Lighting a candle during Baby Loss Awareness Week

This week is Baby Loss Awareness Week and it didn’t seem right to let it pass without at least a quick blog post.

This year’s awareness week is a different one for me. When we marked BLAW2018 it was our first since losing a baby, coming about 11 months after we lost Lentil. At that time we were in a season of grief and longing.

By BLAW2019 we had newborn Charlotte and we were balancing the joy of parenthood with the grief of loss.

Then in 2021 things changed significantly. At the start of the year we experienced our second miscarriage when we lost Pip very early in our third pregnancy. And when BLAW2021 came around we were at the 24-week mark of our fourth pregnancy, hoping and praying that it would result in a second happy, healthy baby to care for on Earth.

As I type this, I have a #WaveofLight candle burning on the fireplace for the two babies we never got to meet, an energetic three-year-old napping upstairs and an eight-month-old baby shaking a rattly toy next to me on the sofa (an eight-month-old baby we know would never have had the chance to live had we not lost his sibling the year before he was born).

Baby loss is different for us now. Back in 2018 thinking about starting a family was dominated by longing and sadness. Today our little family brings joy to every day. In 2018 we were hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel. Today we are living in that light.

It’s a terrible reality that some people who experience childlessness and baby loss never reach that light at the end of the tunnel, at least not in the shape of having the baby they long for. But for some, it could be that that light is just around the corner. We never knew what our future would look like. All we could do was follow the words of Romans chapter 12, verse 12 and: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

And all we can do now is continue to be faithful in prayer as we navigate parenthood and try to do the best for our living children, never forgetting the ones we didn’t get to bring home.

Sarah Moore is the author of For the Love of Lentil, A journey of longing, loss and abundant grace, which tells the story of her experience of pregnancy and miscarriage. Copies of the book are available here.