A special type of baby book.
From the moment you find out you’re pregnant, you start to plan everything in your head.
You flick through catalogues looking at furniture and bedding sets, you think of what pram you’re going to get, you start buying baby clothes.
Most of us will buy baby books to document our journeys and to place our scan photos into.
Unfortunately, we don’t always get to finish those baby books.
I fell pregnant for the second time shortly after I got married. After returning from honeymoon, I was so excited when I took a test and it was positive.
I still had a few pages in the back of the journal I kept for our wedding plans so I started to put all my appointment cards from the hospital into it. The end of one journey and the beginning of another.
At the beginning of my third month, I miscarried and it felt like the floor came out from under my feet.
All our hopes and dreams for our baby were gone and I was left completely lost, not knowing what to do with the feelings I had about the baby we wouldn’t bring home.
She couldn’t find a baby book for miscarriage, so she made one https://t.co/1N5wx0tog3
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 22, 2019
Author Margaret Scofield watched a close friend of hers go through a similar experience and decided to create a new kind of baby book to help parents dealing with miscarriage and child loss.
The book, beautifully titled I Love You Still, is designed to commemorate certain events and record how parents are feeling, so they can express their emotions.
Scofield’s aim is to help parents through the grieving process by giving them a healthy outlet containing beautiful drawings, pages for them to write messages and a list of resources that can help with child loss.
More than one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage with around 14,000 women experiencing pregnancy loss in Ireland every year.
In my opinion, books like I Love You Still are incredibly important and remind parents who have lost a pregnancy or baby that their child is still important and very much loved.
If you or anyone you know has dealt with miscarriage or child loss and need support you can contact Feileacain or The Miscarriage Association of Ireland.
