Practices to Honour Pregnancy or Infant Loss

October 15th is the Day of Remembrance for Pregnancy and Infant Loss in Canada, and on this date, it is not unusual to see calls to light a candle in honour of babies who have died. While lighting a candle can seem like such a small thing considering the life-altering impact of these losses on families, rituals – however small – can play an important role in helping to support people in their grief and honouring the love they shared with their baby. Though we often look to religious traditions to teach us how to perform rituals, ritual does not necessarily have to be religious in nature. Instead, any action that we take with intention and purpose can be used to set something apart from routine life. For families who find themselves grieving a loss amidst a world that just keeps turning as though nothing has happened, ritual is a helpful way of slowing down to acknowledge just how important the life of your baby was and is for you. Rituals to honour a loss say: This is important. I remember. I will not forget.

Rituals are time-bound – they happen in a particular time and place; they have a clear beginning and an end. Rituals are often symbolic – they draw on objects, images, sounds, words, or movements that mean something to us and help us bring that meaning into the present moment. Rituals have an intention – they serve some sort of purpose to us, whether that is to honour the memory of a loved one, to express a significant change in our beings, or to mark something or someone as important. If you are looking to come up with a ritual of your own to honour a pregnancy or infant loss and are not sure where to start, this blog post will provide you with some ritual examples that can serve as a starting point for thinking about rituals that might be most supportive to you right now.

Light a Candle

It’s a classic for a reason. Lighting a candle is a small, everyday way to build a ritual around remembering an infant or pregnancy loss. Lighting a candle involves taking a short moment to grab your supplies, spend a moment thinking about the life you are remembering, and lighting the candle. As it stays lit, it serves as a reminder of the love that remains even when our babies are gone. To make a candle lighting ritual a bit more involved, you might designate a special space in your home to light your candle, perhaps surrounding it by objects or symbols that remind you of your baby, the love you shared, or how you envision that love enduring. You may also surround that candle with images of other loved ones who have died to remind yourself, if appropriate to your belief system, that your baby is surrounded by loving people even after death. There are many ways to customize a candle lighting ritual to your specific beliefs and circumstances and it can be nice to have a simple – but still meaningful – ritual to return to time and again.

Plant a Tree

Planting a tree or perennial can be a heartfelt symbol of the love that endures even after a baby dies. Some people choose to plant trees around their home or choose a special spot that holds personal meaning to them. You can create a ceremony around the actual planting of the tree, bringing together family and friends, playing music, and saying a prayer or speaking other words. The tree planting itself can be a nice way of hosting a memorial ceremony, especially for families who choose not to or are unable to host a formal memorial service for whatever reason. A tree or perennial plant can also serve as a way to mark a space for ongoing grief and memorial practices. You can return to your tree year after year whenever you want to take a moment to remember your loved one and the impact they had on your life. If the tree is on your property, returning to the tree to offer water, pruning, and other care can be a way of remembering the care you are offering to your baby even though they are not physically there with you.

Bake a Cake

On the anniversary of your baby’s birth – regardless of how your baby was born – it can be meaningful to acknowledge your baby’s birthday. Alternatively, you may choose to acknowledge a baby’s expected birthday by recognizing their expected due date. Though birthdays will not have the same joyful quality as they would if your baby had lived, it was still a day of importance to you. If it feels appropriate, you can bake a cake honouring your baby’s entrance into the world and share the cake with others who can share in memories of your pregnancy and baby with you. Alternatively, you can bake a ‘seed cake’ with ingredients safe for local wildlife and leave it a gravesite, a tree you’ve planted, or another natural space as an offering. If baking a cake doesn’t feel like a good fit for you, there may be other ways to honour a birth date, such as making a donation to a local charity in your baby’s name, knitting blankets or booties to donate to your local NICU or birth unit, or volunteering your time to a cause that feels appropriate and meaningful to you. When we do things in honour of the loss we experienced and the love we still have, it is a tangible way that our babies continue to have an influence on the world even though they are not physically present.

Host a Memorial Service

A funeral or memorial service is a traditional way of acknowledging the death of someone in our lives and remembering the love that endures. Depending on when a loss occurs, some families will be required to connect with a local funeral home to discuss how they would like to manage their baby’s body. Even if your loss has occurred prior to this gestational cut-off and you do not have remains to consider, it may still be possible to host a memorial service at a funeral home, a religious centre, or even in your own home. For some, it can feel meaningful to gather people who are also impacted by your loss and who can share in your grief. A service can be customized to your religious or spiritual beliefs and your personal preferences. It can be as small as something you do for yourself and your partner (if applicable) or as large as a gathering of all your family and friends.

While these examples can serve as a helpful starting point for thinking about the possibilities, anything you do with intention can be carved into a memorial ritual. If you wish to develop a ritual of your own, you can ask yourself questions like: What am I trying to accomplish with my ritual? When and where should the ritual be performed to have the most meaning for me? Are there people or objects that I would like to involve? How can I use my senses throughout the ritual to help bring me into the present moment? What do I want to feel when my ritual is complete? Rituals can be as small as lighting a candle or as big as a memorial service. They can be repeated over and over again or performed just once. However you choose to honour infant or pregnancy loss, what matters is that your ritual has meaning for you and acknowledges how important your baby and that experience of loss is to you. For some, rituals become a regular part of their lives; for others, ritual isn’t the way they wish to acknowledge this time of their lives. There’s no right or wrong here. Grief is not a linear experience that slowly disappears over time. It ebbs and flows, sometimes fading into the background and sometimes coming up unexpectedly to pay us a visit. Your need for ritual to hold space for that grief (and its essential counterpart – love) may also ebb and flow. That’s okay. When we choose rituals that help to hold us wherever we are at right now, they become tools that support us in our healing.

Stay tuned next week for a post about how to support a loved one during pregnancy or infant loss.