It's wonderful that there is a national remembrance for all the children who have been lost to miscarriage and still birth. I know that this blog is dedicated to the memory of my middle daughter, Jennifer Marie, but Jenny is not my only Angel Baby. I have experienced many 1st trimester miscarriages and one other 2nd trimester loss. As I find, too often, the loss of a child tends to be trivialized in direct relation to the length of the pregnancy. When a mother losses her baby at 3 years old everyone, even the community mourns the loss and no one says "It was meant to be" or "I'm sure you'll have another". When a mother losses her child at birth her family and close friends and neighbors come to grieve. Sometime there will be a comment or two about how its God's will or part of God's plan but overall the tone is very understanding towards the mother's grief and pain. But when a mother losses a child that medicine still considers a fetus this somehow means that no baby actually existed. Yes I have four surviving children but they are not my only children. I understand, from a medical stand point, that two of my miscarriages were so early that there was no time to develop a heart or anything else that would resemble a baby. But despite those facts I knew I was pregnant, my doctors knew I was pregnant and those babies were very real no matter anyone else my think, feel or believe. Jenny was my only Angel Baby for whom I had a service. There are many reasons for why I didn't do so for the others and, perhaps I'll go into it at a later time but not now. My husband and I had a memorial service for Jenny at a chapel located at Sunset Memorial Park, where my family is interned, with our close friends and family and our family's minister officiating. We had a few prayers and a couple of readings, we cried together and then released a balloon for Jenny and said good-bye. We are still paying off Jenny's memorial stone and the temporary stone, place by the cemetery, was broken so we have no marker at all. Several times a year Jenny's Dad, siblings and I visit a bear spot of earth next to a tree where Jenny's bench will be once its paid off, which we hope will be soon. All I have of Jenny is one picture, a monthly bill on her memorial stone and my memories.
http://www.october15th.com/