Yeah, Ryan. I remember the first ultrasound where we saw a fetal heartbeat too.

[Bettie]

22. You're right, it is SO much more common than we think

Thanks for your kind words. Julie would be 14 this year, so it's been a long time.

A lot of why we don't really know about this until we've joined the ranks of parents who have lost an infant is related to our society's current view of death. It isn't something we speak of, especially the death of a child. Women don't want to hear about it, unless it is a miracle of a very premature child being perfectly OK. It makes them uncomfortable.

When we lost our daughter, the thing that was most shocking to me was that the virulent pro-lifers were the most dismissive of our loss. When my husband bought me flowers for Mother's day that first year after our loss, my MIL, a woman who will fight for the earliest of fetuses, told him that was stupid because I wasn't a mother.

Of course, this is a woman who honestly believes that her stillborn daughter is in hell for the sin of dying before being baptized, so I mostly ignore her on this subject.

I bet your grandmother, still thinks (sorry, don't know if she's still alive) of that baby and wonders "what if". My own grandmother does of her lost baby