We know we delivered, but then the timeline stops. We look frantically for the next page, but it will always be blank. My imagination does simultaneously beautiful and terrible things with these unwritten pages. Would his hair be curly or wavy? Would his eyes be dark brown or amber? Would he love dragons or “My Little Pony” or something entirely different that I cannot possibly imagine?

Questions that can never be answered are so very hard.

Society does not like to hear from us castaway mothers. You may not even know that your friend or cousin or even your own mother lost a baby before or shortly after birth. That is how secret we have learned to be. Our grief carries shame and stigma. Do you wonder if it is our fault? Are you worried it is contagious? Is it just too much for you to imagine what we bear? There’s no word or phrase that names a mother who is wheeled to the hospital doors without her baby in her arms — just a stark picture.

For years, everyone, doctors included, thought it best to wipe nurseries clean, as if removing a crib or giving away the diapers your friend dropped off erased the memory that you delivered a baby. We know what happened to our bodies. We know what we have lost. You owe us this recognition instead of silence and uncomfortable glances.

To get through our lives we members of this quietly sad community must constantly run the gantlet of “do we tell or don’t we tell?” Here is how it goes for me: I have two 14-year-old boys, so everyone asks if they are twins. Each time I answer, my wound is ripped open. The only choice I have is: Do you get to see me bleed or not? I can spare the casual or often not-so-casual inquirer the discomfort of knowing my truth, my son’s truth, and say, “twins.” When I do this, I bleed viscerally. No one can see, but I feel the pain of my betrayal.

I can also leak my sorrow out into the ether as I explain that my sons are triplets and Aidan, my first born, died very shortly after birth. If I do this, I know there will be a terrible pause because nothing sucks the life out of the room faster than telling someone you had a dead baby. The other person will quickly say, “I’m so sorry.” What do I say in reply? “That’s O.K.”?