While some people just want to forget their miscarriage and move on, many of us want to memorialize the baby we lost in some way. There are a lot of different options for remembering your loss. For me, one of the best ways to remember my babies was jewelry.

I like to make beaded bracelets and earrings anyway, so my first memorial was hand-made. After my first miscarriage, I made a very simple beaded bracelet that said “Hope, Dream, Remember” in alphabet beads. It had faux pearls and faux hematite beads. It was pretty and it not only was a monument to my loss but it reminded me to try to be optimistic about the future too. I wore it until the lettering faded on the alphabet beads and the elastic cord it was strung on threatened to disintegrate. I thought about re-stringing it but decided not to. Although I loved it and had worn it almost every day I felt like I'd outgrown it somehow.

I graduated to a silicone miscarriage awareness bracelet I bought through Ebay. It was like the ubiquitous yellow Live Strong bracelets, only it was pink and blue. It was nice but it didn't seem to wear very well. It seemed to attract dirt. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to attract attention. I was really hoping it would. I very much wanted people to ask me what it was for. I wanted to talk about my miscarriages. No one ever asked about it though.

After my last miscarriage in January of 2007, I felt it was time to do something a little more formal. I had out aside money to enroll in a prenatal yoga class. I found out my baby had no heartbeat before I had a chance to sign up for it. I decided to put my money to good use and buy a family ring.
Family or birthstone jewelry is available from major retailers like Sears, JC Penney and Wal-Mart. In addition to rings, there are bracelets, brooches and necklaces. You can even buy them on the Internet which was how I bought mine. I picked what would have been the five birthstones of the babies I lost. June, March, July, September and June. I wear the ring all of the time now.

If you want to go the jewelry route but don't like the idea of birthstone jewelry, you can go on line and look for “miscarriage jewelry” or “memorial jewelry”. There are several good sites offering various types of jewelry. Many pieces also include the pink and blue pregnancy loss awareness ribbon.

My husband didn't quite understand my need for a jewelry memorial.
“It's not like you're going to forget,” he said, although good guy that he is, he also said “but if it makes you feel better, you should do it.”

It's true. I won't ever forget my losses. Ironically, all of the pieces of miscarriage-related jewelry I wore helped me dwell less on my losses and not more. Unlike remembering my losses only in my heart, a solid, tangible memorial also reminded me that even though those losses were terrible, I'd also survived them.