"Is this your first baby?"

How do I answer your simple question without overloading you with my grief?

I sit here with my six week old daughter sleeping on me, with all her little newborn sleepy sounds and her dark hair tickling my chin when I look down to check on her. It’s a very hot day for Minnesota so we’re ringing in Labor Day with loads of laundry, ticking off items on the house to-do list, and of course snuggling and napping. I love my girl so very much and we are so grateful for her life. She’s my little shopping buddy and gets compliments anytime we’re out and about running errands. I hear a question frequently and my answer is always the same despite what I want to say.

“Is this your first baby?”

I pause.

“Yes.” *cue nervous laughter and a deep ache within*

It’s an innocent question. I don’t fault anybody for being genuinely curious and 90% of the time it’s a sweet older lady who looks at my girl with such tenderness, usually remarking about how precious newborn baby girls are.

But the truth is, no, our baby girl isn’t our first baby. We had 5 weeks and 3 days of another life growing inside of me in early 2022. We planned and prayed and rejoiced when we found out after a while of trying to grow our family that God had granted us the gift of a baby. We prayed and cried and worshipped God still when we lost our first baby two weeks after we had found out we were parents.

Rarely does a day go by without me thinking about what that baby would have been like. A son or daughter? We didn’t know but he or she was without a doubt the first Baby Moore.

We were public with our grief and I don’t regret it. I’ve met so many other moms who have lost children and had many many conversations that have absolutely aided me on my journey of grief. While I don’t regret sharing on social media, I don’t make a point of sharing my grief with every person I come in contact with who asks if our girl is our first baby. I don’t want to overload Pam at the Target checkout line and detail our journey to parenthood, our miscarriage, our grief. If we were sitting down at a coffee shop and she asked, sure. But not standing in line with my protein bars and clearance clothes.

So yes, I don’t tell the whole truth when people ask but I assure you it’s not because I don’t remember our first baby or don’t want people to know we lost a child. Grief and loss of any kind is so complex and hard to talk about at times and that’s okay. We do the best that we can and smile at the kind people asking us about our new baby girl who God saw fit to give us after loss.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash