Customer Reviews

Something Happened: A book for children and parents who have experienced pregnancy loss.

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a beautiful book with helpful, meaningful text and rich colors. It is intended for families that have suffered a miscarriage, and for parents who need a way to discuss the heart-wrenching topic with their young child who had expected to become a big brother or sister. We see the gentle story of a child who looks forward to the birth of his baby sibling. Then "something happens" and his mother is no longer pregnant. The child, like his parents, must deal with the loss.
Along with the read-aloud-story, there is additional text throughout that is not meant to be read aloud. It advises parents on why the text says what it says, and how the parent can sensitively help their child in additional ways. This is a much-needed book for parents who are struggling with their own grief and who want advice in how to help their children with their own pain. Gently and sensitively handled by an expert in childrens' grief.

After suffering a second trimester loss I had no idea how to explain to my 3 year old daughter what happened. She knew there was "a baby in mummy's tummy" and we had talked to her about what it would be like to be a big sister. She was excited and so were we. After the loss, I looked for books to cover the subject but all the talk of babies being angels instead and being in heaven, etc..did not feel right. I thought it would confuse my daughter rather then help her. My 3 year old does not understand the concepts of death, heaven, angels etc. So to have to explain it all PLUS the loss of our baby was too much. I stumbled over explanations for her at first, even telling her, "mummy thought she had a baby in her tummy but I didn't". I never thought she would question me and I thought she was young enough that she would forget about it. She didn't. She was smarter and more intuitive than I gave her credit for. She would ask me "Where did the baby go?" "Is he lost?" "Is he outside?". Her questions would break my heart. Finally 2 months after the loss I found this book. It fit my family's needs perfectly. It helped me give my 3 year old an honest, simple explanation of what happened. I felt right after reading her this book and giving her this explanation. It couldn't have been more perfect. We also have a dog like the family in the book does. I read the book a few times myself first and cried it all out. Make sure you read it by yourself first because it will make you cry. Then you can gain some composure before reading it to your child. I really feel this book helps bridge that gap for kids so young they don't know what death is but old enough to know "something happened". It helps you explain it all at once. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making me feel I have done right by my daughter by giving her the information she needed to move on. She asked a lot of questions after we first read the book and still does not fully understand the concept of death, but I feel it helped her on her way to beginning to understand. She has not asked me any more questions about the loss in a month, but if she does, I now feel prepared to answer her. This book is a true gift. Thank you.

So often the grief of parents who have experienced a miscarriage, still-birth, or death of newborn goes unacknowledged. The reactions of other children in the family are even more likely to be overlooked. How can parents help their other children understand and cope with this loss to a family? This book offers wonderful help. It not only tells a story that even very young children can understand in a way that reassures them, but, in separate text on most pages, it also provides insights to parents about what their child might be thinking or feeling. As a psychologist with a special interest in how children think, I was so impressed - both the story itself and the comments to parents are beautifully attuned to the emotional needs and the cognitive development of young children. These features, plus the breathtakingly beautiful drawings, make Something Happened a sensitive, wonderful gift. When you know someone who has experienced this sort of loss and think "What could I do to help?" - my answer is that you can listen with your heart to their story of grief - and you can give this book as a gift. - Madeleine Van Hecke, PhD

I hope you never need this book, though I'm glad it exists if you ever do. Cathy Blanford, a counselor for grieving children, has written a picture book explaining pregnancy loss or stillbirth to children (and it can be tweaked to explain neonatal death and infant death).

The book doesn't sugar-coat loss or present the concept of pregnancy loss in confusing analogies. Blanford writes in the foreword: "Many years of experience with grieving children have convinced me that this direct approach to the issues is what children, even very young children, need to help them understand and cope with death."

I was drawn into the story by the first line: "On the day it happened, everyone woke up happy." You learn about the pregnancy and subsequent loss from the son who was anticipating his sibling's birth. I think the strength of this book is that it doesn't make pregnancy loss a small blip on the screen of life and end with a new pregnancy. It ends with a confirmation that even though a loss has happened, the family continues even with this new missing piece.

On most pages, Blanford also includes a box of text for the parent to use to kick off a conversation with their child about the page or to understand how their child may process the book. All in all, a very helpful book for explaining loss to children especially because it is straightforward and secular and accessible to all. Age range: Most pages have a small amount of text BUT since the subject matter is advanced, I think it would be best for three and above. I could even see an older child wanting answers and sitting down with this picture book with a parent.

