The world really is a snowglobe at times. Everything seems so perfect on the surface, and only when you really pry, and look for it, can you find that there is actually a tremendous amount of suffering in the world. Tremendous. When Isla died, our doctor told us Isla was the third neonatal death that WEEK. At the first visit to our baby loss support group, the moderator told us they get a call A WEEK from families who've lost babies. How is this all going on under our noses, and no one knows about it? How are the pregnancy books SO able to avoid this topic past the 12th week? Why are families not at least cautioned to the possibilities of unfavourable outcomes in pregnancy? I am continuously stunned at the number of babies who die every day, that get no mention in pregnancy books. Lose a baby, and in "the underworld", others who've lost come out of the woodwork. Babies die. Lots of them. One book I bought had a death plan in it. It detailed in case of death, what your wishes were regarding the body etc. I thought, at the time, how morbid. Oh, blessed hindsight. I bet the author had lost a child. No one in their right mind can decide whether they want their newborn baby's body cremated, or embalmed for burial, within hours of giving birth. It's just not fathomable. Yet it happens. Who makes a death plan? No one, because babies don't die. If you make it past your 12th week, you're hoem free, right? You never hear about it, in public. No fundraisers ever make the news for neonatal death. There's lots of other, less devastating, dare I say more PC illnesses to support. October is infant and pregnancy loss month, but you'd never know it. Another pink cause is much my more trendy, and palatable to support (no offense intended). Baby loss is something so tragic, and so unbelievably sad and uncomfortable that society avoids it at all costs. When a woman loses a baby, many are isolated from their friendship circles because the bereaved mom makes the others uncomfortable. Why? Because they must then face the fact that this could happen to them too; that they and their precious children are mortal, with no guarantees for a long and happy life. They'd rather not face that. Sure, wouldn't we all? But guess what? Everyone dies. I think it's laughable that we think we can cheat death, specifically infant death, by not dealing with it. Living in a death denying society makes it really fucking hard to deal with death when it ends up at your door. Though we all *know* that eventually, we'll lose a loved one, we sure don't expect it to be our baby. When a baby dies in hospital, the mother is often kept at the far end of the unit, for her own sanity, as much as the other moms, who have their babies with them, and want to enjoy this happy time (which they deserve, don't get me wrong). When babies die in hospital, they are quietly escorted to the morgue in an isolette, "no one will know she's passed" I have heard. Well why not? Babies die. It's no secret. It's not catching for Christ's sake. Why shouldn't it be known that my baby died? It's not a dirty secret, I'm not ashamed. I could sure use the support, rather than the alienation. I hate that we deal with our dead this way. A friend of mine was kicked out of her scrapbooking circle because she chose to scrapbook her daughter's short 3 day life, and her death. It made the other girls "uncomfortable". Well fuck you, I say. Too damn bad. Her baby DIED, and YOU feel uncomfortable? Oh I can't even put my anger into words. I would probably hurt someone who said that to me

I have to be fair though, and say that before any of this happened, I would have been happily treading along in my own death denying existence too. I routinely shielded Evan from the topic of death, choosing instead to tell white lies, and skirt the issue. Case in point: my friend's dog. He was hit by a car, and when he wasn't there last time we visited, and Evan asked where he was, I told him the dog had gone to live with someone else. Save him the trouble, you know? Well, suffice to say, he now knows what happened to that dog, and anyone else whose life has graced ours, and since passed. We have books, he knows what death is, and though it's god damned awful that his baby sister died, I'm glad he knows what death is. It will help him deal with it in the future, instead of being broadsided and immobilized by it like me, and the rest of the death denying world.

I love and miss you sweet baby girl. xoxoxo thinking of you all. the. time.