Remembering My Unborn Children

Allison Brown shares how she found comfort in her grief after multiple pregnancy losses.

"How many children do you have?" 

I pause, hesitating to answer the question and quietly debating my answer. I am a proud mother of 12 children, including my heavenly babies. Our eight children here with us on this earth have grown up aware they have siblings in heaven. We have never shied away from having this conversation with our children. If you ask them, they will proudly tell you the names of their siblings. While there was always a period of sadness and grief after each loss, the children were always open to accepting that their baby sibling was now a saint in heaven, praying for us and waiting to meet us one day. 

Grief: a taboo subject

What made the grieving process hard for me as the mother was that the subject was still taboo in today's society. I felt I had to hide my grief from most people. That my child's life, though very short, wasn't acknowledged. 

I found comfort in the Catholic faith and its teachings on the value of the life of the unborn child. 

The Bible tells us that God had knit us in our mother's womb, and He knew us before we were born. 

You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13)

 

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born, I dedicated you. (Jeremiah 1:5)

God acknowledged the lives of my unborn children

God acknowledged the lives of my unborn children, even if society didn't. 

I found peace in knowing that, but I was still searching for a way to acknowledge and remember their short lives.  

I found information about the Shrine of the Holy Innocents in New York. This shrine is the only shrine in the world dedicated to unborn children who have died before or at birth. 

Many people around the world have emailed the shrine asking for their child's name to be inscribed into the Book of Life, which is found at the shrine next to a candle lit in memory of the unborn. 

A certificate of life is also emailed to the parents to download and keep. 

A Mass is held on the first Monday of every month to honor these babies. 

I had been trapped within my grief 

After emailing the names of all my babies and receiving their certificates, I experienced a sense of relief. The grief I had been experiencing was deep, and in a sense, I'd felt trapped within it, unable to find closure. There was no funeral or gravestone to visit. There was no mourning period and acknowledgment by extended family: no flowers or cooked meals delivered to the door. No one could visibly see my loss, as I was the only one who truly felt and experienced the new life that once was in my womb. No one else personally knew the little person who I held within my womb and close to my heart. No one else had a relationship with this precious little one. 

No one other than my husband and children felt the loss of our babies. 

As much as this new life was invisible to the naked eye (as I was in my first trimester), so was the loss. The world around me continued to go on without my baby while my heart was crumbling as I tried to grasp why God would allow this. 

As I look back and ponder this, I can see how God was inviting me to trust Him and to surrender to His plans for my family and me. 

In particular, with my last miscarriage, Mary, my heavenly Mother, was extending her hand out to me under her title, Our Lady of Sorrows. I didn't understand at the time, but she was reaching out to me with compassion and understanding of the pain of loss, especially the loss of a child. 

She invited me to turn to her as my mother and me as her daughter. 

I now look back with the understanding that the Lord can see the bigger picture, and He has plans for these little babies of mine. Even though their mission on earth was completed, their mission continues now in heaven. For some reason, the Lord wanted them quickly back with Him, and I sometimes wonder if this was to protect their souls and guarantee their place in heaven. If they had stayed on this earth longer, their souls might have been endangered. I find peace in this as, like all mothers, I desire to have all my children make it to heaven, and so far, I already have four of my children who have made it. 

The Shrine of the Holy Innocents gave me hope and comfort. They continue to hold these unborn children close to their hearts as I do. Knowing that somewhere on the other side of the world, my babies are being remembered and honored is a blessing and a gift I carry. It soothes the pain and my grieving heart. 

Most importantly, while I feel that society, in general, fails to remember unborn children, Jesus has reminded me through this parish and shrine that He remembers every one of our unborn and holds them all close within His Sacred Heart. 

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Copyright 2024 Allison Brown
Images: Canva