by Tara Shafer posted in Parenting

I have been hearing a lot about the memoir by Mayte Garcia, the former wife of the late Prince. Her memoir, entitled The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince, details her relationship with the music icon.
While I am not one to speculate on the private lives of the super-famous, one aspect of this book concerns the birth and short life of their baby. As a bereaved mother, this compels me.
Details that surround the life and death of their baby, Amir Nelson, belong only to Prince and Mayte Garcia. It feels both disrespectful and voyeuristic to speculate on the ultimate parental agony those two experienced as they watched their son be born and then die.
Suffice it to say that the pregnancy is reported to have been difficult, that the little boy was born with birth defects, and that he died shortly thereafter. The couple struggled to cope. Their relationship ultimately ended. I am not suggesting it was because of baby loss -- I certainly am not in any position to assess that. Nevertheless, this does raise an important point. While many people understand that that the death of an older child often causes marriages/relationships to fail, this truth extends as well to pregnancy and infant loss. So while I leave Prince to RIP and I thank Mayte Garcia for opening the door for a discussion on the pain of baby loss, I leave it there.

I do wish to say to people who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss (and those who love them) that these exper...