Never Forgotten. Stories of love, loss and healing after a pregnancy loss.

When you’ve lost a baby, the path you must travel can be brutally lonely. There’s no shortcut. No Bandaid. No silver lining. But by hearing from others who have walked that same path, the blackness can be illuminated just a little. We’ve been there. We know how you feel. We can’t change what’s happened and we can’t bring back your baby, but we can help light your way through the dark. – Mia Freedman. 

This week we’re recognising Never Forgotten: Mamamia’s Pregnancy Loss Awareness Week.

Since Mamamia’s humble beginnings on Mia’s couch in 2007, our website has proudly shared the stories of hundreds and hundreds of women and men who have lost their babies during pregnancy or in childbirth.

We want to offer hope to those who are hearing those torturous words, “I’m sorry, but there’s no heartbeat” for the first time. And to those who are still grieving after years or decades. Because we understand there’s no such thing as closure when you’ve lost someone you never got to know.

We wanted to share all of our Pregnancy Loss Awareness Week posts in one place, and that’s here.

You can download Never Forgotten: Stories of love, loss and healing after miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death for free here.

Join Mia, Rebecca and others who have lost a child in our private Facebook group.

‘Stop. Think. You might mean well, but imagine how you’d feel if you’d lost a baby.’ Laura Flanagan shares the worst things you can say to someone after a miscarriage here.

What is pregnancy like after a stillbirth? Two women share their stories here.

“The memory of my miscarriage hovers over my future conception plans like a spectre, and stops me from moving forward.” An anonymous writer shares her fear of falling pregnant again here.

“Act normal. I even play touch football, have a glass of wine. Why not, right?” Blogger, Mummasite, shares her diary of a miscarriage here.

“This is my brave face, friends. This is the face I put on to tell myself everything was fine when I was hurting so deeply inside.” Lauren Casper’s writes about how hard it is to tell the world how you really feel here.

An anonymous author writes about how she doesn’t know how to answer the question “Is she your only child?”, here.

Rebecca Sparrow and Mia Freedman on the darkness and light of losing a child, here.

“We left her at the hospital and went home. It was the hardest thing I have ever done.” Lyndal Curtis is one of Australia’s most esteemed journalists. She shares how hard she finds the question, ‘how many children do you have’, here.

“Just three weeks before Archer passed away we’d put the announcement of our pregnancy on Facebook.” Nicole Barsky shares her experience of a second trimester miscarriage here.

“So why did we decide to keep this a secret from our family and friends?” The emotional writing of a woman who had three miscarriages in eight months. Here.

“I was going to meet the baby boy or girl that I was already completely in love with…and then my world came crashing down.” Doyin Richards shares his perspective as a father, following the loss of his child, here.

“I didn’t know five years ago that a broken heart could be folded up and tucked into your back pocket. But it can.” Bec Sparrow’s letter to her daughter, Georgie, on the fifth anniversary of her death. Here.

“It is overwhelming trying to support a mother in labour, knowing that the child she carries will never breathe, to keep doing my work amidst the suffocating sadness that weighs on the room.” The emotional writing of a midwife that attends stillbirths is here.

“My miscarriage grief,” one dad shares his story, here.

Looking at pictures of tiny Walter Fretz is difficult. But his mother, Alexis, is proud he has touched so many lives so profoundly and has shared the photos here.

“The most challenging type of failure I’ve ever experienced though, is the failure I felt around pregnancy loss and the infertility that followed it.” Mia Freedman writes for ever woman struggling with infertility who feels like a failure here.

“His memory will bring a sad smile instead of tears as you imagine his milestones and the person he might have been.” Looking back, a woman writes a letter to herself three years after she lost her baby, here.

If this has post raised any issues for you or if you would like to speak with someone, please contact the Sands Australia 24 hour support line on 1300 072 637.