I'm really sorry for the upsetting nature of this post but i am heartbroken. Tomorrow is the third anniversary/birthday of my stillborn son who was born full term. I have phoned round my friends to ask if they are free to mark the occassion like we do every year. We go for lunch or something. We talk about him.
My friends have been quite evasive about it this year and finally one called this morning saying she thinks i should let it go. I can't keep letting this haunt me forever. She had a miscarriage at eight weeks a few years ago and i don't see her organising anniversary lunches etc. Her words.
I'm so sorry if this sounds cruel, but to me - yes, they are two horrible situations but not quite the same. Delivering a full term baby, and holding him, getting a photo of him etc is not on the same level as a eight week miscarriage. Just as i think someone losing a child - for example a baby to cot death - is again far worse than delivering a still born.
I understand that everyone has different emotional boundaries. So for some people, a miscarriage at 4 weeks could feel the same as someone losing a child to cot death.
Basically, i jusst feel quite embarrassed now and isolated. I want to celebrate Ethan's life no matter how short it was. But i've been made to feel it's insignificant. Am i being unreasonable thinking both of our children's deaths are terrible, but not quite on the same level?
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8week miscarriage isn't quite the same as delivering a full-term stillborn?
Lira · 12/09/2012 10:53
married, thanks for asking. Have good days and bad days, as will probably always.
But women like you, sharing their stories and their memories of their beautiful children, you have no idead how supportive I find it.
Mothers of angel babies have given birth. They have to register both their birth and their death, and I know both those experiences. They have to make arrangements, for the body/shell of their child. They cannot walk away, it is a legal requirement of them.
And just now in Aillidh's unit, last Saturday was the funeral of a beautiful baby girl, born 22 April 2011, taken by the same disease that claimed Aillidh. She died before she made it to 16 months. I remember seeing her lovely mother, after they were told their child had failed to remit after all the drugs known to treat AML, and how she cried about how she would never walk (she was 10 months when she diagnosed and ill after that), never say 'Mum', and how she wanted shopping, spa days, period pains, relationship troubles and whinging for driving lessons. All I could do was hold her and cry, my child was in PICU already then.
I saw her again, the night A died, in the onco unit. She asked how things were going, despite already knowing her own child was probably terminal. I told her that A was likely to die, I was just down for a much-needed shower a few minutes. And her great blue eyes filled with tears and she came to cuddle me and she whispered, 'I know I will be in your place, in 5 or 6 weeks.'
I hoped and prayed against hope, that wouldn't be true. But it was. Her child died.
And, following A's death, the death of Naomi Sharp, age 15. Same disease as both those girls. One year post successful bone marrow transplant, she relapsed. She chose to go for more chemo. It killed her in less than 6 weeks. With AML's who require stem cell transplants, it is only successful at cure about 50% of the time. In those who relapse within 2 years, well, let's put it this way, the odds are so poor, they give you the option, assuming your child is even found medically fit to possibly withstand it (and a significant percentage are not), to not do anything more.
And I think, how we went to a memorial service for those who have died in A's unit in the past 5 years on 19 August, they were not so few for 2012, and now there are three more and, sadly, I know the parents of some of the children whose names are to come when we go back next year. 
Thinking of you Lira, and Ethan, today. I wish we had a ballons emoticon. Here are some happy 
and a :) in their place.
And thank you for starting this thread.
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