From Gentle Sorrow to Public Grief, The Changing Face of Infant Loss

“ Tavistock House, Wednesday, June 30th, 1855.
My dear Mrs. Winter,
I am truly grieved to hear of your affliction in the loss of your darling baby. But if you be not, even already, so reconciled to the parting from that innocent child for a little while, as to bear it gently and with a softened sorrow, I know that that not unhappy state of mind must soon arise. The death of infants is a release from so much chance and change—from so many casualties and distresses—and is a thing so beautiful in its serenity and peace—that it should not be a bitterness, even in a mother's heart. ”

“ They are covered with flowers, and on the little head is also a garland of flowers. No one must weep for the death of an infant. It would be an offence against God, who had compassion on the little creature and took it to make of it an angel in Paradise before it had learned to sin. ”

“ But the death of an infant, while a sad, is a beautiful thing to witness. There is no flower that blooms on a baby grave that does not speak to the world-worn heart, of Immortality. The grief, therefore, is gentle in its touch. But with the ebb of a maturer life the sorrow is of a different character, and when the physician announced to this worthy couple that their daughter, Elvira, would die, they were stunned by the blow, and when the event came "they refused" like Rachel "to be comforted." ”

“ Madame Granson's grief was silent, concentrated, and little understood. There are two forms of mourning for mothers. Often the world can enter fully into the nature of their loss: their son, admired, appreciated, young, perhaps handsome, with a noble path before him, leading to fortune, possibly to fame, excites universal regret; society joins in the grief, and alleviates while it magnifies it. But there is another sorrow of mothers who alone know what their child was really; who alone have received his smiles and observed the treasures of a life too soon cut short. ”

“ Grief turns instinctively to the somber garments of mourning for the slight measure of comfort which they give, but modern ideas of enlightened civilization look with disfavor on long crêpe veils and any other form of mourning that is so pronounced as to be ostentatious. Black is very depressing, especially to young children, and a mother, however deep her sorrow because of the death of one of her children should keep this in mind and should, at any rate, not wear black every day. If she likes she may wear mourning when she leaves the house. ”

“ To it the infanticide so common among the uncivilized and semi-civilized is, of course, mainly due—the burial of living infants with mothers who have died in childbirth; the putting to death one out of twins; the destruction of younger children when there are already several. For these acts there is an excuse like that commonly to be made for killing the sick and old. ”

“ At the birth of a child, a special messenger was sent to notify relatives and intimate friends, who must soon visit the baby and take it presents, and especially so if it was the first in the family. Yet infanticide was not uncommon, for poverty sometimes decided against the infant, and this also might be true of a child born maimed or deformed. "In old days, when the new-born child was laid at the father's feet, the father could refuse to take it, and the child was then exposed to die in a bamboo-grove. ”

“ Thus we are brought face to face with another problem of infant mortality. Are we to check the infant mortality rate among the feeble-minded and aid the unfortunate offspring to grow up, a menace to the civilized community even when not actually certifiable as mentally defective or not obviously imbecile? ”

“ A woman whose only child has died has failed for the time being in that work of giving life which is her only justification for existence, and so her unconscious mind would try to pretend that it had not happened and she would find herself unable to believe that the baby was really dead, and she would feel as if she had let them bury it alive. ”

“ Once you have lost a child, you never again feel any confidence that the rest are safe; you seem to know they are going to die if they but catch a cold or scratch a finger, and that they will have no chance at all if you let them out of your sight. ”

“ We often find that the loss of an infant is lamented with a more violent and unappeasable grief than that of an adult; and this is simply because, in the one case, the damage is ascertained, and forms but one distinct idea; while in the other it is arbitrary, vast, beyond imagination. A child is, in one sense, a dangerous possession: it is apt to warp itself into the vitals of our very soul ”

“ The death of children is a great bereavement of home. Behold that little blossom withered in its mother’s arms! See those tears which flood her eyes as she bends in her deep grief over the grave of her cherished babe! Go, fond parents, to that little mound, and weep! It is well to do so; it is well for thee in the twilight hour to steal around that hallowed spot, and pay the tribute of memory to your little one, in flooding tears. There beneath those blooming flowers which the hand of affection planted, it sweetly sleeps. It bids adieu to all the scenes and cares of life. ”

“ And then when the child has been actually sacrificed, when by the simple act of releasing their hold upon it and turning away they have actually allowed it to pass out from their love and tenderness into the world unknown, this silent cradle has seen them smite their hands in anguish and yield to such voiceless tempests of grief as only those know who have loved much and lost all. ”

“ How sad and lonely especially is the mother who is called thus to weep the loss of her departed infant. Oh, it is hard for her to give up that loved one whose smile and childish glee were the light and the hope of her heart. As she lays it in the cold, damp earth, and returns to her house of mourning, and there contemplates its empty cradle, and that silent nursery, once gladsome with its mirth, she feels the sinking weight of her desolation. No light, no luxury, no friend, can fill the place of her lost one. ”

“ She is brave and she is faithful, and we say we're reconciled,
But your hearts are always heavy once you've lost a little child;
And a man can face his sorrow in a manly sort of way,
For his grief must quickly leave him when he's busy through the day ”

“ And no one feels the death of a child as a mother feels it. Even the father cannot realize it thus. There is a vacancy in his home, and a heaviness in his heart. There is a chain of association that at set times comes round with its broken link; there are memories of endearment, a keen sense of loss, a weeping over crushed hopes, and a pain of wounded affliction. But the mother feels that one has been taken away who was still closer to her heart. Hers has been the office of constant ministration. Every gradation of feature has developed before her eyes. ”

