How to Use the Directory

Welcome to the Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss Directory. This blog is maintained by volunteers to act like a "telephone book" for blogs dealing with the loss of a baby. It is open to anyone who has ever lost a baby in any way - we do not discriminate by age of your baby or circumstance of your loss. If you think you belong here, then we think you belong here.

When you submit your blog, it is manually added to the list, so it may take some time for it to appear on the list. When you submit your information as requested below, it is easier to spot those emails that have been redirected into the spam mail.

Blogs are listed by category of loss. This is to help you find blogs that deal with circumstances that may be similar to yours. That being said, it can be a moving and healing experience to read the blogs of people who's loss is not similar to yours. You are welcome to read any of the blogs listed here.

Though there could be literally thousands of categories of loss, we have created 4 broad categories: before 20 weeks, after 20 weeks, after birth, and medical termination. Please note that most blogs dealing with extreme prematurity are listed in the "after birth" category even though the gestational age might suggest a different category.

As a warning to those feeling particularly fragile, many of the blogs listed here discuss living children or subsequent pregnancies. In the sidebar links, those blogs are usually marked with an asterisk(*). However, the circumstances of individual bloggers will change, and sometimes the listings do not get updated. It is possible to encounter pictures of living children or pregnant bellies on the blogs listed here.

We also have a list of resources (books), online links, and online publications that you may find useful. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see the full listing of links.

We are so sorry the loss of a beloved child has brought you here. We hope that you will find some solace within the community that has gathered.
Please help us set up this resource for grieving families by:

Welcome

A. Submitting your blog information
(Email Subject: Please Add My Blog)
  • The link to your blog
  • The title of your blog
  • The topic of your blog (see sidebar - Personal Blogs)
  • If your blog discusses living children or subsequent pregnancy after loss

B. Submitting links to helpful web resources
(Email Subject: Please Add This Link)

C. Submitting titles of helpful reading materials or videos/films
(Email Subject: Please Add This Resource)

D. Adding a link to this site from your blog

***************************************************

Friday, May 11, 2007

Friday Blog Roundup - Beautiful Mothers

It's almost Mother's Day - a day those of us without living children dread, and those with living children endure with outward smiles and inward tears. For some it's the first one since losing a child, and to you I send wishes for peace and my hope that you will somehow find a way to celebrate the fact that you are a mother.

We are all mothers. We created life, no matter how small. We nourished it, no matter how long. We loved, we lost and we learned that, if given the chance, we would have died for those babies if it meant that they could live.

The love that grew along with our children is what makes us mothers. Be it 4 weeks or 10 months, we have been forever altered by the tiny lives that lived in us and by the tiny hearts that once beat in time with ours.

Emm at 13 Years into the Journey brings a perspective I don't think I've seen before in this little corner of blogland. She writes as a mother who has been mourning the loss of her daughter for 13 years. In her words I found incredible strength, and I took great solace in the fact that she shows it's possible to survive the loss of a piece of your heart.

I often wonder if I'm doing okay - if I'm putting the same amount of effort into my healing as I am my grieving, but Emm explains that the feelings of loss don't go away, even after 13 years. There will always be a measure of pain.

"There's just this feeling everyday that something is missing. It doesn't hit when I first wake up - or before I go to bed. It's in the little things of everyday."

What I'm missing now I'll always be missing. There is a strange comfort in knowing that. I'm glad Emm found us and I hope she continues to write about her daughter and her journey.

I will never understand those who must endure sorrow heaped upon sorrow. Please send Rosepetal some love and prayers. She is losing her second desperately wanted little boy next week. The love woven into the words she writes to her sons is breathtaking. It's so intimate and personal I almost feel like I'm intruding on sacred ground when I read her posts. I'm awed by her strength, and once again astounded, comforted and touched by the depth of mother-love.

Carole's post about a trip to the cemetery to visit her son Joseph with her daughter Abigail in tow nearly made me cry.

"We are heading back the van. She is holding my hand. She looks up at me and says..."Joseph lives with the doctors, right?". I try to explain the whole heaven thing again. I wonder if she thinks we left him at the hospital. There is no telling what is running through that 3 year old mind."

This is life for so many mothers (and fathers) - trying to make their lost children a part of their living childrens' lives, and doing all they can to ensure that those tiny souls are never forgotten.

Abigail's innocent confusion was what brought me to the brink. She will grow up understanding loss in a way many children never do, and as a result she'll have compassion and maturity beyond her years when it comes to grief and healing. But that she has to know such sorrow to gain such wisdom is utterly heartbreaking.

Steering her living children through the minefield of sorrow must be mentally and physically exhausting. And yet Carole does it with the grace, love and selflessness that only a mother can.

Finally, there's Artblog, who was tagged this week. Her task was to write an "I Am" poem that would give her blog readers a sense of, well, who she is. Her poem ended with this:

I am happy, I am sad, I am playful, I am glad,
I am grateful, I am mad, I am tired.

I am.


And isn't that life as a mother in mourning in a nutshell? We are so many things at all once - even things that seem to be in opposition to each other. We are all those things all at once because we have to be. And because, by some miracle, we're strong enough to be.

Happy Mother's Day

1 comment:

delphi said...

Thank you for this, K. I know that Mother's Day is a huge hurdle that we all face every year. I also worry that I spend too much time greiving and not enough time working towards healing - I am so inspired by Emm's continued love for her baby. Maybe the right thing to do is to embrace the hurt and joy of life at the same time.

I love the Roundup. I look forward to it every week. :)