I’m not going to link, because it will just provoke something that I don’t want it to – and anyway, I agree with the sentiment of the original poster, just not really with what read as a slightly unforgiving commenter afterwards. Yet again, I’ve ended up really hurt and cross because of the “you need to count yourself lucky because you have lots of children already” thing.
I hate that.
Yes, I’m lucky. Yes, I know I have lots of children and I’m really, really fortunate. I’ve had people telling me that and hating me for that for plenty of years already, thank you. I count my blessings every day. I get up and I relish them and love them and I never loved them so much as I did the day I saw them in stark contrast to the little dead boy I had just walked away from.
I’m already doing the “it could have been worse, I’m lucky and I should try not to grieve” thing. I’m already doing the “it’s worse for everyone else who has no children” thing and aching and bleeding for them. But I’m massively riled, having said that ‘yes, I’m luckier but I’m also in the shit position of having to acknowledge that loss very completely and see it for only part of a whole” to have someone reply with “how can it be as bad for you?” Ach. Enough already. Dead baby is dead baby. It’s all the same shit on a different shovel.
Let’s make one thing quite clear. Having given birth to five children did not make one of them disposable. It doesn’t make it less awful to have watched him die because I came home and had to immediately start being mummy to the living ones.
I’ve got children and one of them is dead. He was just as important as all the others. He’s not less important because of them. He was one of them. And he’s gone. And it isn’t okay. At all.
