When October came around, she began to notice the reminders about Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and something inside her shifted. It was a subject that she had heard whispered about but rarely openly discussed, no matter how many lives it affected. She was shaken to the core to learn that one in four women had experienced the loss that she had experienced, let alone that she had experienced it herself, but had clearly been far from alone all along. The stories that follow come from the strength she found in the five women whose stories rocked her world and reshaped her understanding of loss, love, and resilience.
Melissa’s experience is one of endurance. She got married at a young age, had her first miscarriage at the age of twenty, and went back to work the next day in quiet pain. For the next eighteen years, infertility, PCOS, and disappointment followed her. Her doctors said she would never be able to give birth without the help of IVF, which was out of the question financially. Then, aged thirty-seven, Melissa got pregnant. It was a joy and terror all mixed into one. Her son, Adam, was born still after his heart stopped beating. Sixteen years had passed, and Melissa still struggled with self-loathing and pain, loving the child she had yet to raise and anticipating the joy of finally meeting the child in the afterlife.
Emmie has always been a woman and a mom at heart. However, Emmie has a diagnosis of PCOS, and this has led to miscarriages and many years of fertility procedures. The procedures included surgeries, medications, depression, anxiety, and weight gain, which made Emmie’s physical and emotional state suffer. IVF procedures were simply expensive for Emmie and her family. When Emmie received news of a pregnancy from another woman, Emmie’s wounds were opened, and Emmie’s hurt escalated when well-meaning people made Emmie’s pain worse.
A healthy pregnancy had never ended in loss for Ashley. She had never experienced such tragedy. At twenty weeks, she received devastating news: her baby had passed away. Giving birth to her child gave her the chance to hold and say goodbye to her precious son, Winston. Her grief stayed with her even as she went on to have her next child. In her grief, nothing was taken away; it learned to exist with it. Carrie’s journey as a mother was riddled with heartbreak. After experiencing miscarriages, Carrie was able to go full term with her child, Brendan, but he died a few months later due to serious medical issues. Carrie got to hold Brendan in her arms as he died, but it was in this moment that she realized that being a mother is not measured by how long one lives but rather how much one is loved.
Emerald had a resurrection story. It was hard labor interspersed with fear and hope. But with the birth cries of her daughter, she felt as if she had been given a part of her heart back. In that moment, she realized she was strong enough to be a mother. Together, these stories tell a truth: grief can change you, but love remains. Grief requires space, tenderness, and wisdom. No woman needs to walk this way alone.
