Birthday Party for Pregnancy Loss

[GeoBQn]

Bonnie at A Knotted Life wrote about having a birthday dinner with cake on what would have been the due date for her first pregnancy.

aknottedlife.com/2014/02/7qt-bday-card-little-joe-and.html

I've only just started following Bonnie, so I read up on previous posts about "Peter Mark." It was her first pregnancy, and she had a miscarriage about 5 days after a positive pregnancy test. She would have been 2-3 weeks along, 4 at most. She and her husband decided that it was a boy and picked a name.

aknottedlife.com/search/label/Peter

It's been six years and even though she has had 5 children since then, she still blogs about the miscarriage once a year on the estimated due date and talks about how she wishes that he would have been far enough along for a proper burial.

I've never been pregnant or suffered a loss, so I don't know where the line is on what is an appropriate amount of grief. The idea that she is involving her children in this makes me uneasy, especially since the miscarriage happened before she had the rest of her children. One of her daughters made a birthday card that said, "Happy Birthday dear Peter. My heart is broken" with a picture of a broken heart.

[Georgiana]

Since all fetuses develop as female until the Y chromosome triggers androgen to kick in and force male development, her baby was technically female. Or actually neither, since it wasn't far enough along for any sex-specific development.

Edit: She needs help. Forcing your children to have tragic birthday parties for someone who died before they were born is sick.

[SPHASH]

For fucks sake.

[PennySycamore]

I knew a woman some years ago that lost a teenage son to leukemia. Ceil had birthday parties for her son for years afterward. It was NOT healthy in the least. She was stuck in the process of grief.

The due date when you've had a miscarriage might be sad, but this behavior is abnormal and Bonnie is hurting her kids by subjecting them to this. No kid's heart should be broken because her mom had an extremely early miscarriage.

[darkplumaged]

The due date when you've had a miscarriage might be sad, but this behavior is abnormal and Bonnie is hurting her kids by subjecting them to this. No kid's heart should be broken because her mom had an extremely early miscarriage.

Edit: She needs help. Forcing your children to have tragic birthday parties for someone who died before they were born is sick.

ITA with both of you. Foisting her (disproportionate) grief on her children is selfish, even cruel.

[gypsygirl22]

I miscarried very early also, mine happened 3 days after the doc confirmed the pregnancy. It was many years ago. I still remember the date, I'll never forget. But I have never had any sort of would-be birthday party for the baby. That would just be weird.

[singsingsing]

She's a Catholic blogger. They all have to one up each other, don't they? The next one will have the miscarried baby's personality and future all decided. "We're devastated to announce that three hours after my positive pregnancy test we lost our son, John Marc Ignatius Boniface, future Harvard graduate and Pope. Our other children will wear black and speak only to pray the rosary for the next nine months in his honour."

[Nobodysdoormat]

These people must be bored with their lives. No busy fulfilled person would do this. But then again, I am commenting about her non life blog, oy vey!

[GeoBQn]

These people must be bored with their lives. No busy fulfilled person would do this.

I was thinking this too. One of my best friends had her first pregnancy end in a miscarriage, then followed with two healthy babies. She is so BUSY--raising her sons, keeping chickens and ducks, starting her own photography business. She probably thinks about the first loss occasionally in a quiet moment, but she's embracing the children and life she has.

[artdecades]

I am looking through her blog and she keeps mentioning someone named Fulton Sheen, and apparently this guy is a candidate for sainthood and she claims she prayed to him and he revived her dead son and submitted that as a miracle for his sainthood. That is another level of one upping.

[maybeizfundie]

I have miscarried three times, and farther along. But I just can't imagine doing something like this.

I am open with my kids about miscarriage. And I am all about people needing to grieve in their own way. And I don't think people who have super early miscarriages should be mocked for grieving what some wouldn't even consider potential life at that point.

But there is something squicky about this. Not that she's grieving. Not that she's remembering a date. I feel sad for her children to be burdened with something so heavy and dark at such young ages. That's really unfair to them. My kids know I lost some babies, and we've talked a little about what happened, and I've answered the questiosn they had from me. But I can't imagine having "birthdays" for those babies and driving my kids to heartbreak over siblings that they never met, and in 2 cases didn't even know existed until the miscarriage was over and done with. That's not their burden.

If she is harping on Bishop Fulton J. Sheen being a miracle working saint, then I would guess that she's on the cray-cray end of hyper-Catholicism. My family are super conservative Catholics (converts from Protestantism) but that's way over the deep end, even for them.

[chissprincess]

Yeah, that doesn't seem healthy at all, for any of them. It really sounds like she needs some kind of professional help to get through this...she doesn't have to forget or bury her feelings but I can't imagine being a surviving kid and having my mother do this every year over a baby that was never even born. It just...I'm afraid of the message that sends to her living kids.

