to feel a bit funny that a friend has a photo of a dead baby as her profile picture?

[HowToLookGoodGlaikit]

A friend (distant) has put up a photo of her cousins very obviously dead (I think stillborn) baby as her profile picture, as a "tribute".

AIBU to find this a bit weird? The photo makes me feel uncomfortable. Is this my problem, and it is in fact a nice thing to do to honour the poor wee child? Her cousins has put "thank you" underneath, so she must think its a fitting tribute. Maybe its just me. I am quite prepared to admit I am BU if need be.

I don't think pictures of stillborn babies should be hidden at all, but if I am totally honest I don't tend to understand people sharing anything of real importance on FB. It just isn't me and I can never understand the "RIP nan" stuff either.. After reading the thread however I suppose with something like a baby being born stillborn I can understand how that does get ignored, or spoken about in hushed voices and the mothers and fathers might want to scream at the top of their lungs about their baby.

I would find it very upsetting personally to see a picture like that too , (although if a friend wanted to show me of course I would) so I don't think the OP is being UR. There have been some very nasty comments on this thread by other posters though.

No, you can't foist a wish to talk about it onto people who don't want to hear about it, that's true. So I didn't. The people that I am talking about where my mum and my sister, btw, so they are people that I am close to. To be fair I think that they would change the subject for fear of me getting upset.

A friend of my sister's lost her DS when she had him prematurely. When my sister went to see how she was, her friend kept talking about him (understandably IMO) but my sister thought it was strange that she would want to talk about him. Grief affects people in different ways I suppose.

:( it's so sad hearing about everyone's tragic losses - am sitting here crying. I'm so sorry for all of your losses.

I think you're absolutely right, WanderingSheep. Grief affects different people in different ways and sometimes it's just not understandable to other people. I was quite matter of fact about my miscarriage but grieved terribly when we lost our dog. I know that won't make sense, maybe it was a way of blanking it out but to this day, I don't accept that it was a 'baby' although I accept that it was a loss. I don't apply that to anybody else, just myself, at that time.

What you say about 'changing the subject' seems to be very common. I think people are often keen to try and gauge how the person is feeling and move the conversation away from upsetting things if at all possible, for fear of causing even more upset.

I think people in the UK are generally quite reserved about death. My friend in Ireland was telling me about the Wakes held for people, a celebration of their life, and it all seemed quite joyous in the midst of sadness. I also remember seeing a film where families would take photographs of their deceased, sitting upright on chairs. My aunt had a German magazine (Das Neue Blatt), which is a bit like 'Hello' magazine around the time of Princess Grace of Monaco's death... and it had pictures of her at the crash scene and in her coffin. I was horrified at that but my aunt was matter of fact.

Perhaps it is just that we are not used to pictures of 'death' and that's why we shy away from them. I do think that people really don't intend to cause offence to grieving parents or anybody else, they're just terribly uncomfortable.

Anyone who says a photo of a stillborn baby, someones son or daughter, is sick - really needs to take a good hard look at themselves and then stop posting such utterly vile & cruel nonsense. If they can't show anything empathy then shutting the fuck up works.

Bloody hell...some of you on here are revolting pieces of work aren't you?
My brother died 22 years ago, not stillborn but he was severly disabled. We have a picture of him and me in our living room (he is alive in it)
Me and my mum both post on FB every year to mark his birthday....why should it be brushed under the carpet like he never lived?

My best friend lost a boy at 22 weeks pregnant, it was his birthday this week and my BF wrote a post to mark the day.
A couple of my other friends lost boys...last year and this.

Until you have been there keep your nasty bile in your own head. I can't believe baccus, what a foul thing to say...you have no idea what that family is going through so how dare you say that.

I can't believe some of the comments I have read on this thread and I hope those in question are ashamed of themselves

'YANBU - I think posting a pic of a dead baby is really weird'
I assume you haven't lost a baby late in pregnancy? You sound quite ignorant frankly. Just imagine for a minute it happened to you and the only pic you had of your precious baby was when they were 'dead' as you put it. You cannot be sure what you would do because often that changes when you are ACTUALLY going through it. I can tell you from experience that it is fucking awful beyond words, and people's ignorance doesn't help. luckily after a while you learn that apart from the sensitive few most people have no idea unless they have suffered simelar.

