Each Baby

Each baby,
even the tiniest life,
is special, was wanted,
was real and is loved.

There is an ancient belief that each entrance of a child into heaven is marked by a falling star.

The death of an infant is perhaps the most difficult and wrenching tragedy any family can imagine. You don’t expect a baby to die. Babies mean the beginning of life, not an end. It’s that contradiction that makes the death of a baby so alien to our understanding, so difficult to believe and accept.

When a baby dies, a bit of hope dies too, a bit of our dream breaks away, a bit of our future is erased before ever being written. Beside the physical loss, there is an emotional loss and a loss of all that new life promises. This is true whether the baby died as a newborn or before birth due to miscarriage, stillbirth, or other reasons. Society has been slow to recognize that the impact on the parents can be the same regardless of when the loss occurred. Parents’ grief over a miscarriage is as valid and real as their grief over the loss of a full-term baby.