My Two Cents

I don't know if I actually expect anyone to read this as it's rather long winded but I had to get it off my chest!  If you do read it you will probably disagree with me.  Feel free to comment either way. 

Surprise surprise another article has been published admonishing the lives and grief of the baby loss community.  This one was written by Anne Kingston and published at Macleans.ca.  Here is the article

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/02/29/the-mourning-after/

The gist of the article is that there is a growing trend of fetus fetishizing.  Women who miscarry are grieving very publicly at the risk of making others uncomfortable and at the risk of delaying their own healing process.  Good God, even Jayz mentioned a miscarriage in a rap song!  I can almost forgive him for closing down an entire hospital wing so his child could be born without interruption.

I think the first thing we need to do is take a step back and realize why this article is being written at this time, in this culture.  I cannot be the only one who realizes that this is part of the movement to squash the reopening of the abortion debate.  In the US the abortion debate is in full swing.  In Canada there are inklings that it will be.  The only reason articles like this are being written, the only reason the way parents grieve is being judged, is because pro abortionists do not want to admit that there is life before birth.  It is a fetus, a sac of tissue, as one woman put it on a FB group, "an abortion is like exfoliating, you don't cry over dead cells."  If an abortionist were to admit that yes, these are children, loved and wanted, at any gestation, then how would they say it was okay to end their lives?  They can't admit that.  And so they go on the attack, belittling and berating grieving parents.  How dare you grieve and cry over something that never really existed?  That is the point of view that articles like this are coming from.

For me, this is a personal attack.  My son was 17 weeks and 3 days gestation.  Under the laws of the land he was not a human being.  He deserved no gov't birth certificate or death certificate.  To the public he quite simply did not and does not exist.  If I had not claimed his body from the hospital and had him cremated privately he would have been disposed of with the medical waste.  Seriously.  I'm not exagerrating.  My hospital release papers said I suffered an "inevitable abortion."  That is what they call a loss before 20 weeks here. 

Another issue the author brings up is having photos around or sending out birth announcements.  I have no photos of Blaine.  I wish I did.  If I did I would probably not share them publicly.  It's a personal decision and I would never judge a parent for doing so.  I think we need to respect the feelings of the parents who want to share their photos and their stories.  But and most people are not going to like this, we also have to respect the people who don't want to see the photos.  Someone wrote on FB that if their Grandmother died they wouldn't remove the photo from their desk at work.  True.  You wouldn't take a photo of her in the coffin though and put it on your desk.  Pictures of dead babies are beautiful to me, they aren't gross, they are sad and sweet and tragic.  Maybe I treasure them because I have none of my own.  I know though that if I did have one of Blaine most people would not feel the same way.  I wouldn't hide it in my own home but I wouldn't send it out to people in a birth announcement and I wouldn't take it to a place of business.  Work is work, not your home.  And yes, it annoys me when people have a million pics of their living kids around too.  "look there's my kid putting on socks" "there's my kid eating a cheerio!"  They're only interesting to the moms!  Some people are not comfortable with death, even some people who have lost a child.  

This article is just part of a growing trend.  As the abortion debate spreads so will the attacks. 
Stop sharing stuff like this on FB.  It hurts people to read it.  I have a pretty tough skin.  You can say whatever you want to me and I will shrug it off.  Others will let it ruin their whole week.  One of my FB friends said she couldn't sleep after reading it.  So, why spread the hate?
Don't try to educate people online!  Haters gonna hate.  I would say, with the exception of the Dr's who perform the abortions, people who are pro abortion are uneducated about fetal development and they are uneducated about abortion methods.  They will never see the other point of view.
You need a place in your life that isn't about loss.  A place that is just about joy and silliness and life. 

No one should be made to feel like their baby didn't matter.  Like it wasn't real, didn't exist.  I didn't exfoliate on April 13 2010, I gave birth.