In an instant, your perfect world is turned upside down. You start to bleed. That heartbeat that was just there yesterday is nowhere to be found. Those ever-present kicks have stopped. The shrieking cry you've longed to hear when your baby is born is met with silence. A nap has turned into the deepest of slumbers from which no one can awaken. 

You've just become a member of a club that no one would want even their worst enemy to be a part of. You've become the mother or father to an angel. 

-    -    -

In October 1988, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed October as National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. "When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there isn't a word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, stillbirths, birth defects, SIDS, and other causes."

In 2002, Robyn Bear, Lisa Brown, and Tammy Novak petitioned the federal government and the governors of each state to proclaim October 15 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Today, all 50 states have yearly proclamations of this date.

Even with national recognition, pregnancy and infant loss is still such a taboo subject. Before losing Ian, I knew that my mother had a stillbirth before I was born, as well as a cousin who had also had a stillbirth before their daughter was born. After putting Ian's story on my blog, I had an outpouring of women, both friends and family, telling me about their loss and letting me know that I'm not alone. But you see, if you don't tell someone your story, it's easy to feel alone, especially if your loss was very early. No matter if you were 3 weeks or 39 weeks pregnant, you lost a baby. A person whose life deserves to be celebrated and recognized. 

That's why I wanted to do this series on my blog. It is my hope that in reading mine and other's stories of pregnancy and infant loss, you will not feel alone. You will see that 1 in 4 women will suffer a miscarriage or infant loss. And if you happen to be one of those women, it is my hope that you will feel understood. That you will have an army of women (and men) standing behind you lifting you up, supporting you, and helping you through this rough patch of life. Together we can make it through this. Because I am 1 in 4, and I'm surviving. And so can you.