By Maureen Ferguson
When Ed Sheeran’s concert tour made a swing through Washington recently, one of his saddest yet sweetest songs wasn’t on the set list. Sheeran’s fans know “Small Bump” as a precious ballad that captures the heartache of a parent losing a child before birth, in this case a baby stillborn at 5 months of pregnancy: “You are my one and only … finger nails the size of a half grain of rice and eyelids closed to be soon opened wide … ‘Cause you were just a small bump unborn … then torn from life.”
Of course, we would all mourn the loss of a baby at this stage of development, because we all know that whether it’s a small bump or a big bump, it’s a baby bump. We’ve seen images of the standard 20-week ultrasound, in which those tiny fingernails “the size of a half grain of rice” are plainly visible. Babies at this stage are so fully formed they already have distinct fingerprints, are yawning, hiccupping, sucking their thumbs, and have working taste buds. Some can even survive if born.