[veron1que]

My mom had 5 miscarriages and 4 children. I have never viewed those miscarriages as anything more than biology, and the loss of incompatible cells. I can not imagine the burden if I was raised to believe I had five dead siblings.

Not to mention it would mean I wouldn't exist. Though miscarriages can be devastating to some, they are part of your path. If that pregnancy had yielded a child, her current children wouldnt be who they are.

Also. Women please stop testing at 4 weeks. Save yourself the grief of miscarriage and just wait to test... :/

[nelliebelle1197]

I had a brutal miscarriage at 18 weeks. I can't even tell you the date of the miscarriage or the fetus' due date. The only impact it had was to make me hyperaware to issues in my subsequent, successful pregnancies. Fetishising a lump of cells is sick. I make zero apologies for feeling that way.

[singsingsing]

I absolutely don't think there's anything wrong about grieving a miscarriage, even a very early one, or viewing it as a baby when it was wanted, even if it was technically still 'a lump of cells' - but making your children celebrate/mourn the due date every year is frankly unhealthy.

[darkplumaged]

I had a brutal miscarriage at 18 weeks. I can't even tell you the date of the miscarriage or the fetus' due date. The only impact it had was to make me hyperaware to issues in my subsequent, successful pregnancies. Fetishising a lump of cells is sick. I make zero apologies for feeling that way.

Ugh, I'm sorry, nelliebelle1197.

Bonnie is just a couple small steps away from being Frankie.

(Link unbroken b/c it points to another FJ thread.)

[Coconut Flan]

She's way far away from the middle of the curve. I lost several pregnancies and I made it a point to forget both the exact date that they occurred and the prospective due dates. For my life, those dates should never be memorialized. The living children are the ones who need their mother not the ones who don't make it through the pregnancy. So many early pregnancies end in miscarriage that excessive grieving is such a waste and dragging her children through it should raise red flags in the family for her to receive counseling.

I'm not heartless about losing a wanted pregnancy and I understand the grief at the time. There comes a time to move past it and that time isn't measured in years especially when there are children to be considered.

[terranova]

Ugh, I'm sorry, nelliebelle1197.

Bonnie is just a couple small steps away from being Frankie.

(Link unbroken b/c it points to another FJ thread.)

Oh dear Frankie. I'd forgotten about her.

I feel incredibly sad for anyone who suffers a miscarriage, no matter how far along in their pregnancy they are and I support their need to grieve, but perhaps after 5 years she needs to see someone about it?

[maia sayet]

Also. Women please stop testing at 4 weeks. Save yourself the grief of miscarriage and just wait to test... :/

This is good advice. I think a lot of women don't realize what the actual stats are. 1 in 3 fertilized eggs that manage to implant spontaneously abort, and the vast majority of those are in that first week.

[Zazzle]

I lost a baby at 18 weeks. My children were very involved in my pregnancy, they were very excited about having a baby sister, and they were devastated when she died. We have included that baby in our family traditions- at Halloween we set out a tiny pumpkin, for Christmas we put up a tiny stocking for her, we will probably eat cupcakes on her birthday. My kids are emotionally stable, and when we talk about the baby we remember the happy times, we dont dwelling on the grief. This is what feels right for our family. My neighbor had a similar loss, she told her kids that the doctor was wrong, there was no baby, and they never talked about it again. Her kids are happily ignorant. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to approach the situation.

I am currently 5 weeks pregnant, and I found out today that the pregnancy probably won't be viable. This is a very different loss, the baby doesn't feel like part of our family yet. Every woman handles loss differently, and not every loss is the same.

[crazyforkate]

The link's not coming up - I keep getting a GoDaddy page instead. Anyone else have this problem?

EDIT: Nvm, Google to the rescue.

[Jana814]

The due date when you've had a miscarriage might be sad, but this behavior is abnormal and Bonnie is hurting her kids by subjecting them to this. No kid's heart should be broken because her mom had an extremely early miscarriage.

Have to agree!! Why did she even tell her kids about it.

[Flossie]

Maybe this doesn't belong here, because this deals with a child who was born and died a few years later. Mods, please either move this to wherever you see fit, or delete entirely.

I knew a woman whose youngest child died just after his fifth birthday. It was completely unexpected, as the death was from an accident that happened during a routine medical procedure. On top of that, six months earlier her husband had died from cancer.

Anyway, she still had two older children who obviously remembered their passed brother. On the child's next birthday, she took her kids to the grave and they had a picnic lunch featuring the boy's favorite food (McDonald's Happy Meals) and had a small birthday cake with six candles on it. During the meal, they looked at pictures and talked about the boy, then they lit the candles and let the wind blow them out. They each had a slice of cake, then wrote messages to the little boy on helium balloons and released them.

