Three Babies

There's so very much I want to write about, that I haven't had time made time for. Where do I start? I guess I'll start with what's most on my mind.

I have to talk about these three babies.

I've known for quite some time that my Gram Carpenter lost one baby, in 1961. "She came out blue when she was born" was what my very young ears heard. I knew she was a little girl and her name was Diane. She would have been the third girl: my gram had already had two- my mom, Donna and my aunt, Denise. I remember feeling sad for my grandma when she told me the story, stoically, but not thinking too much of it.

Not like I do now, as a mother myself. Now that I know what's it like to carry a baby full term, to get in those final weeks, days and hours and know you're so close to meeting the little someone who's been kicking around in your stomach the past few months. And then to have that moment come, and see not joy but pain and sadness... I literally can't imagine how horrific that must have been. And how, if my understanding of the 1960s is at all correct, the whole ordeal was probably swept under the rug and my grandparents were to go home to their two and three year olds who may or may not have understood that a baby was supposed to come home, too, and they were all supposed to carry on like nothing life changing had just happened to them. My poor gram. I can only imagine the pain and loss she felt.

I've also known for many years that my Gram Eldred lost two babies- Vivian and Donald. I really didn't know much beyond that except that their gravestones somberly read "Vivian 1948-1949" and "Donald 1950-1951". Such loss is such a short period of time! If wasn't until this past week that I was able to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.

I was looking for something in the town's Death Records book, when I flipped open to a page of deaths from the 1940s. I scanned the page and found Vivian's record. Cause of death: accidental asphyxiation (today's SIDS). This coincided with the awful story my mom related to me of gram walking her baby in the stroller up Route 9 to her mother's house, and finding her 2 month old baby girl dead when she went to take her out.

My poor, sweet grandmother. What a living nightmare.

I flipped just a page or two to 1951. Donald's cause of death- pneumonia- wasn't the thing that shocked me the most. What shocked me was that he was 15 months old when he passed. He was not a newborn. Donald was a part of the family for longer than a year. Did I ever hear his or Vivian's names mentioned, ever? No. This again confirmed my suspicion that when these tragedies happened, the family was supposed to keep on going and not look back.

My heart aches for these three babies and their beautiful moms who played such a huge role in my life. My heart aches because I'm sad that my grandmothers lived during a time that encouraged suppression of feelings, not finding support and help through groups and counseling. My heart aches because the pain they had to endure is almost impossible to imagine, yet they were both some of the strongest women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I think of those babies- Diane, Vivian, Donald- and think about all the other tiny souls taken far too soon. Every day babies are lost- some while still in the womb, others at birth, and still more after birth. We, as a society, are just starting to talk about it, acknowledge it. We still have a long ways to go. Each life impacts this world in one way or another, and the generations that follow.