In October of 2012, I lost my first pregnancy to miscarriage. I went through a traumatic D&C that made me feel vulnerable and incredibly raw. The entire experience was awful. I remember being numb, swearing that I never wanted to get pregnant again because I didn’t think I could survive this feeling. It was the lowest I have ever felt, and I was completely lost. I was lucky though. I found a group of women who had also experienced a loss or multiple losses and this gave me a network of people who understood my anger, frustration, jealousy, and extreme sadness. They listened to me while I cried and worried and screamed. They held my hand while I recounted the D&C and the aftermath. They were there for me. And again, in February of this year, I lost another pregnancy. This ended at home and it was less traumatic, but the impact was still monumental. The due date for this baby was October 10th.

I was lucky because I had people I could talk to. But there are so many of us out there that have gone through these unimaginable losses with no one to talk to. I feel as a survivor of two miscarriages that I have a responsibility to be a source of comfort to women around me who are experiencing loss. It feels right to me to be able to tell them that it isn’t fair, they are allowed to be angry, and that yes, eventually it will get better, but it will never be the same.

Looking back, I wish that my family, with the exception of my sisters, had been more supportive. My parents have still not acknowledged either of my losses, and it makes me have a wall up to protect myself from them. I named my babies — Baby Mae and Baby L. I am the only person in my world who acknowledges those names. Even Mr. Cereal had a hard time being a support for me. With our first loss, he felt it heavily and didn’t know how to help me. And with the second, he was disengaged from the start because the pregnancy was unexpected.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. For me, this means that I will be vocal for the whole month on my social media. I want people to know that I have two babies I will never meet. I want them to know that this happened, so that they can feel comfortable speaking up about their own losses. It also means that I am promoting a number of events in my local area that are intended for bereaved parents. These events bring this quiet community together to remember our babies, say their names, and comfort each other.

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This tribe I am in, the loss tribe, is huge. There are so many of us and as an administrator in a regional loss group, I see new members request access almost daily. These losses are constantly happening. We need to be able to talk about them. We need the mothers who just got the news that there is no heartbeat to have a space that they can talk about the loss. To have a space to be angry, to be frustrated, to feel hopeless. We need mothers to feel comfortable sharing photos of their babies who were born still. We need to stop pretending that this isn’t happening and that it is a shameful thing.

If you have experienced a loss, share it here. Tell me your baby’s name. Tell me what you remember about your pregnancy, your loss, and the time after the loss. Did you have a support network? I want to give all of the loss parents an open opportunity to honor your children. And I want others to see that despite these babies not being in our arms, they will always be in our hearts and our minds.