My mother has two surviving siblings, out of a total of 6 known pregnancies. Two of the others were miscarriages/premature births; the last made it full term but only survived a couple of days. With all the medical advances of today, we tend to get a bit sanguine and complacent, but this sort of thing used to be heartrendingly common, and it still happens. Siblings, too, always wonder about the little person they never got to know.
