I have been reading your posts and I just wanted to thank all of you all for passing on your thoughts. Reading all your reasoning and seeing where the local community is coming from is great.

Replacement child? No - its not possible to replace a child like a broken toy.

Another child to help fill the terrible void left by losing a child?
Absolutely. Its hard enough to live with the loss - having another child to focus on helps by giving you a chance to parent.

As someone who has also lost a child, I completely agree that there is no such thing as replacement children. When someone loses their mother, father, sibling, or anyone special for that matter, can you replace them? The answer is no. We lost our son over 5 years ago to complications due to prematurity. He was 37 days old. And, yes, when someone asks if I have children, I do tell them, and almost always have to tell them that he is no longer with us. I am sorry if it makes that person uncomfortable, but it does help to talk about him. He was a real person with a real life, no matter how short it was.
We are/have been trying to make him a big brother, but unfortuantly, it hasn't happened yet. But when it does, we will tell him or her about their big brother and how brave and strong he was. But they will never be a replacement. How can you replace someone so special as your child?

Being a mother who lost a child in May 2009 when I was 6 1/2 months pregnant, and I'm pregnant again. I don't call this baby a replacement child. This is just my first baby's younger sibling. Like LocalGirl quotes her younger siblings, when people ask me if I have kids I tell them yes, I have a daughter. Or when people talk to me I happen to say my daughter, they tell me "oh I didn't know you had kids" I tell them unfortunely she's not here with us today. No such thing as a "replacement" child. No body can ever replace the ones that are lost.

As someone who has been touched by this issue, I will say that my family member buried a small child who died within a few months of becoming ill from a brain tumor. She and her husband had an older child and then they had a baby about a year after the funeral. When we saw them a few months after the baby was born, she and I spoke about the similiarities and differences between her child who had died and this baby. She let me know that she appreciated me talking to her about the child who had died and the baby. Most people don't know what to say, but when you know a family who has lost a child, that child still lives in their hearts. Like my young relative said, "When I meet someone and they ask how many children we have, I tell them three." (Thus including the young one in Heaven.)

Replacement children? No such thing. When children go to Heaven, no matter what age, any children who come after are they because there still is lots of love left in the parents hearts.