Maureen Bjerke

Moms Like Me Presenter 2025

Nineteen. That’s how old I was when I got pregnant.

Nineteen. That’s how old my son would be, if he had survived.

Nineteen. The number of weeks I carried him before he was gone.

While I won’t say ‘dead baby’ 19 times, I do say it and if it makes your heart hurt, that’s your invitation to imagine what it feels like to walk around with the grief of a dead baby.

For some of us that takes no imagination because we live it everyday.

I’m Maureen Bjerke. I was born and raised in Helena. I am the youngest of six girls and every time one of my sisters left home to start their own life, I felt abandoned. In addition to six kids, my parents ran multiple businesses. They were short on time and energy for my sensitive self. I struggled with depression and healthy coping skills. I longed for attention, love and connection. I wanted someone to see me, to love me. 

Enter Josh. He was equally in need of love and attention, searching for someone who would accept him. He had his own mental health struggles. We were together for a while and neither of us worried about condoms. I was surviving day by day. I sustained myself on Marlboro Reds and Dr. Pepper. 

Thanks to my healthy diet of cigarettes and fountain pop, it wasn’t uncommon for my period to be all over the place. Depression and cutting myself to cope made for regular doctor visits. At one of those visits, I mentioned my period to my doctor. She did a pregnancy test. Positive. Like, I’m pregnant. But I’m 19. Um, okay. What the fuck do I do now?

Josh and I talked about it - he was excited to be a dad. I was less excited since I spent a lot of time curled up in Josh’s basement puking into his dirty toilet. Neither of us were ready to tell our parents.

A few weeks later, I was feeling better but went back to the doctor for an infected cut - and for whatever reason my mom came into the room with me. The doctor said something about me being pregnant and my mom scoffed then froze. “What?!” We drove home in silence. I reluctantly walked into the cold, dark back room at my parents house. My mom told my dad - she has something to tell you. Full of shame and embarrassment, I blurted out I’m pregnant. His immediate response was “we love you”. I’m not sure how that was his response, but it was and that’s the only thing I remember about that conversation.

My parents talked about an abortion or adoption and neither seemed like something I wanted to do. I was in. I was going to be a mom. I had never planned on this but now it was here and I was doing my best to prepare. I read pregnancy books. Josh and I moved in together. I took all my vitamins and attended prenatal visits. I quit smoking and started eating. I got maternity clothes. I let myself gain weight freely for the first time ever. I wore tight shirts and embraced my distended belly after eating a big meal.

I was mesmerized by my baby’s heartbeat - every night I’d tune in like it was a new show - on this weird thing that resembled an old school walkman to listen to his heartbeat - he was alive inside me. My amazing body was growing a human.  

Living with Josh wasn’t enough for my parents. They decided we needed to get married and started planning for a wedding in May. I told my sisters - none of them were excited. While Josh and I embraced the baby, we felt ambivalent about getting married but as a scared 19 year old, could I say no? I didn’t think so, so my parents continued the wedding planning.

One night, in our tiny basement apartment I woke up bleeding. We had this weird toilet up on a platform. I called my parents while I was sitting there. I didn’t know what to do. It was the middle of the night and my dad (no stranger to all things women) mumbled “um yeah that is your period”. Once he woke up and realized who he was talking to, he instructed me to go to the ER and he and my mom would meet us there. The doctors did an ultrasound and sent us home since everything looked fine.

I was unsure what was happening but clung to the idea we were becoming parents. 

For the next couple weeks, I was in and out of the ER and doctor’s office regularly because of the bleeding. I got a variety of ultrasounds and scans done. We learned it was a little boy. Josh bought him a little hockey outfit so he could be like his dad. 

Somewhere in those endless hospital visits, I was put on bed rest. There was a lot of time laying on the couch looking at the ceiling. I don’t remember the doctor ever telling me we are headed towards a miscarriage but that is what the medical records say.

I was 19 and looked young so I imagine they were treating me like an irresponsible teen, not a real adult. 

On April 25th, the cramping hit - hard. Josh was on his way home from working out of town. My mom took me to the ER and dropped me off at the door. Unable to walk, I crouched on the concrete sidewalk holding my belly - waiting for her to park the car and help me inside. Nurses put me in a bed and they hooked me up to an IV of pain meds. At some point I felt and heard a pop and gush and someone saying “the baby is here”. But there wasn’t any crying? Josh had arrived at some point and clamped the cord.

They gave me the baby and he moved in my arms. I asked them to save him but they said they couldn’t. He died in my arms. 

Josh and I agreed quickly that he looked like an Anthony. We stayed for what felt like hours holding our baby and talking about who he looked like more - his mom or his dad. We got a “special birth certificate”.

I’m not sure where the justice is there when you hold your baby to die and don’t even get a real birth certificate?

Although they did put his handprints and footprints on this fake birth certificate - his handprints are smudged but his footprints are perfect.

What do you do when you can’t take your baby home from the hospital? Well, I left Anthony wrapped in a blanket on the hospital counter. That was how I left my baby. I don’t know what kind of heartless mother does that? He was left all alone, cold, and dead. I don’t even know who carried him to the morgue or how long he laid there. This continues to haunt me.

The next 19 days blurred together. I spent a lot of time laying on a rug outside crying. Josh was nearby telling people I was just sad. I remember a phone call with my mom - someone asked if the wedding was still on and she responded “if they would get married with a baby then they’d still get married without a baby”. I was drowning in my grief, clinging to Josh - the only other person who could remotely understand this pain. It felt like our loved ones exhaled in relief. You were so young anyways. It wasn’t planned. You have your whole life ahead of you. It was a blessing.

