Today 9th October 2022, marks the start of Baby Loss Awareness Week. I have never lost a child but people close to me have. I also work with this kind of loss frequently as a Psychologist. For those who have lost babies or children, this week can feel overwhelming for some due. So please keep yourselves safe and do what you need to do in avoiding or engaging with social media.
This awareness week is an initiative that’s been running for twenty years to mark the lives of babies lost in pregnancy or soon after birth. Loss is not just miscarriage or still births but also abortion, as even if decided, this is still a huge loss that brings complex emotions that have to be situated in much debate and controversy within society. Some abortions are for health reasons for mother or child or both, some are due to rape, and othera due to life circumstance not feeling they can meet a child’s needs at that time. Whatever the situation loss is loss. None more so, none less so.
The theme this year of loss awareness is one of stepping stones and about how after loss life can take a path that was never expected. This path is unique to everyone. Whatever you feel you are entitled to feel. No one else is in a position to judge as they are not you and therefore are not privy to your individual viewpoint, experiences and current emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and practical resources.
One of the processes that has been helpful for people to consider in my therapeutic work is that when a woman is pregnant the cells of the baby migrate into the maternal bloodstream and then back to the baby. This means there is an imprint of the baby upon the mother’s biological cells. Research has shown that if there is a problem with the mother’s heart due to injury fetal cells rush to the site of the injury to heal.Cells from a fetus have also been shown to be present in a mother’s brain 18 years after the child’s birth.
The physical connection between mother and fetus is provided by the placenta, made from a combination of mother and baby cells. The placenta is the highway to cell transference. The cells of one human life integrate into the tissues of another. When we also add to this the fact that all the eggs a woman carries in her life, form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means cellular life as an egg originates in our grandmother’s womb. Each of us has spent five months there and so forth back through the generations. So the eggs from cousins who are the offspring of female siblings will have all been resident in the same grandmother’s womb at one stage. We live life with many of us considering we are distinct individuals, a separateness is assumed. However it seems we carry parts of others within us – one vast connected universe.
This process is called “Fetal-maternal mucheochimerism”. The idea that can provide comfort in times of loss is that a part of the child always remains with the mother. Like a shooting star (which isn’t really a star at all) the baby leaves a trail of light as it passes through the life of a mother taking her on a path that never would have happened had the essence of that child never have been felt by her. With what we see as shooting stars, first specs of dust have to enter the earth’s atmosphere and run together causing friction which heats up and is then seen as light. Just as the loss has to be felt and grieved before the light can be seen and ongoing healing can occur.
I would extend the information in this article to any parents not just mothers who have lost a baby, and also not just a baby but a child.
The following charities offer help and support to those experiencing loss:
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