Stupid Comment #8: Baby Loss Only Happens To People Who Do Something Wrong

On a very popular baby and pregnancy site, I pop onto the board from time to time that has women due approximately when I am due. This board is full of baby names, ultrasound results, and questions about symptoms. It is a place where women discuss their hopes and their dreams for their unborn child. It is a place where women compare baby strollers, argue about whether or not to breast feed, and find new friends.

It is also full of women who post that their dreams have just been shattered.

Some women cannot venture into those threads because they cannot bear reliving their past, or they do not wish to think of all of the bad things that can happen. I go into them because I want to add my sympathetic voice to their sorrow.

Typically these women talk about what happened to them, and they get out their feelings. We have all been there. We have all thought "why did this happen to me"? We have all thought "what did I do wrong"? as well as countless other questions that will never be answered.

What I read the other day was the following:

"Only women who do something wrong lose their babies, so why did I lose mine?"

I have read several other posts with this sentiment, the sentiment that these women come from a family where baby loss doesn't happen, and we, the baby loss mommies, are part of families who lose babies all the time, who do horrible things and deserve to lose our children. It is an "us" versus "them" mindset, and suddenly these women are finding out that they are in the "them" category. What angered me even more is the women who were chiming in with their agreement.

I didn't do a damn thing not straight out of the books for any of my three pregnancy losses. I ate right, I slept on the right side. I exercised well, and I took my prenatals religiously. I didn't drink, I didn't have caffeine. I could go on and on. If there was a chance that it would harm my baby, I didn't do it, despite that I know that small amounts of some things are considered perfectly safe. I still lost my three children. I still buried three children. And I don't know all of my readers, but I can pretty much guarantee that all of you did the same as me.

I have a lot of sympathy for any woman who has lost a baby at any stage of pregnancy, or through SIDS, but I will not tolerate women trying to make us feel as if we deserved to lose our children. I will not tolerate women trying to make it seem like there are families who lose babies and ones who just don't deserve to.

At the end of it all, we are all the same. We are all mothers who have lost our children. We are all mothers who would do anything to have our children back. And we all know better. Baby loss happens to women like Russian roulette. Sometimes, for these women who are sitting there thinking that we have done something to deserve this pain, I sit here waiting for that axe to land on them too.