Not only does ABC Family’s ‘The Fosters” feature a lesbian married couple and tackle foster care and adoption, the latest episode has Lena, 20 weeks pregnant, facing having to deliver because she is pre-eclamptic. She starts the episode with daydreams of her beautiful, chubby baby girl, prior to finding out she might lose her. She begs the doctor to let her stay on bedrest and wait 6 more weeks, and the doctor is highly against it.
I am sitting here with tears running down my cheeks, as Lena says, “I’ve seen her in dreams, I feel her moving inside of me, she HAS to be alright!” After her daughter is gone (they don’t show the delivery or saying goodbye to the dead baby, I guess it IS ABC Family), a little girl who got loose from her mom gives Lena, still in the hospital, her stuffed unicorn, who happens to have the same name as the now deceased baby.
This would’ve struck me as a silly plot device, a coincidence that only occurs in movies, before I had my own miracle. Before my own tiny, lost daughter decided to tell me goodbye in her own unmistakeable way.
After ‘Return to Zero’, I didn’t think I would see a storyline on TV that directly addresses delivery of a healthy baby who is too soon to survive. It warms my heart and makes me feel so much less alone to know that a whole network considered it a problem worth delving into.
Mother of All Things 
It broke my heart also. I am still unsure how I feel about how it was handled. I did though like the planting of the tree and Jude reading at it- acknowledging that Frankie will always be a part of the family.
I saw this episode and it didn’t hit me. I was shocked! I don’t know why it didn’t? ALl other movies/shows which elude to it did! Maybe because they depicted it so well. They told her correct statistics on survival (which I watched a show the other day where they told someone a 24 weeker had a 90% survival chance and I was livid!). My DH even got teary eyed watching it. I don’t know. My DH even asked me if I was ok! Maybe I wanted to see more, like a goodbye, or Lena crying, or the whole family crying. I don’t know. It felt very sterile to me, matter of fact, except for a couple of small scenes. Or, it’s just me being weird…
You’re right that they didn’t show the hysterics or heartwrenching goodbye… but like any other issue on the show, they only go so deep.