Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Support Group
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is any sudden and unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant aged one month to one year. SIDS is responsible for roughly 50 deaths per 100,000 births in the US.
The other day my husband had told me we needed to go ahead and finally get a headstone for our baby boy! Its an event one I think we have both been avoiding like as making his death seem final. I am still having every day struggles following his death. In some ways going to look at headstones today (which was his half birthday) felt like losing him all over again. Thinking that I should be worrying what clothes to buy him, what food should we try next, what words would be his first. Instead we are trying to figure out do we want his stone carved or not. What graphic will we put on there that resembles him the most(narrowed down to 3 designs) What words are going to be placed on his stone and will we have room for it all when we do decide. I have never had to help decide on a stone and its so scary because its permanent and even tho his life ended six months ago. It really seems like the end.
I miss him so much. Noone or nothing will ever replace him and how much he means to me.
Sending you a bunch of hugs.
There's a country song from when I was a kid by Vern Gosdin. The chorus goes:
"You don't know about lonely
Or how long nights can be,
Till you lived through the story
That's still livin' in me,
And you don't know about sadness
'til you faced life alone,
You don't know about lonely
'til it's chiseled in stone."
I think about that whenever I visit his grave.
But, it is awful to have to try to chose that when we should instead be enjoying making our babies giggle, buying him/her a toy, bathing the baby and smelling that sweet clean baby scent.
That has to be hard thankfully for us we will not have to go through that is we had our angel cremated as we lived in Sydney at the time & we knew we wanted to leave that horrid city as soon as we were ready & we did 8months later (Aug 2011) & I couldn't bear the thought of leaving him behind completely so we had his ashes put into a heart shaped tin & it was placed inside of a Teddy Bear, some people thought it was "warped, sick, gross" etc but it's what we wanted & having 2 older children also it gave us something to physically hold, touch & see. It was one of the hardest decisions I have EVER made & one that I struggled to make because I also knew that once he was cremated it would be the end of him being in the form he was born in & would no longer be a "Baby" :'0 (
So I send you big hugs & much love & support for you xx