Welcome to Club Invisible: New Members Added Daily

When I was pregnant, I was part of the "pregnant club." Walking around Target or the grocery, my eye was always drawn to other pregnant women. Even if I did not make eye contact with them, I was highly aware of the fact that we were all carrying new life within us. Before I even started to show, I remember looking at other pregnant moms and feeling an instant connection. 

I expected to become part of the "new mom's club." I pictured sitting around with other moms, talking about the joys and agonies of parenting a newborn. Walking around a store, I expected to occasionally ask another mother how old her child was and exchange war stories.

Earlier this week I was at Target and saw a mom carrying her child strapped to her chest. She has no idea that we are both part of the "mothers who gave birth within the last six months" club. She has no idea that I am a mother. I looked at her, surreptitiously assessing the age of her baby, while part of my heart was breaking inside.

After Isabella died, my husband and I were in Missoula, Montana at a farmer's market. It seemed like every third family had a young baby or was pregnant. I felt like an outsider, when just a month before, I was an obviously pregnant, soon-to-be mother, expecting to be toting around a newborn daughter soon. Part of me desperately wanted a shirt that read, "I'm a Mom, too."

That day I realized I am part of an invisible club. Club Invisible consists of parents who walk around every day, missing one or more of their children who they have had to bury or say goodbye to long before they expected. 

Looking at us, no one knows we are parents. Our parental status is completely invisible. Even once we have more children, we will always be missing a child here on earth. Our heartbreak is hidden. How many other people are part of Club Invisible, and I never knew it? Who else do I walk by at Target and I have no idea that they, too, had to bury a child?

One of the worst parts about Club Invisible is that no one talks about it. After Isabella died, many people reached out and told me their stories of loss. At my work alone, at least five of us have buried our children. I was aware of zero until I buried Isabella. 

New members are daily added to this club. "Every year, nearly 3 million babies [worldwide] die within the first month of life, most from preventable causes. More than a third of these babies die on their first day of life – making the birth day the riskiest day for newborns and mothers almost everywhere" (Save the Children, page 3). According to this same Save the Children report, "The United States has the highest first-day death rate in the industrialized world. An estimated 11,300 newborn babies die each year in the United States on the day they are born." This means roughly 31 babies a day in the United States die on the day they were born.

There are many reasons that the neonatal death and infant mortality numbers in the United States are high. Some of this is related to whether a death is classified as a miscarriage or stillbirth. Regardless, these numbers are staggering. It represents families all around each of us that are walking around daily without one of their children.

There will never be a way for me to identify everyone who is part of Club Invisible. However, it does not need to be both an invisible and unspeakable club. It exists. Our children exist. And they are missed.

image via Pinterest and Google Images
Credit on photo - Design Squeeze