I thought this book was very well written. When I was pregnant, I had this feeling that things weren't right so I started researching books on loss, not for me, but for my 6 year old. I saw this book and when I experienced my loss at a little over 8 weeks, I purchased the book. We had my son read it as we all sat as a family.

It was VERY easy for a 6 year old to read and he liked that. My son was confused about why the book told him he "had a tummyache." I thought that was an interesting point in the book and we talked about that. We were able to change the dogs name to his dogs name and that really helped.

The only thing I didn't like was that the pictures depict the mother in the hospital holding a baby and that didn't relate to our situation. It would be hard to create a book that helps with every type of pregnancy loss so I just disregarded that part. It applied in the sense that I was also in the hospital, I just didn't have a baby to hold in my arms and show my son.

Overall, I think it is a very good book.

We just lost our son at 4 days old due to severe congenital heart defects. Our living daughter is 3 (will be 4 in a couple months) and we were having a hard time finding a book about a baby/child dying that was age appropriate. We've had months to prepare for our son's death and have quite a few loss books for kids. This one was given to us by the hospital and I'm glad we have it. It's probably my favorite and the most age appropriate. It's not completely in tune with our situation - we brought our son home from the hospital (on hospice care), so going to the hospital for her (and all of us) was a happy time getting to meet her new baby brother. It also made it difficult for her to understand how our baby was here at our house and now he's gone. She asks where he is and looks for him...

The book talks about how happy everyone is about a new baby joining the family and then "something bad happens". I like that it says "our baby died" and "our baby can't come back, no matter how hard we wish". I like how it says everyone was very sad. Very simple explanations.

I don't like a few phrases (i.e. "sometimes i had a tummy ache and just felt like crying." "sometimes I felt really mad and didn't want to play." and "I was scared that it was my fault."). I just felt they weren't age appropriate and I didn't want to put those thoughts/ideas into our daughter's head. So I just skip over those.

Then it talks about planting a tree and flowers as a special place to remember our baby - our 3 year old thought that was really neat so we're planning to do that.

Towards the end, it says that the Mommy, Daddy, living child, and dog are still a family - I like that, but I wish they would have included the baby that died as still part of the family. I add our sons names when I read it - yes, we've had two sons die...our first son was stillborn before our living daughter was born.

I wish it had something about a funeral or how to explain what a casket is - we're still not sure how to explain that to our daughter. Our son's funeral is next week and we'd like her to be a little prepared... We got another book from the hospitals called "Ethan's Butterflies" and that's another favorite and fairly age appropriate. It also talks very briefly about a white box (casket) that the baby's body is in.

Every other page has little paragraphs at the bottom for the parents to read to help their child deal with the grief, which is very nice.

I also really like the other books like this one: "We were going to have a baby, but we had an angel instead" (which I think involves the baby more in the family than this one). We also have "Someone Came Before You" since our first son was stillborn before our daughter was born.

"Lifetimes" is a pretty good one and my daughter likes it, though it's all in muted brown tones and quite ugly in my opinion. It talks about how everything has a lifetime (from insects all the way to humans) and some have long lifetimes and some have short lifetimes.

"I Miss You" is another decent one. I skip over some phrases in that one too, but overall it's good. Explains what being alive means and what it means to be dead. The end is great - says we'll always be connected to our loved ones with memories and thinking of them.

After my miscarriage my two sons had two very different reactions. One was upset and would try to express his sadness, but was confused about what happened and why. The other didn't want to talk about any of it. This book showed them both that they weren't alone in their feelings and gave them words to help express themselves. I think anyone who has suffered a miscarriage and has children should have this book.

A friend told my spouse and me about this book, but we never thought we'd need a copy. Then a colleague and her husband lost their second son in childbirth. We instantly ordered a copy, read it ourselves when it arrived, and then shipped it on to the grieving family.

This book was so helpful to us and to my colleague and her family. They had to explain to their 3-year old son that his brother wouldn't be coming home. They were able to use this well-written and thoughtfully presented book to help with that task.

I was especially taken with how the author prepared two texts, one for parents to read to their children and one that helps the adults understand what the child might be feeling and thinking.

This must be such a terrible situation for anyone to go through, I'm glad there's a book like this out their for those families.

We recently lost our coming baby. The worst part was telling my 4 living children. I bought this book hopeing that it would help my husband and I with such a difficult subject.

This book is horrible! It started out nice but ended on such a depressing note. It did not convey death in the positive light (I don't want my kids worried over dying) that I wanted it too. So I returned the book to Amazon.