Facing the New Year Without Your Baby (Pregnancy & Infant Loss)
by Suzanne Jones
On this grief journey, some days we see coming and know they will be difficult. Birthdays, anniversaries, major holidays like Christmas - we look ahead and try to prepare for their arrival, knowing the grief and pain will intensify. Then there are days that sneak up on us, where the pain is unexpected but just as sharp.
My son’s birthday is in early January, so after packing up the Christmas tree, I was expecting the next difficult milestone to be his birthday. New Year’s Eve and Day were barely on my radar. I was completely looking past them to a first birthday that would be missing a guest of honor.
After losing my son at two months of age, 2017 became the worst year of my life. I first thought I would be glad to say goodbye to 2017, but the exact opposite happened. I was not leaving the pain or trauma of 2017 behind; it was becoming clear that would continue in 2018. Instead, I felt like I was leaving behind my baby. 2017 was the year he died, but it was also the only year he lived.
That first New Year’s was the hardest. No other year will have the particular emotional weight of the year that you carried and/or held your baby. However, I still feel a weight of grief each year as the calendar turns over each year, as if I am leaving my son further behind.
I think as grieving moms, we know instinctively that people around us will move on. That is why it is so special to have friends and family members who mark milestones and say our babies’ names aloud; we want people to remember them with us. But there is also an irrational fear that deep down, somehow we will move on as well, that as our pain fades, our memories will grow fuzzy until we don’t remember our precious child. A hard-earned lesson on my own journey was differentiating between letting go of the pain and letting go of the person. Yes, over time the grief changes and becomes less acute, but our love never diminishes, not at all.
Moving on to a new year may be difficult, but the truth is that the love we hold for our babies does not have an expiration date. We will never reach a day on the calendar where our love won’t reach back through time to them because “love will last forever” (1 Corinthians 13:8 NLT).
Our God, who exists outside of time and space, is holding our precious babies safe in His arms until that day, a real calendar day, when Jesus returns. On that day, we will celebrate not just a new year but a new creation:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!”
(Revelation 21:1-5 NLT)
God is making all things new, so we can face this New Year with hope. As you flip your calendar, know that you are actually one day closer to being reunited with your baby, not one year further apart.
meet the author: Suzanne Jones
About Suzanne: Suzanne Jones is a wife, a mom to five amazing children, and a part-time pediatric audiologist. Her son, Ethan, passed away of SIDS in March 2017 at two months of age. She honors Ethan's legacy by writing at www.walkingintheshadowlands.com and caring for his memory gardens at their home and their church's preschool playground.
Connect with Author: @walkingintheshadowlands
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