Not sure what to think...Follow

A friend of mine from high school just miscarried. A few days before Christmas. Sad event, and all that. But today she posted a bunch of pictures of the baby on Facebook. I found it a bit creepy, seeing a handful of pictures of a dead baby. Black lips, etc.

Can't say I've experienced miscarriages often, but out of the handful of times it's happened to friends and family around me, this is the first time someone's posted or shown me pictures of the baby afterward.

That sucks for her, my mother went through a few (like 4?) so it is a drag.
However, the pics..that is a bit much. She just exposed people to a subject that many might not have wanted.

It's important for the grief process that she have those pictures. Thousands of women who miscarried in the '40s-70s had the fetus whisked away and buried without them ever getting to see it, which caused a lot of psychological issues later on. The pictures, even if a bit morbid and gross, are proof that she was a mother even if the baby didn't make it to term.

Now, if she brought the fetus home and made the kids sleep with it in the house ala Rick Santorum, it's a whole 'nother level of creepy.

How religious is she? A Christian preacher once told a grieving couple who miscarried that it meant their baby's purpose to God was so important that it could not be corrupted by a single breath on Earth. The couple later said it was the kindest thing anyone said to them during the whole thing.

Same thing happened to our friend just a few weeks ago, posted pics on FB and everything just as you described. It really sucks. I don't know what to say to them. She is getting her tubes tied she says now.

Edit:

This same couple had a 3 year old child who fell off a bunk bed and died from a head injury on the way to the hospital. There really is just no end to the misery for them.

Edited, Dec 27th 2013 5:42am by Kuwoobie

Depends whether it's just pictures in the hospital or if the pictures were taken out and about in town taking glamour shots.

At that point might as well just consider taxidermy.

I have a cousin that lost her baby a week before he was born. She is constantly posting pictures of him which a lot of the family disapprove of. Its hard to say anything though because it is a bad situation.

I know I sound terrible but I really think she took advantage of people when this happened. Everybody got together to help pay for the funeral expenses of the baby because her and her husband at the time didn't have a lot of money and funerals are expensive. After that she spent several hundred dollars on this tattoo that is on her wrist. It is a hand print of the baby and she says its a constant reminder of what happened. It just looks like a big glob of ink unless you pretty much put your face right up to it.

Well every year several people in the family take a cruise. My father is retired and he watchs for deals pretty much every day and they plan for these things almost a year in advance. After everything had happened it was about two weeks from this cruise and she talked my grandmother, who is on a fixed income, into giving her enough money to go on a cruise with the family. Her husband had to work so she brought her 3 year old son along which cost extra. Once on the cruise she basically made everyone in the family miserable and constantly pawned her 3 year old onto everyone while she had her alone time.

I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a child that close to being born. We have a 4 month old baby and I am very grateful that he is healthy. Anytime I mention it I am instantly scolded for being heartless but after everyone helped donate 1000's of dollars to her to bury her baby I think it was pretty rotten to burn 100's of dollars on a tattoo and then beg her grandma for close to $2000 so her and her son could go on a expensive vacation.

Personally it's a little much for me. I understand that having those photos is important to the mother for the healing process, but I don't think that it's necessary to spring something like that on your facebook timeline. It would have been far more tasteful to post about her tragedy, and then if someone asked to see the photos handle it privately.

I'm sorry for her pain. I hope that she can get through it quickly and get back to a better state of mind.

As an aside, I think that people share far too much on Fakebook.

Well, in the era where people were professionally photographing stillborns, "giving birth" was done in your home perhaps with a midwife and the cost of raising a child was spread over the next 14-odd years.

Edit: I totally missed that you were discussing a modern situation and never read Fronglo's post.

Seeing photos of a tree could "potentially trigger trauma" as long as we're just making up hypothetical situations.

Edited, Jan 1st 2014 5:53pm by Jophiel

No, what we're doing is making up situations where a pretend person gets pretend trauma and suffers pretend lasting effects from seeing a photo.

Get back to me when it happens for real. You said you "found it a little creepy". That's fair and that's what I was talking about, momentary discomfort. Trying to make a call on it on the basis of "But someone somewhere might have trauma!" as Mazra was doing isn't the same thing.

Edit: For what it's worth, I have no desire to see someone's stillborn infant either. But if it's something I think is going to happen enough that it's going to seriously bother me, the solution is obvious: de-friend the person, block their feed, etc. More likely, I can accept that it's probably a much larger deal for them than it is for me and move on pretty quickly. I assume this is the case for the vast, vast majority of people and making up edge cases where someone is going to be "traumatized" enough to even bother at hinting at an equivalence with the grief of the mother seems silly to me.

Edited, Jan 1st 2014 7:01pm by Jophiel

I miscarried at 4mo and posted a picture of my first sonogram on Myspace. I know a sonogram isn't the same thing as an actual lifeless infant but I do understand the mothers need to memorialize her child. As for Mazra's post about trauma of others, I think it is valid. If I were to see that on my Facebook feed, it would bring back memories of my lost child, something I am still coping with to this day seeing as how that was my first and only pregnancy and I am quickly approaching my 30's. I see both sides of the argument.

Edit: It occurs to me that I don't actually care enough about this to debate it.

Edited, Jan 2nd 2014 7:39pm by Jophiel

It's not her page, and blocking her is a reactive solution.

I get that it's exposure therapy to her, but that's usually something you do with your therapist, not something you force upon your entire Facebook friends list. What if a kid sees them? What if a previously traumatized friend sees them? Maybe someone served in the military, went to war, saw dead babies, repressed the memories, and now they're all coming back. Maybe someone suffered a miscarriage a while back, and watching pictures of someone else's dead child triggers a trauma.

Like I said, I'm sorry for her and her loss, but forcefully exposing people - friends no less - to powerful pictures of a dead child is not okay. She obviously wants to share her grief, but that's what therapists are for (some priests are even trained to assist in this kind of thing, if a therapist costs too much or you're the religious type).

My private sphere is just way too small for this to be appropriate in any way.

Edited, Jan 3rd 2014 4:32am by Mazra