“ How many have died, and how many are dying continually! Have you ever reflected how many fathers have worn out their lives in toil? how many mothers have descended to the grave before their time, exhausted by the privations to which they have condemned themselves for the sake of sustaining their children? Do you know how many men have planted a knife in their hearts in despair at beholding their children in misery? how many women have drowned themselves or have died of sorrow, or have gone mad, through having lost a child? Think of all these dead on this day, Enrico. ”

“ The death of an infant which scarce knew you, which a week's absence from you would have caused to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your closest friend, or your first-born son—a man grown like yourself, with children of his own. ”

“ It is, therefore, a Christian privilege to weep over the death of our departed kindred, yea, who can stifle the anguish of the heart when the tender flowers of home sink into the waxen form of death? when the flickering flame of infant life burns lower and weaker; when the death-glazed eye is closed, and the little bosom heaves no more, and that lovely form becomes cold as the grave, what parental heart can then remain unmoved, and what eye can then forbid a tear? Not even the assurance of infant salvation and the hope of reunion in heaven, can prevent sorrow for the dead. ”

“ Each year, approximately a million pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or the death of the newborn child. National observance of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, 1988, offers us the opportunity to increase our understanding of the great tragedy involved in the deaths of unborn and newborn babies. It also enables us to consider how, as individuals and communities, we can meet the needs of bereaved parents and family members and work to prevent causes of these problems. ”

“ There is nothing more devastating to a family than the death of a child. Each year, thousands of America's families face this tragedy, losing their children to illness, injury, or accident. Our whole society experiences this loss as well, for we are all diminished by the death of every one of our young people, whose love, laughter, talents, and achievements bring so much joy to our lives and so much promise to our future. ”

“ When they had laid her in the churchyard he came home, and took the key, and went into the little parlour all alone. She had never seen it. She had never [Pg 140] even heard of it. It is sad to bury a baby that is dead; it is sadder, if we but knew it, to bury in darkness and silence a child that has never lived. A joy that has gone from us for ever is a jewel that trembles like a tear on Sorrow's breast, but the brightest stars in her diadem are the memories of hopes that have passed away unrealised and untold. ”

“ Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power, have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. ”

“ So hazardous is this period of early infancy, in the United States, that our annual loss of baby life is between seven and eight times as great as was the yearly loss of our young men in the war, for upwards of 200,000 babies less than a year old die each year. That the first month is more dangerous than any which follow is shown by the fact that about 100,000 of these baby deaths occur during the first four weeks of life. ”

“ As all of these conditions are preventable to a greater or lesser degree, we have to acknowledge that many babies die whom we know how to save. There is sound reason, therefore, for the belief that proper care would save the lives of about two-thirds of the mothers and half of the babies who now die and half of the babies who are born dead. ”

“ And those technologies, those apparatuses and machines which we now use everyday, have convinced us that, beyond question, the unborn child is simply another human being—another member of the human community—indistinguishable in every way from any of us.
Now, for the first time, we have the technology to see abortion from the victim’s vantage-point. Ultrasound imaging has allowed us to see this, and so, for the first time, we are going to watch a child being torn apart—dismembered—disarticulated—crushed—and destroyed by the unfeeling steel instruments of the abortionist. ”

“ In addition, as the Court once explained, viability is not really a hard-and-fast line. Colautti, 439 U. S., at 396. A physician determining a particular fetus's odds of surviving outside the womb must consider "a number of variables," including "gestational age," "fetal weight," a woman's "general health and nutrition," the "quality of the available medical facilities," and other factors. Id., at 395–396. It is thus "only with difficulty" that a physician can estimate the "probability" of a particular fetus's survival. ”

“ The AMA has recognized that this procedure is "ethically different from other destructive abortion techniques because the fetus, normally twenty weeks or longer in gestation, is killed outside the womb. The 'partial birth' gives the fetus an autonomy which separates it from the right of the woman to choose treatments for her own body." ”

“ Furthermore, therapeutic abortion committees generally can speed up the certification process in an emergency situation, particularly when the pregnant woman's gestational age requires immediate medical attention. In spite of the reduction, however, these delays continue to result in an additional risk to the health of these women. The risk of post-operative complications increases with each passing week of delay. There is a heightened physical and psychological risk associated with later stage pregnancy techniques for abortion. Finally, psychological trauma increases with delay. ”

“ The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form. ”

“ And, finally, when parents are freed from their "conspiracy of silence" by a reverent attitude toward the whole of life, their very saneness will impart to their children a wholesome respect for the reproductive instinct. There will then be found in the next generation fewer half-starved men and women carrying the burden of unnecessary repressions and the pain of unsatisfied yearnings. ”

“ The alarming mortality of childhood, amounting to nearly half the children born, before the age of five years is reached, leads us to inquire whether it is an unavoidable fatality of our race, and therefore must be patiently submitted to, or is to a great extent the result of ignorance on the part of those to whom the care of the infant man is intrusted? ”

“ The act of 1908 also makes an endeavour to check the heavy mortality of infants through “overlaying,” [1] enacting that where it is proved that the death of an infant under three years of age was caused by suffocation whilst the infant was in bed with some other person over the age of sixteen, and that that person was at the time of going to bed under the influence of drink, that other person shall be deemed to have neglected the child in manner likely to cause injury to its health, as mentioned above. ”