Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

by Britt Berg

Today, October 15, marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I, like many others, will be taking time to reflect, remember, and heal. On New Year’s Day 2010, I suffered a miscarriage. New Year’s Day has been bittersweet for me ever since. After my miscarriage, and in the days and months that followed, I questioned my fertility. Would I ever get pregnant again? I had already had two healthy pregnancies and deliveries, but still I worried: Was this the start of secondary infertility? I scoured pregnancy websites, desperately looking for a sign that everything was going to be OK. I obsessively tracked my cycles, bought fertility jewelry, and sought consolation and advice from friends and relatives. I was so worried that this miscarriage was a sign of infertility. I was getting older and did not know if this event meant the beginning of the end for my little womb. Still, I maintained hope that I would be able to get pregnant after miscarriage.

Thankfully, like the majority of women that experience pregnancy loss, I did become pregnant after miscarriage, and am now a mom to three little girls. I have mostly healed from my miscarriage, but at times I wonder about that little baby. Would I have had a son? What would he or she have been like?

My miscarriage was upsetting, but I know that so many of you have been through much more than I have. I know that some of you are having recurrent miscarriages, some of you have had stillbirths, and some of you have lost children after birth. Many of you have tried to get pregnant for many months or years, without success. All of these are losses and each needs a time to be grieved.

At 7:00 pm on Saturday, October 15, 2011, people around the nation will be lighting candles and coming together in remembrance of the babies we have lost. I hope you can join us.