Superficiality = Trigger!

Anyone else feel their grief, particularly the ANGER stage, triggered by the superficiality of others?  This continues to be a problem for me.  Bit by bit I am trying to cut people out of my life who say stupid sh*t, but it's just everywhere, is it not?

Over the past year, I've heard several women complain (or post on their FB) about the most superficial aspects of their deliveries of LIVE BABIES.  I just want to scream, "You have NO F*CKING IDEA!  Try having your baby DIE!  THEN you won't give a sh*t that your makeup didn't look good during your delivery photos!"

I mean seriously.  These are people who know me, know my son died, and haven't ignored that fact.  And yet this simple realization is lost on them: That all that really matters is that your baby is alive and healthy.

Today, another such trigger.  A woman pinning newborn photography and commenting about how this time, all that she hopes for is a "normal hour" birth for her next baby, as her last baby was born in the wee hours of the morning.

Because she wants the pictures to come out with everyone looking bright eyed and bushy tailed, apparently.

Try having pictures of your baby dead, I want to say.  I'd give anything for one picture of my son alive, regardless of what time it was or what I looked like at the time, I want to say. 

But I don't.  Because then I'll just be "that crazy lady who can't deal".  And this is someone who really should know better.  She really should.  So saying something won't make any difference.  She obviously feels she is too good to have tragedy strike.  She is way too above simply hoping her baby is born healthy and alive.  She takes those things for granted, and simply ALL she hopes for is a good birth hour so the pictures turn out well.

It makes me want to scream and tear my hair out.

And this really isn't about her, or about anyone else in particular.  Because she, and the aforementioned woman, they simply represent the vast majority of society.  A society of seemingly blissfully naiive pregnant women who post photographs of jars of Prego spaghetti sauce to announce their pregnancies as soon as they pee on a stick.  A society that obsesses over nursery themes and picking the perfect shade of paint, a society that pays name consultants to select the perfect name for the baby, a society that spends countless hours researching and registering for products (most which are completely unnecessary) and throwing lavish parties weeks, even months, before the baby even arrives, not knowing what that outcome will be.

So why wouldn't they say superficial things?  They're a product of their society, right?  And society largely ignores the very real fact that babies die - that miscarriages AND stillbirths are more common than most people realize.  That all of this hoopla is simply setting women up to feel like freaks of nature and failures if the worst case scenario happens to them. 

I guess it's silly for me to think that maybe what happened to my son was something memorable to them, something unforgettable, something that would shake them to their very core and make them treat their own pregnancies with more caution and humility.

Maybe I am just in a place where I need to stay away from Facebook and Pinterest altogether.