My name is Allison Milam. I live in Fargo, North Dakota, with my husband Erik. In the spring of 1998 I was pregnant with our first baby, due in October. We had told everyone at Easter. Erik had already bought a tiny Twins cap. I had a yellow blanket half knitted.

At my fifteen-week checkup, the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat. An ultrasound told us what I already knew from her face. We said goodbye at the hospital the next day. We never learned whether our baby was a boy or a girl, and it didn't matter. We named our baby Wren, after the little brown birds that nested in our porch light that spring.

I made this page a few weeks later, mostly because I couldn't sleep and I needed somewhere to put all of it. I didn't expect anyone to read it. Then the letters started coming. So many women, and more men than you'd think, wrote to tell me about their own babies. That's how the star page started.

What I learned that I wish I'd known

Losing a pregnancy is much more common than most of us realize. As many as one in five known pregnancies ends in miscarriage. I thought I didn't know a single woman it had happened to. Then I told people, and it turned out I knew nine.

My doctor sat with me for a long time afterward. She told me that very often nobody can find a reason, and that nothing I did, not the coffee, not lifting the laundry basket, not the argument with my sister, caused it. I needed to hear that more than once. If you need to hear it too: it was not your fault.

What helped us

• Giving our baby a name.
• A memory box. Ours has the ultrasound picture from eleven weeks, my hospital bracelet, the Twins cap, the half-knitted blanket and every card people sent.
• Planting a lilac in the backyard. It bloomed for the first time this May.
• A pregnancy loss support group through SHARE, which has groups all over the country for parents who've lost a baby during pregnancy or soon after. The first night, I just cried. So did everyone else. That was the point.
• Talking about Wren out loud. The people who said the name were the people who helped most.
• Letting Erik grieve his own way. He built a birdhouse. It took him all summer.

If you are here because you lost a baby too

I am so sorry. Your baby was real and your grief is real, no matter how early it happened or how many people don't know what to say to you. Please be gentle with yourself. Here are a few things that might help:

• Ask your hospital or doctor about support. Many hospitals have a chaplain, social worker or nurse who works with families after a loss, and can tell you about local groups.
• SHARE Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support has support groups in many cities and can send you information and a newsletter.
• Empty Cradle, Broken Heart by Deborah L. Davis was the first book that made me feel understood.
• Talk to your doctor if the sadness doesn't lift, or if you can't eat or sleep for a long time. Grief and depression can look alike, and there's help for both.
• Add your baby to the star page. Just e-mail me a name, a date if you'd like, and where you are.

A little news

On June 30 of this year, Erik and I welcomed our son Anders, seven pounds, eleven ounces, with a whole lot of opinions. I was frightened every day of that pregnancy, and I know how hard it can be to read news like this when your arms are empty, so I've kept it short. Anders doesn't take Wren's place. He's Wren's little brother. Someday I'll show him the lilac.

[email protected]
I answer every letter, though it may take a little longer now that we have a baby in the house.


visitors have come by since May 1998. Thank you for remembering with us.

Last updated September 7, 1999
© 1999 Allison Milam