It has been less than a week since I posted about my stillborn son Nathaniel and included a picture of him. Since that time a well known television family, the Duggars have come under fire for pictures of their baby, who was about the same gestational age as my son. This makes me so sad. The pictures I have of Nathaniel mean more to me than any earthly item I have. If there was a fire, once my living children and husband are safe, chose to safe my photos of him. Everything else can be replaced. They can not. Once of the reasons why I did chose to post a picture of him was so that there would be a place where his picture could be retrieved if my physical copies were somehow lost.
I think what people need to understand most is that these pictures are precious to the parents who have lost a child. We don't view them as gross or disgusting or horrendous, any more than we would think those things of pictures of our living children. I honestly wish we had more pictures, not less. I wish we would have taken pictures before we dressed him and of the tiny details like his hands and feet or even his chin or his ankles. Anything that would help me remember everything about him. I still have the tiny cap from his burial gown and it reminds me of how small he was.
Have you heard of this group?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org/
they provide free photography to families who have lost children at or before birth.
I had not heard of that particular one, but I know that there are several now. Things have changed quite a bit since I had Nathaniel over 13 years ago. I wish we would have had more options. Nat's pictures were taken with a regular film camera and the negatives had pictures from a hospital kid's day party on them along with our pictures. There is little that can be done with editing to improve the pictures with editing.
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