Then they each privately approached the grave to have a moment alone with the boy.

The whole process took about an hour, and the mom said that sometimes they didn't talk, sometimes the laughed, and sometimes they cried.

When they left, they left a Happy Meal and a slice of cake at the base of the headstone, along with some flowers and tied a Happy Birthday balloon to a rock and left it there, too.

She'd called ahead to the cemetary to find out if there were any funerals scheduled that day, as she didn't want to make her visit at the same time. An employee told her the best time to come and advised her that these types of celebrations sometimes happened, but told her that they'd have to remove the food, so as not to draw birds and animals. She was going to ask a friend to come by later and pick up the food, but she was told that they'd have one of their employees wait a discrete distance and they'd pick it up for her after they'd left. I thought that was kind of them. When she went back the next weekend, the toy from the Happy Meal was still there, and she kept it as a keepsake.

Anyway, one of her other children told a teacher about it, and the mom was called to the school and told that they were turning her into CSD because they felt it was unhealthy for her to force her kids to have a birthday party at the grave of a dead child. They felt it was too much to ask of a fourth and fifth grader to do that. She was so upset. She told them that the celebration was something that the kids grief counselor not only approved of, but part of the ceremony was designed by the kids themselves as part of their therapy. The grief counselor was so incensed that she called the school and chewed them out. If CSD was ever called, they must not have deemed it abusive, because the mom never heard from them.

The mom said that if her kids wanted to do it the following year, they'd do it again. Maybe they'd have part of the ceremony at home and then visit the grave, maybe they'd do everything at the grave. Maybe they wouldn't do anything. For her, it was all about helping her kids deal with loss. We lost touch after that, so I don't know what, if anything, that little family did on the next birthday.

[Jana814]

To the above post. That's a wonderful thing for your friend & her kids to do!! Especially since the grief counselor was the one to suggest they do that. How dare the school be mad about that.

[latraviata]

Maybe this doesn't belong here, because this deals with a child who was born and died a few years later. Mods, please either move this to wherever you see fit, or delete entirely.

I knew a woman whose youngest child died just after his fifth birthday. It was completely unexpected, as the death was from an accident that happened during a routine medical procedure. On top of that, six months earlier her husband had died from cancer.

Anyway, she still had two older children who obviously remembered their passed brother. On the child's next birthday, she took her kids to the grave and they had a picnic lunch featuring the boy's favorite food (McDonald's Happy Meals) and had a small birthday cake with six candles on it. During the meal, they looked at pictures and talked about the boy, then they lit the candles and let the wind blow them out. They each had a slice of cake, then wrote messages to the little boy on helium balloons and released them.

Then they each privately approached the grave to have a moment alone with the boy.

The whole process took about an hour, and the mom said that sometimes they didn't talk, sometimes the laughed, and sometimes they cried.

When they left, they left a Happy Meal and a slice of cake at the base of the headstone, along with some flowers and tied a Happy Birthday balloon to a rock and left it there, too.

She'd called ahead to the cemetary to find out if there were any funerals scheduled that day, as she didn't want to make her visit at the same time. An employee told her the best time to come and advised her that these types of celebrations sometimes happened, but told her that they'd have to remove the food, so as not to draw birds and animals. She was going to ask a friend to come by later and pick up the food, but she was told that they'd have one of their employees wait a discrete distance and they'd pick it up for her after they'd left. I thought that was kind of them. When she went back the next weekend, the toy from the Happy Meal was still there, and she kept it as a keepsake.

Anyway, one of her other children told a teacher about it, and the mom was called to the school and told that they were turning her into CSD because they felt it was unhealthy for her to force her kids to have a birthday party at the grave of a dead child. They felt it was too much to ask of a fourth and fifth grader to do that. She was so upset. She told them that the celebration was something that the kids grief counselor not only approved of, but part of the ceremony was designed by the kids themselves as part of their therapy. The grief counselor was so incensed that she called the school and chewed them out. If CSD was ever called, they must not have deemed it abusive, because the mom never heard from them.

The mom said that if her kids wanted to do it the following year, they'd do it again. Maybe they'd have part of the ceremony at home and then visit the grave, maybe they'd do everything at the grave. Maybe they wouldn't do anything. For her, it was all about helping her kids deal with loss. We lost touch after that, so I don't know what, if anything, that little family did on the next birthday.

Twice a year we have a memorial dinner for my late youngest son (aka Rigolo or petit juif) on his birthday and the day he died. We (Cuteneurorad and I) prepare an extended 6-course dinner and invite some family and friends. Dinners with a laugh and a tear, good conversations and music are very soothing.