And the person 'milking it'? Just because her baby died doesn't mean she will forget it!! Why shouldn't she have a ticker? Should she just forget him/her and the birthday? Should she just remian silent in extreme grief and isolation?

Her need to share her precious baby should come before your discomfort, she is SUFFERING through hell. If you don't like it DON'T LOOK, delete etc.

Dead bodies are really not so scary. I have seen many many at work and through loss forums and none have scared me even if there are abnormalities etc. I actually feel honoured to have seen these special babies. Death is part of life.

As I said before I don't share my pics on FB as that's my choice but plenty of my friends who have lost do so and it doesn't bother me, that is their choice. i refuse, though, to act like my DDs are not part of the family and I may talk about them every now and then. Do people with living children seek attention when they post that it is a child's birthday? Or is it just those with the misfortune of having a deceased child?

There are some very ignorant, sick people on this thread, maybe one day you will go through something terrible and realise how shallow and wrong you were?

I am finding some of the posts and lack of understanding on this thread quite appalling tbh. Suprisingly, although I think the OP was misguided, I don't include them in that.

I would doubt that for most people, having photos of their stillborn or lost DC or showing people/displaying those photos is about grief at all, so it has nothing to do with 'grief being a private thing' as some posters have suggested. Having photos is about having memories of your DC, alive or otherwise and celebrating their life and the fact they are or were here.

I don't think it is something anyone who hasn't lost a baby will understand either. (and I am not suggesting that all who have lost a child will feel the same way) A friend of my DH's lost their baby son who was stillborn at term a few years ago and I remember my DH saying this friend (army, so living apart from his DW sadly) had a photo of his son next to his bed. I admit at the time I found it a little strange and didn't understand it at all. I also didn't understand the impact that losing a baby has on the parents.

The thing that most shocks me is how much people do anything and everything to avoid discussion about it or mentiona child you have lost. I frequently mention my daughters if something about them is relevant to a conversation I am having, just as I would my other DC. After all, my pregnancy, labour, birth and time with them is just as important as it was with my other DC. Yet people's discomfort when I mention them, even 'casually' (eg, I am not sobbing everytime I speak of them, I can talk about them quite normally) is blatantly obvious and it's clear they wish I could pretend they never existed so that they could be more comfortable. I avoid these 'friends' now.

Thats why I don't like showing people dds photo. Have seen many friends from sands sleeping angels and all beautiful.

This thread makes me want to post right here a very large pic of my dd taken after she died.

The argument that one shouldn't display such things publicly because some viewers will be deeply affected and never forget it just doesn't hold any water. There are images of dead people in the media every single day, and though these will be troubling to all sorts of people, the images keep on coming. We live in a distressing world.

For images you'll never forget, even though you wish you could, (look away now all those who prefer to pretend death doesn't happen in real life) watch your child take her last breath, feel her heart beat for the last time and see the light disappear from her eyes.

I know I know, I played the trump card, naughty me; but honestly some of you need to get over yourselves, in my opinion, which of course I'm entitled to but which you may not share etc etc.

" Raw grief is seen as something to be taken care of privately, with support from loved ones, not something to push in the face of your 1000+ extended network or randoms you went to school with to make them feel embarrassed and guilty."

I'm not pushing my "raw grief" in anyone's faces. I don't post out of grief as I've said a few times already, I post because she's just as much my daughter as my other children. I don't care if people are embarrassed that I lost a baby, tough luck really! You're entitled to feel embarrassed that I lost a baby, but I'm entitled to share my family and I don't have to take everyone else into consideration when I do.

ChippingIn "What a load of crap"

You said it in less words than me!

"It's not all about you"

Yes, but as your not an angel mum it's not about you at all.

"I wouldn't need to plaster the house in photos of him"

You at least have the pictures to be able to do that. I have six pictures of my daughter. Most are in an album the hospital gave us with her other things, we have one on display with the pictures of the other four children. The pictures on Facebook are in an album, just like my other children have albums on Facebook and I wouldn't take them down if they died. I use her as my profile pic just as I do the others.

