u/anon4jesus

TW: Loss of an older child.

I’m a 30 year-old mother who is 21 weeks pregnant with my second daughter. My precious 18mo daughter suddenly passed away right before Christmas 2025 so not that long ago…complications from a virus… I am of course completely heartbroken & taking everything day by day. I do have a close relationship with God and do believe in an afterlife, which is the only thing that keeps me from completely losing it probably. Three months after she passed, I found out I was pregnant. It was a very irrational survival decision…. The thought of not being / mother anymore was destroying me…. I try to stay as strong as possible because I don’t want to hurt my baby girl inside of me. I fight back tears some days and try to calm myself down. Are there any mamas who have gone through intense grief, while carrying their child? I fear that me crying will hurt my baby emotionally and that they won’t be happy. Please help

Like many others here my faith was shaken after I lost my toddler suddenly & unexpectedly. I had a really close relationship with God and had experienced and felt the presence of a higher power many times throughout my life…. Yet after experiencing such a traumatizing loss I was questioning if God even existed. Yet I had no doubt that God existed before the loss of my child. It made me think to myself…” am I going to choose not to believe in God anymore because my daughter died or because I feel it is his fault?” . People die every day all around the world, men, women & children. Was I OK with God as long as it wasn’t one of my loved ones who died? As long as it was other people’s children and not mine? Is death a reason to not want to believe in a higher power anymore ?

Like many others here my faith was shaken after I lost my toddler suddenly & unexpectedly. I had a really close relationship with God and had experienced and felt the presence of a higher power many times throughout my life…. Yet after experiencing such a traumatizing loss I was questioning if God even existed. Yet I had no doubt that God existed before the loss of my child. It made me think to myself…” am I going to choose not to believe in God anymore because my daughter died or because I feel it is his fault?” . People die every day all around the world, men, women & children. Was I OK with God as long as it wasn’t one of my loved ones who died? As long as it was other people’s children and not mine? Is death a reason to not want to believe in a higher power anymore ?

Not at all what I was expecting to hear after 5 months of waiting . A perfectly healthy 18 month old girl . My daughter had a rough nights sleep the night before she passed. Couldn’t get settled and sounded congested. The evening before bed she started having a fever & look lethargic, at that time we just thought she was exhausted from the fever. We assumed the fever was coming from her impacted teeth. 😢. We could’ve never imagined it could be something worse. We gave her a safe recommended dose of children’s ibuprofen, she took a little nap and that seemed to help a bit before she ate her dinner and went to bed with me.

She then slept pretty rough like I mentioned before, but woke up in the morning acting like her normal giggly self, playing with her dad & I . She even ate most of her breakfast. It wasn’t until nap time. She started to act lethargic again, but no fever. I noticed one trickle of green snot in her nose, which was very unusual. I know that green usually equals infection. I don’t know how in the hell that didn’t prompt me to take her straight to the hospital. I feel horrible & like a loser & failure. I found her during her afternoon nap, she was face down & already gone 🫩.

We’ve been waiting five months to hear back from the medical examiner, and her cause of death has been listed as “ unexplained sudden death” . I don’t even know what to do with this information, if there are any parents that have any experience with this, can you please give me some advice? I’m also curious to hear any information you have found from your research. I’ve done my own research, and there seems to be some similarities with my daughter symptoms and other children her age who died, and it was classified as sudden unexpected death.

I feel like I owe it to my unborn child. I’m currently pregnant with to keep digging for answers. .