As I was getting ready for what was supposed to be a combo baby and wedding shower, my milk came in. Like a slap in the face. No baby to feed, but here came the pain and discomfort anyways.

Again, I was 19 - I knew nothing about this. Nobody warned me as I left the hospital empty handed. I never talked to a doctor about it. It was just how it was. I was supposed to just deal with it. I went to my shower - now just an awkward depressing wedding shower. None of my regular clothes fit but I couldn’t embrace my belly now that there was no baby to show for it. I was just fat and empty with a dead baby. My boobs were huge and uncomfortable. I was miserable. 

Nineteen days after losing my son, I walked down the aisle. It was a blur. I hadn’t even physically recovered yet. I was still bleeding. Nobody mentioned the baby. Nobody dared to talk about it. It was just gone. Done. Move on now. Like he never existed.

Josh and I tried to honor our son. We created a baby book - filled with the two congratulation cards we got from worried loved ones after we announced the pregnancy, the book had ultrasound images, pictures of Anthony - the day he was born and died, his special birth certificate with his precious footprints now tattooed on my forever empty belly.

At some point I got the message - from someone - from everyone - from society - that nobody wanted to see or talk about your dead baby so I stopped talking and ripped the baby book apart in a fit of anger. 

For years, I drug around the guilt and shame believing I killed my own baby and abandoned him in the hospital. How could I ever forgive myself - or my body?

It wasn’t until a couple years ago that a loved one fought me on it. Hard. They challenged me, forced me to consider - maybe I had nothing to forgive myself for. Maybe these terrible things just happen. Logically, I knew that. But it wasn’t until that emotional argument that I began to wonder - is that true? I don’t have to forgive myself for this?! Mind blown. Still working on that…

I attended a retreat for loss moms last year. The facilitator gave me permission to use the term stillbirth. I always wanted to but wasn’t sure I was allowed.

Like I was worried someone would be like “nope, not a stillbirth, that’s a miscarriage…?? I’m still experimenting with that terminology. It seems to carry a different weight even though both types of losses are crushing. 

I’ve spent 18 years working with children and families. Mostly in high trauma areas - Like Shodair and CPS - where I had to swallow my rage as kids suffered at the hands of parents. Why the actual fuck did they get to have kids and I couldn’t? 

And let me tell you when you are of child-bearing age and work with kids, everyone’s favorite question is “do you have kids?” One person even told me I was lucky when I responded with a simple but painful “no”. I didn’t bother to explain why that was such a fucked up thing for her to say. I’ve had people say “I hate you - you get to sleep in”. My internal response is “I hate you - you have a living child”. Instead I awkwardly laugh and turn away as my heart screams.

It took me years but I have finally allowed myself to decline birthday party invites for my loved ones’ children. I get filled with a hot jealousy thinking about their living child eating cake and opening gifts and the mom getting to plan and take pictures of their happy child. It’s a terrible feeling - it's embarrassing and shameful - I really just want to be happy for them and celebrate with them instead of making it about me. 

All of my sisters have living children and I work in community health focused on early childhood - trying to support parents.

I am constantly trying to hold space for myself as a mother while acknowledging I have no idea what it is like to get annoyed when your child needs you. I don’t know what it’s like when your child takes their first step. When they enter kindergarten. When they get their drivers license. When they graduate from high school.

I see my sister’s son (Anthony’s age) and sometimes I let myself imagine my son growing alongside him. Feeling overly emotional at the seemingly basic task of thinking about what college he is going to. Each milestone is a reminder of what could have been.

I was driving to Billings to visit my sister and her family when I imagined Anthony as a teen for the first time. He had aged. He wasn’t just a dead baby, he was growing up with his cousins. I had to pull over, unable to see clearly through the tears. Now, it’s a sweet moment when I can imagine him growing up with his cousins - maybe even getting into trouble - because let's be real - with Josh as his dad and me as a young mom, he would have had some struggles for sure. But he was loved. He is loved.

I mother him in the only way I know how - I clean off his headstone. I make fairy gardens thinking maybe his fairy angel little self will come visit. He sends tiny white feathers to let me know he is still my son and that I am still his mom.

After a few years, Josh and I went our separate ways so the comfort of having a partner to grieve with disappeared. It’s suffocating how isolating this journey can be.

The spaces where we can freely talk about our dead babies are so rare. In Helena, we are working to create more of these spaces. 

We have been doing creative workshops every other month for about a year now. Our biggest loss event was the Wave of Light. Every year on October 15th people light a candle to honor the little ones they are missing. Last year we offered this as a community event and over 50 people joined us on a cold, dark evening - outside. There was an entire park full of other moms like me collectively holding space for the children we had to say goodbye to, together under a beautiful full moon. I have attended the loss groups at Roots, the loss group in Helena and done some online work with loss. All these spaces created by those of us who recognize the pain of losing a little one. 

Motherhood. Grief. Parenting. Parenting a dead child. There is no right way to do these things.

It took me 15 years to touch my belly. It took me 16 years to imagine Anthony growing up. It took me 17 years to speak openly about him. It took me 18 years to celebrate his birth/death day with others. And now, 19 years later, I am trying to honor my one and only child by sharing our story and holding space for others who have lost a pregnancy, a baby, or a child. I never want anyone to carry around that grief, shame, guilt and self hatred by themselves for any amount of time, let alone 19 years.