Would you hide all photos of your husband if he died?

"The medium is the issue; if people choose to put photos on a site where they can be seen by the world at large then there is some specific reason for doing that that goes over and above treasuring and honouring the photos of a beloved child."

Why is it acceptable to share pictures of my LC but not my angel baby? Or am I not treasuring and honouring my beloved LC when I do? I'll tell you why I share my pictures and my story, it's because it saves lives. Every time someone comes to me and says my daughter made them get tested I have achieved something in sharing. If everyone who saw my pictures was upset except the one person who got tested I would share them for that one person. As it happens more people have been tested or been positive about my pictures than have ever expressed discomfort.

Dee, I totally agree with you! That seems to be the pattern for this thread though.

"Grief is a deaply personal thing. Posting the picture is sick in my opinion (and I am entitled to have one!), not the image itself."

Simple answer to this one. Don't post a picture of your dead baby then. Sorted.

Well said zeno. I can remember the last 36 hours so clearly that I can close my eyes and relive them to the extent I'm not going to A&E I'm telling triage there's something wrong with the baby they need to see me. I'm not accepting that it's a UTI, I'm telling them there's something wrong with the baby. I don't care OH doesn't feel well, there's something wrong with the baby! Holding her in my arms and watching her chest stop rising and Mum saying she's gone is one of my most clearest memories of my life. Then everything from the few hours at the hospital before is incredibly clear, the doctors and MWs around me and their reaction, how people hardly spoke and used half sentences when they did. Snapping at a MW for putting a sheet over me (in my defence I was in transition) who looked like she was going to burst into tears when she apologised.

I don't see the problem with the cousin posting the picture either. Our niece has had our children as her profile picture, they're her cousins and she loves them. When a baby dies it's not just the parents who feel it. Our church was full when our daughter died, all our family came and some from the church because a death, especially that of a child, affects us all in some way. Just because a baby dies at or before birth doesn't mean that people are less affected than if they were older.

I'm wondering if anyone sees some deja vu in this thread? To a particular one earlier in the year and also another subject that you could so easily swap the words around and not know the difference!

No one has yet answered my question from my first post on this thread. My daughter survived birth, her life was very understated, no gasping for breath or any real sign she was there other than the gentle movement of her chest for three hours. I won't tell you when the pictures were taken and you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at them, but would it make a difference if they were before or after her death? They're of a perfect premature baby, slightly bruised but not deformed at all, she's not blue or grey that you'd expect from a dead body.

zeno... It's that attitude that I see as 'shoving somebody's nose in it'. This is a forum thread, it's open to the world at large and it would be very unfair that somebody could open the thread and see such a photo. It's very different to showing friends who have a relationship with you. It's one of the very bad things about facebook and I think that was what was meant by the 'oversharing'. The world at large does not have a relationship with you and you would run the risk of your beautiful child's picture being treated with disdain for that reason.

I expect you think that means that I think the photos are 'bad' in some way - I don't. Your DD is precious to you, everybody's children are precious to them. Reading your post is so sad, I can't imagine what it is like to lose a child but I do know what it is like to lose somebody you love, of course it's painful beyond measure.

This thread has developed into a series of rants because grieving posters, blinded by anger, cannot or will not see what's really been posted and meant by those posts. Nobody on the thread, including Bacchus, has said anything intended to hurt any poster but, because it's all highly emotive, it is all to easy to say something clumsily and cause hurt anyway.

Please don't immediately leap to the concluson that people don't care, I believe that they do. I do. :(

YANBU to be uncomfortable about seeing such a photo but you would be unreasonable to voice it to the parents/family.

A friend of mine has a photo of her stillborn son on display in her lounge. I feel strange about seeing a photo of a baby who isn't alive but I totally respect her need to have such a photo on show alongside the photos of her living DC.

When people are bereaved, I can never say that I really understand as I have never experienced a very close bereavement, luckily for me. However, I do try to avoid platitudes and always ask how they are in the hope that, should they wish to talk about their loved-one, they can use that opportunity to do so.

And of course I duly admired my friend's photo when she showed it to me and remarked on how beautiful her DS was. The fact that I found it a bit uncomfortable to look at is my problem, not hers, and that photo is all she has of him.

