‘My Baby Lived for One Minute After Miscarriage-I Regret Not Holding Him'

My son was alive for about a minute after he was born.

A nurse at the hospital held him instead of me because I couldn't.

I thought if I held him, or even saw him, I would die.

Thirteen years ago, I was told I was going to have a miscarriage. I was 17 weeks pregnant at the time.

When I was told I would have to be hospitalized, the facts didn't compute. I was in grad school at the time and I had a class later that day. I thought, I need to present, I can't be here. I didn't fully grasp the urgency of the situation.

It took three days for my baby to come out. I was admitted on the Monday and it was over by Wednesday.

What they don't tell you when you're having a miscarriage, is that you're still placed in the labor and delivery unit.

Seeing the hospital's nursery-and other women having their babies-was extremely painful.

While there was a sign on my door to notify people that this wasn't the joyous occasion it should have been, some missed it, and I was greeted with congratulations.

I wasn't mad at those people, it was just very awkward.

It took me a long time to realize that I very much left my body during that experience. I was basically waiting for my baby to die. I remember saying to my husband, "I wish you could do this. I don't want to do this."

It felt conflicting because the nurse would check for his heartbeat-which felt good to hear-but then I would also not want to hear it, because I knew he wasn't going to survive.

I still carry so much guilt and shame, but I was so checked out, so dissociated, that I didn't understand what was happening.

They kept calling it a miscarriage so in my head it wasn't a baby yet. Why would I hold a miscarriage? Why would I want to remember this moment with photos?

Things would have been so different if I had given birth to a living baby. I might have held him.

But when your first introduction to motherhood is having a miscarriage, you don't even identify as a mom.

Nobody thought to tell me, "This is your son. This is all the time you're going to get with him. You might want to hold him."

Everyone is different, but looking back, I needed someone, perhaps a motherly figure to come in and say something like, "You are going to survive this. You are going to be okay. That is your baby, and I'd encourage you to take a little bit of time with him."

I kept wanting someone to explain to me what is going happen. What do I need to know? I've never done this before and I don't know what to do.

I was asked if I wanted to speak to a pastor. I'm not religious so declined. But since I was getting my Master’s degree in social work, I opted to speak to a social worker instead. I thought, these are my people.

That, however, was a mistake. She didn't help me. I don't blame her for that-she was young and I know hospital social workers are across everything.

I just wish that someone who really knew what pregnancy loss like that looked and felt like and knew what you needed could have been there.

I still think about the nurse who held my son a lot. Well, I want to believe she held him. I like to tell myself she helped him, that she held him gently. That somebody loved him in that minute because I couldn't.

She was a very seasoned nurse and had been doing this work for a long time. She was a real, steady presence for me.

There was a brief period where I got so mad at my husband that I kicked him out of the room.

Once he left, the nurse told me that this hits dads in a different way. That was the first time I realized she had done this before.

When the baby came out, I felt really grateful to her. It would not surprise me if she held him, intended to him, and that feels really good to have someone to do the thing I couldn't.

Now, through my therapy work, I help moms carry grief and new life at the same time.

When you have traumatic grief, you have to treat the trauma, or it won’t allow you to actually process the grief.

Being able to process the trauma opened a door for me to try and come to terms the loss and grief of it all.

The date of my miscarriage is sacred to me now. I take care of my body and try and connect to my baby, with whom I had a loving relationship.

I also got a tattoo of the ceramic imprints of his hands and feet that the hospital gave me.

They also took pictures of him which I went to pick up a year later. I can't believe they stored all of it.

My husband and I talk to our son about him too.

For a lot of people who have experienced pregnancy loss, you grieve your whole life, no matter what phase you were at.

You always wonder, what would they have been? What would their life have been?

I'll never get that hour back. That's the thing I carry.

But one thing I've experienced on this journey is validation, and I've since found out that I'm not the only one who had to make that choice.

That's been healing for me.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Jennie Hardman, 45, is a trauma therapist with a private practice in Minnesota, Jennie Hardman Therapy. She shares supportive content for moms grieving a pregnancy loss or coping with a pregnancy after loss on her social media @wholemotherstory.

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This story was originally published June 5, 2026 at 11:21 AM.