Pregnancy loss and miscarriage can be deeply personal and incredibly painful experiences. There is no single way to grieve, and no right time or way to remember a baby who has been lost. For some people, pregnancy loss remembrance becomes an important part of acknowledging both their baby and the future they had begun to imagine.
In our article Pregnancy Loss Gift: Ways to Show You Care, we look at pregnancy loss from the perspective of someone wanting to support a friend or loved one. We explore thoughtful gifts, practical ways to help and some of the small things you can do to make an incredibly difficult time a little easier. This article comes from a different perspective. Here, we're speaking to the person experiencing the loss.
You might be wondering if there is something you can do personally, as a couple or together as a family, to acknowledge your baby and what they meant to you. For some people, creating a keepsake, ritual or pregnancy loss memorial can become a meaningful part of grieving. For others, the idea may feel far too difficult in the early days, weeks or even months.
There is no timeline you need to follow. You may want to do something immediately, much later, or not at all. These are simply some ways to remember a miscarried baby if and when doing so feels right for you.
The Giving Angel is proud to support The Pink Elephants Support Network, an Australian charity providing specialised support for people experiencing miscarriage and early pregnancy loss. Their work is a reminder that while personal acts of miscarriage remembrance can have a place in grief, you don't have to navigate pregnancy loss alone. Support from your GP, psychologist or another healthcare professional may also be an important part of looking after yourself during this time.
Below are some creative ways you might choose to honour your baby, whether privately, with your partner or together as a family.
1. Give your baby a name, nickname or word that belongs to them
You may have already chosen a name during your pregnancy. You may have had a nickname you used between yourselves, or perhaps there is simply a word that has come to represent your baby to you.
The Pink Elephants Support Network suggests naming a baby among the ways parents may choose to mark their loss. It can give an identity to someone you had already begun making a place for in your life.
It also doesn't need to be something you share. A name can belong entirely to you and your baby.
2. Record the little things you don't want to forget
Particularly after an early miscarriage, there may be very few physical things connected to the pregnancy. Instead of feeling that you need to create a traditional memory box, you could record the things that only you know.
Where were you when you found out? How did you tell your partner? Was there a food you suddenly couldn't stand? Had you secretly started thinking about names? What did you imagine when you thought about bringing your baby home?
They may seem like ordinary details, but they are part of the story of that pregnancy.
Remembering a miscarried baby doesn't have to centre only on the loss itself. It can also mean preserving some of the happiness, anticipation and little moments that came before it.
3. Create something with your hands
Making something yourself can offer a very personal form of remembrance, particularly if buying a traditional keepsake doesn't feel right.
You might paint or draw something, make a small piece of pottery, sew or embroider a name or symbol, press flowers from a meaningful day, create a scrapbook page or simply write a few words by hand and keep them somewhere private.
What you make doesn't have to look perfect, and it doesn't have to be something you display. The meaning can come from the process of creating something specifically for your baby.
For some people, the finished piece may become a miscarriage memorial they keep for years. For others, making it may be the meaningful part, regardless of what they decide to do with it afterwards.
4. Create a tradition around a date that matters to you
There isn't one date that you need to recognise. For some families it is their baby's expected due date. For others it might be the day they discovered they were pregnant, the date of their loss, or Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day on 15 October.
A pregnancy loss remembrance tradition doesn't necessarily have to feel sombre or ceremonial. You might visit somewhere beautiful, take a family walk, buy a particular bunch of flowers, make a favourite meal or simply set aside a little time for yourself.
It can also change from year to year depending on what you need.
5. Write down the future you had started imagining
Pregnancy can create an entire imagined future remarkably quickly. You may already have pictured meeting your baby, bringing them home, watching them with their siblings or celebrating their first Christmas or birthday.
Writing those thoughts down can acknowledge another part of pregnancy loss: grieving things that hadn't happened yet, but had already begun to feel real.
You don't have to turn what you write into a letter or keep it forever. You might put it somewhere private, include it with other memories, or simply write it and decide afterwards what you want to do with it.
6. Find a way to remember your baby as a family
If you have other children, there may come a time when remembering your baby together feels right.
It could be something very small. Each family member might choose a flower for a vase, paint a stone for the garden, visit a favourite beach or choose something together that represents the baby.
There doesn't need to be a formal ritual, and children don't need to participate if it doesn't feel appropriate for them. It is simply one way a family may choose to acknowledge that the pregnancy forms part of its story.
7. Do something good in their name
For some people, creating something positive from an incredibly difficult experience becomes its own form of miscarriage remembrance.
That could mean volunteering, supporting another family, contributing to pregnancy loss support, raising money for a cause that matters to you or simply doing an act of kindness privately in your baby's memory. It doesn't have to be public, and nobody else needs to know why you did it.
8. Find a symbol that means something to you
There isn't one pregnancy loss symbol or miscarriage symbol that you need to adopt. Some people connect with butterflies, forget-me-nots, angels or hearts. Others find meaning in something that has no recognised connection to pregnancy loss at all.
Your symbol might eventually appear somewhere tangible, or it may simply become something you notice and privately associate with your baby. Its meaning doesn't need to make sense to anybody else.
9. Give your baby a place within your family's story
A pregnancy loss memorial doesn't necessarily need to be a physical memorial. You might include your baby's name in a family album or journal, keep an ultrasound image alongside other family photographs, incorporate a small symbol somewhere meaningful or simply decide that you will speak about the pregnancy when it feels right.
There can be a place between forgetting and having something permanently on display. Your baby's memory can simply exist as part of your family's history in whatever way feels natural to you.
10. Let remembrance change with you
What you need in the weeks immediately after pregnancy loss may be very different from what you need years later. Something you cannot imagine doing now may eventually feel comforting. Equally, something you create as a miscarriage memorial today may one day be something you feel ready to pack away.
Changing how you remember doesn't change the significance of what happened. Pregnancy loss remembrance can evolve as your life, family and grief evolve too.
Final thoughts
There are many different ways to remember a pregnancy loss or miscarriage, but none of them are things you have or need to do. The ideas in this article aren't a checklist for grieving. They are simply possibilities you can return to if, at some point, you feel you would like a way to acknowledge your baby, your pregnancy or the future you had begun imagining.
The Giving Angel is also proud to support The Pink Elephants Support Network, where you can find specialised information, resources and support for miscarriage and early pregnancy loss.