Meg

Regarding the toothbrushing, if it is at all helpful there’s an Elmo toothbrushing song that is pretty catchy and cute. To go along with Emily’s suggestion about YouTube, perhaps they’d enjoy watching that music video!https://fb.watch/q4DntJgeUK/

I should add, my son Spencer was born in June 2020 (that’s why we had no answers for a long time, they were slower during the peak pandemic months at rounding on the autopsy reports). My living daughter was born Sept 2022. I am so sorry for your sister. It’s so so hard. It never gets better but it does get easier.

I lost my son at 35 weeks. He was my first. It turned out. He had a cord accident, the cord ruptured. But we did not know that for a number of months. I then had two early miscarriages before finally having my living daughter. At the same time, my daughter was born, one of my best friends from high school Experienced a late term cord accident. She has a living son who would be the same age as my son. I now have a living daughter that would be the same age as her daughter. So I’ve been on both sides. I think the most helpful thing to understand is that there’s nothing you really can do that is going to fix it. It can’t be fixed. The children we lose, will always be our children and whether we have other living children or not, our family is never complete. Those first months are extremely painful. I would say from my experience the first 15 months were the hardest. Friends and family have shown up in many ways that have been helpful and not so helpful. Early on, you mostly need help with surviving. Food, check-in, making sure , we are showering and sleeping. A lot of people ask if there’s anything they can do and I never really knew how to answer that question. The things that helped the most were the things that just appeared. Also, one of my very good friends sent me a box with a number of small wrapped gifts , she told me to open one whenever I was having a particularly hard time for comfort. The gifts were things like a mug with a box of hot hot chocolate, a necklace, comfy pajama pants, etc. That helped a lot and I felt like she was with me and caring for me whenever I needed it without having to ask and without her having to ask. I did the same for my friend and she said it was the most helpful as well. Later on, just telling her you’re thinking of her son, and using her son‘s name. We just want the babies that we’ve lost to feel included and seen as part of our family, first and foremost, at least that’s my experience and my friends experience. The way we love them, and the way we grieve is keeping their memory alive And we don’t have a ton of stories of times we spent together or times we went to this place or that place. We just have those times we were pregnant with them. So we talk about those times and it’s helpful when others acknowledge them as real. Also, I’m sorry for any typos, I’m voice to texting this to try to get my thoughts out .