LWIW, your response doesn't make much sense to me.

I am not blinded by anger, and I don't feel I have shoved anyone's nose in anything.

Please try and pay attention to the fact that the upset and unfairness of seeing an image of a dead child is, on the scale of things, minor. As I said, images of death are published frequently in mainstream media. Do you avoid all this, or write to papers complaining that you are upset by them? There's a double standard here.

youngwomanwholivesinashoe... Oh absolutely, they have the right to do exactly as they please. They're free to inflict distress on whomever they choose, after all, they're going through a million times worse. It's absolutely right that anybody should feel free to post whatever pictures they deem fit to as wide an audience as they choose. If another person unwittingly chances upon it and is distressed, that's too bad.

I don't subscribe to that. I think it's a slippery slope to people doing exactly as they please without regard for anybody else and that's selfish.

Olifin... OP never voiced her discomfort to her friend, I doubt that anybody would do that. I also have a friend who has a photo of her stillborn son in her living room, he's beautiful, truly. Why wouldn't a family have pictures of their baby on display if they want to, of course they would.

People have the right to their feelings.

zeno... You said this:
"This thread makes me want to post right here a very large pic of my dd taken after she died."

Yes, I do think that many posters are posting in anger and grief. You consider that seeing images of a dead child is minor, I would disagree with you. I personally wouldn't want to see these images. I should have the right not to see them as much as you would have the right to display them. There is an easy solution to that, which has been suggested throughout the thread - a facebook album or group album or any method that allows people to elect to see the images without foisting them on people who don't wish to see them.

That's not double-standards, Zeno, it's basic respect for other people. I would disagree with you that there are images of death in the mainstream media, I haven't found that to be the case - but again, I would switch off or not read the article - my choice.

LWITW: 'OP never voiced her discomfort to her friend, I doubt that anybody would do that. I also have a friend who has a photo of her stillborn son in her living room, he's beautiful, truly. Why wouldn't a family have pictures of their baby on display if they want to, of course they would.'

I totally agree, that's very much what I was trying to say, only clumsily. And I realised the OP hadn't said anything to the family member. All I meant was that I don't think anyone can be considered unreasonable for feeling a certain way. What can be considered unreasonable is acting upon those feelings.

Yes, let's hide the photos away in a clearly labelled album lest we make anyone uncomfortable.

Let's not mention our lost sons and daughters lest we make anyone uncomfortable.

Let's make sure if we do mention them that we make sure we don't show too much emotion, or God forbid cry, lest we make anyone uncomfortable.

Bereaved parents spend their whole lives making sure they don't make anyone uncomfortable.

My DNiece died at birth and my sis gave everyone a photo of DN. At first I was utterly shocked at the photo, however when I had got over that initial feeling, I realised I was so pleased to have it.

It is a shock to see a photo of a died baby, but just try and grow up a bit and be adult about it. Your feelings are nothing compared to the parents.

It is a picture of their baby, they can put it where the hell they like.

LWIW you're projecting emotional context that isn't there.

You seem to have a clear set of rules in mind. Perhaps you should run it by SANDS or The Child Death Helpline and see if they might agree to distribute something to bereaved parents so that they will know how to conduct themselves without upsetting the world at large?

You're wrong about the media, there's plenty there. The option of turning the page, changing channel is there, just as you have the option of clicking your back button when on a forum.

zeno... There's no need for that. I feel as if I'm on eggshells posting back to you with what is only my opinion, not rules. Do what you want, wherever you like, your entitlement trumps mine and I guess I'll just have to live with that.

QuickLookBusy.. That is your DNiece that you're referring to, not a child you don't know. There's a world of difference.

I hate these conversations on here . They never happen in rl and the reason they don't is because a bereaved parent will pretty much always put the feelings of others before their own .

For example I have been very fortunate to have gone on to have two more children since my first son died at 14 mths but most of the parents at the school gates have no idea about him .

The reason I don't tell them about my son ?
Because I don't want to freak them out , I would hate them to be scared about the same happening to their child .

So I carry on painting my smile on and being the mum with two boys instead of three .

On here I am but "words on a screen" and speak my mind more .