I agree with Angelica that you are an AMAZING friend to want to figure out the best ways to "be there." Simply being there is the best. And especially as time passes. I've not experienced a miscarriage, but I have lost a one-day-old baby boy named Clyde. By the time I was ready to talk about him and the experience of losing him, which was well over a year afterwards, my friends had gone on with their lives and assumed I had as well. I think they also didn't want to bring up my lost baby because they feared it would make me sad. Plus, I'd quickly become pregnant and given birth to a baby girl within a year after losing him. I think my friends felt that she replaced him in a way. So I felt incredibly alone, with a huge hole in my heart, and like I had no one to talk to about my baby boy who I missed so desperately. Fortunately, I did join a support group for moms who'd lost babies, and it helped tremendously to have other women ask me questions about my baby -- simply allowing me to remember and recognize his existence. That was HUGE for me -- recognizing that I had another baby, even though he was no longer physically with me. One of the other moms in the support group knitted some tiny blue baby booties and gave them to me as a little something to add to a remembrance box that I'd created for my Clyde. (He never had clothes of his own, other than the gown I buried him in, so this meant a lot.)
I have a friend who miscarried three times -- each time around 12 weeks, and I've cried with her over her losses. At about the time that she lost her third baby, I read an article in The New York Times about a special and extraordinarily beautiful cemetery in Japan just for miscarried babies. The article was so incredibly touching, and I shared it with my friend. It seemed to help her to know that she's not alone in her grief and that moms on the other side of the world were doing something beautiful, and public, to remember their babies. I think remembrance is huge, as well as validation.
Continue being there, and when she's ready, allow her to have a voice.
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I agree with Angelica that you are an AMAZING friend to want to figure out the best ways to "be there." Simply being there is the best. And especially as time passes. I've not experienced a miscarriage, but I have lost a one-day-old baby boy named Clyde. By the time I was ready to talk about him and the experience of losing him, which was well over a year afterwards, my friends had gone on with their lives and assumed I had as well. I think they also didn't want to bring up my lost baby because they feared it would make me sad. Plus, I'd quickly become pregnant and given birth to a baby girl within a year after losing him. I think my friends felt that she replaced him in a way. So I felt incredibly alone, with a huge hole in my heart, and like I had no one to talk to about my baby boy who I missed so desperately. Fortunately, I did join a support group for moms who'd lost babies, and it helped tremendously to have other women ask me questions about my baby -- simply allowing me to remember and recognize his existence. That was HUGE for me -- recognizing that I had another baby, even though he was no longer physically with me. One of the other moms in the support group knitted some tiny blue baby booties and gave them to me as a little something to add to a remembrance box that I'd created for my Clyde. (He never had clothes of his own, other than the gown I buried him in, so this meant a lot.)
I have a friend who miscarried three times -- each time around 12 weeks, and I've cried with her over her losses. At about the time that she lost her third baby, I read an article in The New York Times about a special and extraordinarily beautiful cemetery in Japan just for miscarried babies. The article was so incredibly touching, and I shared it with my friend. It seemed to help her to know that she's not alone in her grief and that moms on the other side of the world were doing something beautiful, and public, to remember their babies. I think remembrance is huge, as well as validation.
Continue being there, and when she's ready, allow her to have a voice.
March 17, 2009 - 9:58pmThis Comment
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