Joan Bremer was seven weeks pregnant when her unborn child's heart stopped. She'd miscarried her first child and was heartbroken.
And though the Californian woman knows she’ll never forget the experience, or her unborn child, she wanted to mark the experience in a special way.
Since she’d always been a fan of tattoos, and had a few already, Joan decided to ink herself once more, this time to honour her ‘angel baby.’
“For me, all the tattoos I have signify something, and even though this was a painful time, I still wanted to be able to remember it in some way,” she told Today.
As you can see, the design she chose is absolutely beautiful, especially when you look closely and realise the meaning behind it.
It’s a simple but powerful design of two hearts within one connecting mum and baby. And she already has plans to alter it, depending on what happens the next time she conceives.
“If we are able to carry a baby to term and have a healthy child, I will add a rainbow baby to this design since ‘rainbow babies’ are babies that are conceived after a loss, just like how something beautiful can come after a storm,” she explained.
“If I end up having a second miscarriage, I will most likely add another heart to this design.”
Joan shared her gorgeous tattoo on Imgur not only as a way to express her grief, but to help others who often suffer miscarriages in silence.
“Losing a baby, even if it’s early in pregnancy, is just so difficult,” she said.
“I know there is a certain silence about miscarriages and pregnancy losses, but I am not ashamed that this happened to me. That was one of my motivations for getting the tattoo in the first place – I really think it’s healing to be able to talk about it.”
Touchingly, she has inspired others to share the tattoos that they too got to mark a pregnancy loss.
“It happened to us, and it’s happened to countless other people,” she said. “I want to be able to share and talk about it, and in talking about it move on from the pain and disappointment.”
