what not to say when someone loses a baby

Even though I have had an overwhelming outpouring of love and support from friends and family, I can't help but latch onto the hurtful things people have said.  I think it's hard for most people to see someone we care about in pain. Therefore, the urge is to ease their pain. But it doesn't work. For one, I, as a mother who has just lost a child and the future I imagined for her, want to grieve. I don't want to stuff anything away and then years later, discover the hidden grief and have to deal with it then. Secondly, these words of "comfort" will almost certainly be misconstrued because a grieving person is one big raw emotion and things like:
"Miscarriage is very common. If your baby had been born, it would have had defects, so this is nature's way of taking care of it.  And you can always have another baby"
come across to the griever as:
"Get over it already. You're grieving over something that was barely alive and would have been a burden to society had it been born.  You'll have another kid. Stop raining in my parade. We don't want to hear about your sadness."
Even if the person who said this had the best of intentions, it will more than likely not come across that way.  It will not help them one bit.


Most importantly, if we take these types of comments and apply them to other types of losses, they comes across as completely insensitive and ridiculous.  If someone lost a spouse, child or sibling to cancer, we would not say:
"Cancer is very common. If your _____ (husband, wife, child, brother, or sister) had lived, they would have been in a lot of pain and wouldn't have had a good life.  You can always get another ______ (husband, wife, child, brother or sister)."  
I would hope that looking at it this way would make someone realize how ridiculous that is. You can't replace a loved one. You can't just go out and "get another husband" or "have another baby" in the way they imply. We loved the person that died. They can never be replaced.  What if a person who loses a spouse doesn't or doesn't want to get married? What if the parent who lost the child cannot have another child due to infertility or their age or a myriad of other reasons? They can't just get over it.

But, I'm guessing some people would argue that I was only 12 weeks pregnant. How could I be so upset? I never even met my baby. How could I love her that much?  I recently read somewhere, that women start dreaming of their children when they are children themselves. They play with their baby dolls, they dream up names for their future babies, decide how many and what sex of children they would like to have. That is how most women/girls are. I see my daughter playing this out day after day. She is practicing to be a mother, dreaming of her own children.  So, the love has started long before cells started dividing in our uterus.

Speaking of dividing cells, I think science is the reason some people think mothers should not be upset over a miscarriage.  "It was just a group of cells, a blighted ovum, an ectopic pregnancy." Science tries to make it rational and logical.  But that does not take away the pain or the dream a mother had for her child. Love has no logic. It is a feeling, not a "rational" thought.  My own children already loved this baby. They made her toys, thought of names, decided where she'd sleep, folded and sorted her diapers, and longed for fall because then she would be here.  They had imagined being a big brother and a big sister. They kissed my belly. They loved  her. I loved her.

The amount of time we loved someone, whether we held them in our arms or not, does not matter.

Love is love.

Think of your first love, especially if you lost them.  Maybe you only dated a short time, but the intensity of emotion was there.  People might have said, "Oh, you're young. You'll find someone else." This implies you are too young to feel so much pain. You'll get over it. But if you've been there, you remember the pain. And, then, maybe you can understand that:

Pain is pain.

Grief is grief.

And death is death.

No one should attempt to quantify or question just how much a person should grieve or how long they should be sad. And, really, who has the right to say which kind of death is better, other than the one who died? Sure, when I die, I would rather go quickly than suffer for months or years. But, for the survivors, none of those things matter. The person they love is gone. If they went quickly, it's hard because nobody got to say goodbye. If they suffered long, then everyone suffered. If a baby died in his/her mother's womb, then the family never got to meet or hold the baby. If the baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth, then yes, they got to see the baby, but their baby is still dead.

It's not easy no matter how the death happened.

The thing to say when someone has lost a loved one is "I'm sorry."

No need to say more...