to really not understand these birthday parties [trigger warning - stillbirth and bereavement]

[abunchofnc]

NC for this. 

Someone I worked with some years ago had a stillbirth. She left her job but I'm still linked to her FB page. I barely know her but it seemed to me to be one of the most horrific experiences  a woman could endure.  My repeat miscarriages felt 'trivial' in comparison to her experience. 

She has since gone on to have healthy DCs, as have I.

The thing is, every year since then they celebrate Baby A's birthday. (I'm not sure celebrate is the word though).

By this I mean a proper birthday cake, candles, birthday cards. And it's all on Facebook - lots of photos of them (including very young DCs who never knew their brother) gloomily staring at lit candles. Picture after picture. It really looks staged and very very surreal. Loads of 'happy birthday baby a' in the comments which I can't bring myself to add to.

I totally understand never forgetting, always remembering, marking moments etc, but I feel very odd seeing these pics.  I feel like a heartless bitch even saying this, but it just feels odd somehow.

I don't even know what it is that I have an issue with: the very public FB posts? The incongruity of miserableness over lit birthday cake candles? I also can't imagine how my own 3 year old could ever process this if she was asked to participate like this other persons  DCs do.

I know IABU. Her life, her way. Of course. I would never comment negatively if I saw her again. None of my business. But I can't get it out my head and clearly am not understanding something despite thinking about it a lot. I'm prepared to be flamed for this. Interested to know what others think.

[Earlyday]

I think we should be open about things like stillbirth - I would much prefer to live in a world where people can post on Facebook about it - than to live in the world of a few decades ago where it was taboo.

[TimeToMuskUp]

A very close friend of mine lost her first DS the day after he was born. She celebrates (for want of a better word) him every year on his birthday, and her younger DCs know that he was here, that he existed, that he lived, if only for a very short time. Her family don't acknowledge him and never have. On his birthday every year I take flowers to his grave. My DCs come too, and have always known of him.

For some, grief is a private emotion not to be shared. For my friend, sharing is a way of coping. You have to find a way of coping and that's hers.

[GarlicShake]

MrsDV, I felt that, in writing her post about the effects of the murders, bunch may have been integrating her feelings about that - and her obvious compassion for her friends' mother and sister - with her discomfort around the other friend's birthday commemoration.

How are you feeling about it now, OP? Any different perspectives?

[uniquehornsonly]

I think the OP is getting a harder time here than she deserves. It can be very difficult to understand other people's responses to trauma and grief when they seem completely alien to how you feel yourself.

For some people (mostly introverts, I find), grief is utterly private and public exposure only opens the wound wider and makes things worse. The OP sounds like she's in that category, from her description of the horrible loss she experienced as a child. I'm in this category as well - grief makes me withdraw from the world, and I find it hard to know how best to respond to people who process their grief so differently. I really, really don't want to take part in (let alone host) public memorial events/receptions in the weeks and months after the funeral of a loved one, even though I sometimes have to force myself when other people want it.

For other people (mostly extroverts, I find), grief is a communal pain that is relieved at least a little when it's shared and expressed amongst family and friends. The OP's friend who commemorates her first born loss in Facebook sounds like she might be in that category. I'm sure people in this category find it hard to understand why I don't want Facebook posts and tweets expressing sympathy at my loss - it feels like a horrible invasion of privacy to publicise my loss on top of what I'm already going through and it just makes things worse.

So even though I know in my head that we're all grieving, my heart is horrified by what feels at the time like thoughtless and selfish actions. After some time has passed, my heart catches up with my head and I can appreciate their intentions are good (and that I probably seem cold and dysfunctional to them), but I still want to be left to grieve in my own way rather than be cajoled into someone else's template of what they think grief is meant to look like.

[TheDisillusionedAnarchist]

I have to say that all the families I ' 'know' who have lost a baby or child (and off the top of my head I can count at least 20) celebrate their child's birthday in this way. It has never felt odd to me. I imagine we will do the same.

As for Facebook. Many bereaved parents have more understanding online friends than real life ones. I never used Facebook before my daughter was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition but since then it has been a lifeline. I now have an online community of people who have been through similar experiences. Of course we share our children on there.

I am interested how when people are uncomfortable with how a parent grieves they often portray their discomfort as being because of the other children rather than just admitting their own discomfort. Just leave them alone. It could be you tomorrow (child death is not that rare) and hipefully they'll leave you alone too.

Often I think the real reason people dislike the mentioning of children who have died is that it reminds them that it could happen to them, how fragile their own children's hold on life is, that no matter what you do or who you are this could happen. So they put the responsibility on grieving parents to hide it rather than accepting the difficult reality.

