It's October 15th...

Most people know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. We’ve seen the pink ribbons everywhere, right? Well, October is also Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month. Both are issues that deeply affect women, yet for some reason people are much more comfortable talking about breast cancer than they are about losing a baby. After losing a baby at 24 weeks for unknown reasons, however, this has become a very important issue to me personally. I just wanted to share some numbers with you.

• Approximately 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. (Possibly twice that many miscarriages happen before the woman realizes that she is pregnant, but of course these are difficult to track.) Of the number of women who miscarry, 20 percent will suffer recurring miscarriage.
• Approximately 1 in 200 pregnancies end in stillbirth, which is a miscarriage after 20 weeks gestation.
• Approximately 1 in 200 pregnancies end in neonatal death, when the baby dies before it is 28 days old.
• Approximately 1 in 400 babies die between the age of 28 days and 11 months.

These aren’t just statistics – these are people. I have friends in each of those first three categories, especially the first one. I am sure that you do, too.

Today is October 15, National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. It’s a day to remember these babies and to light a candle in their memory. There is supposed to be a “wave of light” across the world today; everyone is asked to burn a candle for one hour at 7 PM in their own time zone to keep the wave going. Eleanor and I will light one in memory of her sister and all of the other babies that we know of.

I wanted to end with this little excerpt from the blog of a friend of mine. Last year she lost her baby girl Malou at 32 weeks with no warning. She says it better than I could:

Another part of today’s plane trip
that reminded me of
Malou
was Delta’s solicitation
for donation to
finding a cure for breast cancer.

Now,
this is definitely a cause I support.

And obviously,
a lot of other people do so as well,
and there is a lot of focus on it nowadays.

But it made me think,
when will stillbirth become an issue
that the world fights together?

When will we find a cure
for stillbirth?

Google tells me
400,000 people die from breast cancer each year,
but 2 million babies are stillborn
(and that number doesn’t include
SIDS).

Stillbirth is definitely
the silent killer…
grief stifles the parents
and “courtesy” silences the friends
who don’t want to mention it.

And of course
our darling babies
can’t speak for themselves.

But the whole world
is losing out
on a generation
of people
who deserve to live.

There IS a reason
they are dying.

Even when the autopsy
says there isn’t.