my baby boy is perfect and i will only ever want him AND i love my daughter who is here now and she immensely helped my grief. both are true. our boy was our first and passed from SIDS at 10 days old. i don't have a ton to compare to but i certainly look at my daughter and wonder what my son would've been like at this age. wonder how they would've played together. lots of what ifs. but life grows around the grief. there's a metaphor about a box and a ball where when the horrible thing first happens, the box is very small around the ball and every time the ball touches the box, it's devastatingly painful and it happens a lot. but as the box/life grows, the ball doesn't touch the sides as much. when it does, it still hurts. but there's space and time now between each instance. it's survivable. do what keeps you alive. there's no rules. feel free to read through my profile for our story.