Note: Today I’ve shared a post on Still Standing Magazine called Breaking the Second Silence that this post accompanies. It is about how some loss mothers (Still Mothers) do not have children after loss. I hope you’ll take the time to read and share it. 

Let me tell you a little about what it’s like to be a Still Mother in the loss community:

We see you share the news you’re “expecting a rainbow” and our hearts sink. It stings just the same as any other pregnancy announcement after your baby has died, and we feel hurt when we’re told we should be happy for you when all we feel is great sadness for ourselves. It’s not fair to say we’re bitter, when it’s simply the overwhelming cry of our aching hearts at the injustice of always being left behind.

We hear you talk about how hard is it to carry a baby when your innocence is lost, and we completely sympathize but wish with all our hearts we could experience that hardship. Just like you’d trade places with the pregnant mother who complains about her pregnancy without knowing loss, we’d trade places with you.

We see your photos of your new bundle of hope and healing and notice you say how that baby could never take the place of the one you lost, and we think, “Of course not! But where’s our healing? Why don’t we deserve hope?”

We hear your platitudes like “Don’t give up! It’ll happen! After every storm comes a Rainbow!” and it hurts us deeply, just like all platitudes do. We have not given up. It’s not our fault we don’t get the same outcome you do. And, it’s just simply untrue that new babies always come. For many the storm of grief is all we’ll ever know. That’s just the way life works.

We hear you say “My baby in heaven picked this new baby for us to love on earth”, or “God knew we needed someone to hold in our arms” and we think, “What does that say about our baby who died? Or our God? They didn’t want us to be happy??” Maybe instead you could just realize that you’re lucky, but others are not.

When we try to express our hurts in the community, or mention that not everyone gets a “Rainbow”, we are most often met with hostility or dismissal by the people who we would hope might be the most supportive. We hear things like, “You don’t need to be so negative,” or “Why can’t you be happy for them?” or “Just wait, it’ll happen for you too!”  We are hurt and left behind, and just want to be heard, the same way you want to be heard by people who don’t understand grief.

Most of all, we wake up every single day to an empty house and empty arms. We may feel completely lost at times because our purpose in life has been lost. We truly feel like we have no place to belong, because we are mothers with no child to raise. We find it hard to see a reason for participating in life at all, a lot of the time. It can feel like we’re trapped and will never escape. Our motherhood is deniable, and we don’t understand why this is our life.

I share all of this not for pity, nor to criticize anyone, nor to make people feel bad for having a child after loss, but to accomplish the same goal so many other loss parents have: to educate and inform, and to guide the conversation towards support and healing.

If you are a loss mother who has gone on to have another child after loss, please take the time to listen to these ideas, just as you’d like people to listen to you as you describe your situation and needs.

If you are expecting again after loss, please be gentle with your announcements in loss groups and on loss support pages. Yes, it’s great news! But just like you’d want your non-loss friends to be gentle with you, we’d like you to be gentle with us. It’s a painful topic for those of us who long to have another chance to be pregnant.

If you are carrying your baby after loss, please think carefully about the person you choose to vent your frustrations to. We understand how hard it is to carry a baby after loss. Just like you, our innocence is lost, and we know it’s a balance of grief and joy, and it’s going to be the longest nine months of your life. But please take the time to remember that we’d gladly take on those hardships if it meant we got the joy of a living child at the end.

If you want to encourage a mother with no living children, or no child born after loss, please think about how encouragement from people who don’t understand feels to you. Is it helpful when a non loss mother tells you how grief will be? Or how you should be feeling or doing? Or when they try to make things seem better than they really are? Just like you would want someone who doesn’t understand grief to be sensitive in their comments towards you, we hope you’ll do the same for us.

Please do not say “It’ll happen when it’s time” or “After every storm comes a Rainbow.” It’s simply not true, and it’s insensitive.

Please don’t say “Don’t give up!” because knowing in your heart and soul when you need to stop trying and “giving up” are completely different things.

And please don’t suggest IVF or say “Have you considered adoption?”  We know all of our options – believe me – and there are reasons why we’re not pursuing them.

Instead, just like you’d like people to keep it simple, we prefer “I’m so sorry,” and “I’m here for you.”

It’s also important to remember not to say things like “I could have never done this without my new baby.” Just like you don’t want people to say “I would just die if my child died,”  we don’t want to have the idea that it’s impossible to go on without a child spoken to us. It’s not true.

Not having a child after loss is very hard. We hurt deeply and constantly feel left behind. Our motherhood feels false, although we know if our hearts it’s real. We understand all too well there are no guarantees in life, and no amount of “just keep trying”, “ you need to relax”, or “have you considered adopting” comments will change our situation. (Just like no amount of grief cliches will change our grief.)

As a Still Mother, I’d like to make a simple request: when you’re talking to others in the loss community, please remind yourself that some people do not get to have another baby after loss. That’s the ugly but honest truth of it. We don’t all get a baby born after loss, and even those babies can die. Loss mothers with no living children are not to be ignored or overlooked or seen as less deserving of support than mothers with living children. We would love to feel just as welcome in the community as mothers who have living children. We all deserve to be supported as we love and miss our children for the rest of our lives.

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RaeAnne Fredrickson

RaeAnne Fredrickson is mama to Samuel Evan, who was carried to birth with all her love, after receiving a fatal diagnosis early in pregnancy.

She is the creator, co-founder, and Editor of Still Mothers.She is the founding owner of All That Love Can Do, a resource for families who continue pregnancy after a fatal diagnosis. She is a contributing author of Still Standing Magazine, and All That Love Can Do, and her own blog, The Love We Carry.Her story is featured in Still Standing: Because They Lived and "Invisible Mothers".

She is married to her faithful husband, Bryan.

She speaks openly about life and loss, the joy of carrying her son, and the heartache of living without him. She believes no one should have to face a life of loss alone.

Latest posts by RaeAnne Fredrickson (see all)

• Still Mothering - May 5, 2017
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