Forget me not elephant, West Prices Street Gardens.

The forget me not elephant symbolise strong and close knit relationships. Elephants are highly intelligent with an everlasting memory.

This popular statue was unveiled in 2019 and is by Andy Scott, creator of The Kelpie statues at Falkirk. 

The memorial is dedicated to babies’ cremated remains that were cruelly dumped in a mass unmarked grave at Mortonhall Cemetery in a scandal spanning more than four decades.

As a result, hundreds of grieving parents will never know the final resting place of their beloved children, with at least 250 cremated babies buried in secret. Parents were instead told there would be no ashes left to scatter following cremation.

The creation of a memorial was one of the 22 recommendations produced in Dame Elish’s 600-page report commissioned to look into the scandal.

Edinburgh City Council built a £250,000 memorial garden at Mortonhall in 2015 for those devastated parents.

But with some families vowing to never return to the crematorium grounds, officials agreed to build a second permanent memorial.

More than six years after the scandal was uncovered, a two and a half tonne baby elephant was unveiled  in Princes Street Gardens  on February 3rd 1019, as a way to remember the hundreds of babies for years to come.

The memorial, embossed with forget-me-not flowers, is a popular spot for people taking photos, as you can see in mine, these were only in the time it took me to take a few pics. 

SculptorAndy Scott gave the baby elephant the working title “Lulla-Bye” given the tragic circumstances surrounding the project, which took around four and a half years to come to fruition.

He added: “Elephants never forget. I wanted to do something that will capture the imagination. It was quite a daunting thing to take on because of the emotions and the terrible loss the parents had suffered. It wasn’t a project I took on lightly. It’s been a rewarding project in how it has been received.

1 months 19 days ago 13 hours 1 minutes 51 seconds

Found on Facebook.

For any one who has lost a child before birth.

When women discover that I lost a baby during the 20th week of pregnancy, they will often open up to me about their own loss experience. If it occurred earlier in their pregnancies, they tend to reduce its significance by saying they were “only” six weeks, eight weeks, or fill-in-the-blank weeks pregnant when their loss occurred.

They usually follow up that “only” statement by saying something along the lines of how their loss doesn't compare to mine. Or how they can’t imagine losing a baby after the first trimester of pregnancy.

And I guess I’ve said or thought some variation of the same thing. When discussing my early loss versus my later loss, I’ve reduced it to being nothing more than a medical mishap that occurred when I was “only” six weeks pregnant—I guess sometimes it’s just easier that way.

And when hearing of someone else’s full-term loss, I’ve considered how much worse it might have been to lose my baby at 40 weeks instead of at “only” 20 weeks.

But that’s where the problem lies. It’s in the comparison. It’s in thinking that one pregnancy, one life, is more significant than another based on its duration. It’s in thinking that the loss of a baby who was too small to be seen, or held, is less significant than the baby who was big enough for a crib, but was laid in a casket instead.

The truth is that my losses are no more or less significant than anyone else’s. Each loss experience is unique, to be sure—my two were.

But no matter if we’re talking about an early loss or a late loss, I’ve missed out on the same things as every other loss mom. I’ve missed a lifetime of getting to know two of my children. I’ve missed milestones and celebrations. I’ve missed the mundane moments that would have made up the majority of memories with the two babies who didn’t come home with me.

I don’t know the details of anyone else’s loss, nor can I say I know exactly how they were affected by it—the experiences of loss moms are never exactly the same—but I do know that there is no “only” in pregnancy loss. Not in mine or anyone else’s.

There is “already.”

There was a pregnancy that had already progressed to six, or eight, or twenty weeks along.

There was already life as evidenced by two pink lines. The same pink lines that had already alerted a woman to her role as mother.

There was already the sound of a heartbeat, whether it beat for a day, a month, or longer.

There was already a connection between mother and baby.

And there was already love planted deeply in a mother’s heart. A love that had already begun to grow from the moment the first sign of life was displayed in the once-empty window of a pregnancy test.

It doesn’t matter if a pregnancy “only” lasted for a few weeks. It doesn’t matter if it was an early loss or a late loss.

What matters is that there was already a baby who was loved immensely. And love cannot be measured in weeks.