Naming Loila
It was half a year, and more, before I gave “the baby” a name. Why not sooner? I can’t remember now, to what degree I just didn’t think of it, and to what degree it seemed too presumptuous. I’d never heard of anyone naming their miscarried child. It wasn’t till I suffered my second miscarriage that it became necessary to give them each a name, just to tell “the babies” apart.
To another parent grieving the loss of a miscarried or stillborn child, I would strongly urge them to name the baby. Miscarriage is grief in a vacuum - the emotional impact of losing a child with nothing concrete on which to hang that grief - no mementos, no pictures, not even memories. A name is tangible; it is an identity. It is one of the first gifts we give our living children, and it is one of very few gifts we can give those we lose before birth.
I cherish the story of how my parents named me. They were planning to call me Joanne. But when she held me in her arms that first night, my mom said, “That’s not a Joanne. That’s an Annette.” When I asked her what she meant by that, she said she thought Joanne sounded like a tomboy. (Full marks for insight there: I am definitely not a tomboy. Physical daring, or even competence I am most definitely short on.) Annette, my mom said, was a name for someone refined and feminine. (Being the kind of person who can trip over the lines painted on a gym floor, I’m a little less sure she got that one right, especially when I looked it up in a baby name book and found out my name means “full of grace.” I have since resolved to think of my name in relation to spiritual grace, and aspire to be one who is full of the grace of God.) From my early childhood to middle age, it has mattered to me that my parents thought they could know me as an individual from the day of my birth.
But how do you choose a name for a miscarried child? The best image I had of her was a blurry ultrasound. Nobody was even able to tell me if I had lost a boy or a girl. But in my mind, she was always a girl, so when I finally came to the realization that the baby needed and deserved a name, I chose my maternal grandmother’s name, Loila. (Pronounced Loh - eye - la).
There were two reasons why I chose Loila. First, it gave me great comfort after I lost her, to think of my baby in the care of my two angel grandmothers, both women who had mothered many children and loved babies. Second, when I tried to imagine a personality for my Loila, I pictured her persistent to the point of stubbornness. After all, she hung on to life for fourteen weeks, when most miscarriages happen much earlier in pregnancy. My grandma Loila was a fighter. One example: my grandfather, worn down with discouragement by years of unsuccessful farming, had no expectation that any of his children would go to university. He wanted his oldest son to quit high school and help him on the farm. But grandma insisted that he would get a higher education: she even used her earnings as a school teacher to pay for his and her other childrens’ tuition. My uncle became a college professor.
And so, “the baby” became “Loila”, a name with depth and meaning. Something to hold onto.