[longdiling]

Jesus OP, did it not occur to you that there are a sizeable number of bereaved parents on here and that your thread might make them feel like shit? Why would you post something that would make people who have gone through something utterly horrific feel even worse?

Be very very glad that you haven't had to find out how you deal with this kind of loss.

[uniquehornsonly]

I'm sure people in this category find it hard to understand why I don't want Facebook posts and tweets expressing sympathy at my loss

I think its highly, highly unlikely that a bereaved parent would find it difficult to understand why you prefer not to share.

Then why do so many people keep doing it? That is, posting condolences and anniversary notes on Facebook and Twitter even though I've asked them in person not to do that?

Some are bereaved parents, others are not, but a very large group of my family and friends choose to post "thinking of you" messages publicly rather than texting me privately. And it makes things worse, it really does, yet I'm seen as churlish ("oh they're only trying to help / be nice") when I say I wish people wouldn't do that.

Perhaps the reason you don't see oceans of threads online on the topic is that there isn't a distinct behaviour to wonder or complain about. I don't lash out online and tell people to leave me alone. I just shrink a little bit more inside every time another public message comes through

[GarlicShake]

Yes, MrsDV, to all your post. Obviously I don't know how OP's processing the many moving posts on her thread! We'll find out if she tells us

[MsJamieFraser]

You dont need to understand OP, what you need us empathy and compassion, something in which I think you lack in.

[Pinkheart5915]

Everybody has there own way.
I had a stillbirth a few years ago and every year I get a pink cake, light a candle and write a message on a balloon. I will always mark my sleeping angels birthday.


I don't have Facebook so I can't comment on putting photos on there.

[Pinkheart5915]

Posted before finished
A stillbirth always stays with you, and it does hit hard on the birthdays.
I now have a ds who is 6 months old and i love him so much but I'll never forget my baby girl.

[ElsaAintAsColdAsMe]

Once again MrsD I am here agreeing with you on yet another 'my children are fine so why can't those who aren't so lucky shut the fuck up because it makes me uncomfortable thread'.

My son and daughter both died, I am still their mum, my children are still their siblings, we still love them, they are still our family. We all accept that, it's those who haven't been here who don't.

I have birthday and anniversary traditions, and it's healthy fir my children to acknowledge our loss.

We have had all the birthdays and firsts and celebrations taken from us when they died, I refuse to have my children reduced to to a photo that I take out every now and then.

I love all of my children, it seems only allowed to love and acknowledge the ones who are still here though just in case if upsets someone else.

Fuck that, and fuck all these threads criticising and adding to the pain of anyone who chooses to acknowledge their loss like this.

[uniquehornsonly]

MrsD My experiences have been very different to yours, as I regularly hear judgement about people (other than me) who grieve privately rather than publicly, with complaints about how cold they're being, it can't still be shock, it's not healthy to keep it to yourself, etc. And it's nearly always been extroverts talking about introverts, in my experience (though of course it's not an absolute rule).

I think some people are just reflexively judgemental regardless of their preferred mode of grief, and should leave everyone to grieve in their own way

I'm sorry for your loss, and everyone else's on his thread But I'm going to stop posting now because I'm finding it painful to talk about my own situation and wish I hadn't started.

[ThatsNotMyRabbit]

Well it wouldn't be for me. I think it's weird and maudlin but each to their own.

[minmooch]

Each to their ownThatsnotmyrabbit and yet you then judge others by saying you think it's weird and maudlin. Why the need to say anything negative at all? You could have left it at each to their own. The way I grieve for my children is my own grief. I grieve quietly for my stillborn daughters I grieve more openly for my son. It is neither weird not maudlin. It just is.

[ElsaAintAsColdAsMe]

Well ThatsNot coming onto a thread full of bereaved parents and calling the way some of us choose to remember our children 'weird and maudlin' in an effort to make others feel bad wouldn't be for me.

I guess we are all different.

[LilyTheSavage]

Yes yes yes to MrsD and minmooch.

Thatsnotmyrabbit -weird and maudlin..... you have no fucking idea. "That wouldn't be for me" - well just so you know, none of us have chosen for our precious children to die and you (I sincerely hope) will never know how it feels or how you'd act so please don't tell us that we're weird or maudlin. You haven't the faintest idea.

OP - for fuck's sake go and find some compassion and sympathy and just shut up perhaps. Starting this thread was just goady and completely and utterly unnecessary and provocative. Just why????

[ThatsNotMyRabbit]

I had no intention of making anyone feel bad.

When I said "I think", that's what I meant. Ie "that is my opinion". Otherwise I would have said "It is" instead.

Who knows - if it had happened to me I may feel differently. If that was the case I'm pretty sure I wouldn't give the slightest hoot what internet strangers thought. But I sincerely apologise if I caused any offence. Really - none was meant.