Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness

I'm taking some time today, out of my normal topics to post something that is VERY important to me, and many others who I call my nearest friends. 

October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness, and if you know me, you know that in 2007, at just 18 weeks pregnant, I went through the most horrific experience of my life. I was in labor for 24 hours to deliver my precious Henry James who I knew was gone.  There are no words that can accurately describe the pain and devastation of such a life-changing event. 

I wrote about that experience here.  I found many things that offered Solace and comfort in the coming days, including this poem:

Since heaven has become your home
I sometimes feel that I'm alone;
And though we now are far apart
You hold a big piece of my heart
I never knew how much I'd grieve
When it was time for you to leave
Or just how much my heart would ache
From that one fragment you would take
God let this tiny hole remain,
Reminding me we'd meet again
And one day all the pain will cease
When He restores this missing piece
For Jesus heals each tiny part
That holds your memory in my heart

Which inspired my tattoo in Henry's memory.

I found out in the aftermath of our loss that there were numerous women in my life that had experienced a similar loss, and it was so sad to me that so many women are dealing with or have dealt with this, and we just never talk about it.  If you know someone who has dealt with the loss of a child, at any stage of pregnancy, or after birth, please lift them up today and their child.

We are forced, as mothers of angel babies to move on through life, almost as if our child never existed because it makes people uncomfortable for us to talk about them.  Our babies are just as real as the ones you hug on their way off to school in the morning, they just didn't get to stay on this Earth as long as other babies.

I was blessed enough to find a group of women, all of whom had also been due for May, 2008 babies, and lost them at varying times in their pregnancies.  These women are now a group of women that I talk to about parenting issues.  We have been "together" as a support group for each other for the last 7 years, and I love each of them dearly.  These women helped me through the most difficult time in my life.

I will be lifting in prayer every family I know, and those that I don't, that have faced this horrible loss. I never forget about my Henry James, I just remember him quietly to myself.  We do celebrate his birthday every year, at the same time we celebrate my husband's (he was delivered on Barney's Birthday).   Tonight, I will light a candle in remembrance of our son, and all the others who left this Earth far too soon! 

Krista