Today I read a post from one of our members in the miscarriage and stillbirth community about her recent loss. She had been pregnant with triplets, and lost them at 10 weeks. She said the question her friends and family asked the most that she couldn’t answer was “Did she and her husband name the babies?” They hadn’t named them yet, but she was struggling with the idea.

I remember going through this same complex set of feelings when I had my miscarriages. I had three in a row, and each time I got pregnant again, I’d think about what sex the baby might be, what color hair they might have, if they’d be shy or outgoing... all the things you wonder and dream about. But coming down to naming the babies was really hard, weird, and uncomfortable. If I had a boy, I knew I would name him after my father, Pierce, who had died when I was nine years old.

Each time I had another miscarriage, I was more and more afraid that I would never have the chance to use that name. But, I held onto the hope that one day I would have a successful pregnancy, and I held on to the name in the back of my mind, and my heart. As much as I loved each angel that passed, I didn’t feel that they (if they had even been boys) were THE Pierce. THE Pierce would be a healthy, strong little boy who grew into a man and would live to carry on my father’s name. Each time I lost another pregnancy, I lost a little hope, and became less and less attached to the idea I was pregnant. I guess it was a form of self-protection. I was reluctant to call the babies in my belly anything at all.

The story, for me, does have a happy ending. I finally did have a successful pregnancy, and it was a boy, and he is THE Pierce. And he is so perfectly, exactly right for our family, that I can’t imagine any other child. And in a way, deep down, I believe that this spirit, the spirit that is our Pierce, was the same spirit in each of those babies. That spirit was trying and trying to find the way out of my uterus to be with us. It just took the right doctor to find the right combination of medications to keep another miscarriage from happening, and that spirit was finally born into our family. It was Pierce all along.

- Lee