In recent years, miscarriage, stillbirth, and early infant death have increasingly come to pose problems of meaning for middle-class Americans. What is the status of the woman, of her partner, of that which was lost? Why did it happen? What does it mean? How ought one to behave? The dominant strategy in the United States for dealing with this ambiguity is to minimize the loss. Medical explanations stress how common such events are, how insignificant they are in terms of predicting the outcome of a subsequent pregnancy, and indeed how beneficial such losses are – “nature's way of taking care of itself.” Family, friends, and co-workers, people who may have celebrated the pregnancy and joined in the co-construction of the incipient personhood of “the baby,” sometimes respond to the loss by acting as if nothing happened, as if the woman had never even been pregnant. Those who do acknowledge the loss often minimize its importance with comments like, “It was only a miscarriage,” “At least you didn't get to know her,” “You can always have another,” “It was for the best.” Members of pregnancy loss support groups move against this current and often forcefully assert their status as parents and that which was lost as a “baby,” a legitimate source of grief.

In this essay I describe when, to, and by whom names are given, their meaning, and their use by bereaved parents, members of their social networks, and pregnancy loss support group leaders.