Dealing with grief

What grief may feel like

You may feel shocked and numb. You may feel lonely, depressed, and very sad. You may blame yourself, your partner, your health care provider, or your hospital. Seeing other women with healthy babies may feel unbearable. These are intense and difficult feelings, but they are all normal ways to feel when you are grieving.

You are not alone. Other parents whose babies have died have support and information to offer you. Support groups of parents and counselors with special training in bereavement can provide help and guidance. Ask your health care provider for a recommendation or see grief resources.

Your partner's grief

Your partner may not have feelings of grief that are exactly like yours. You felt the physical changes of pregnancy; your partner could not feel them personally and could only empathize with you and imagine what you were feeling. You may feel the loss more strongly than your partner. Or your partner may be grieving but may not want to burden you with any more pain and disappointment.

Ask your partner for love and support in this confusing and difficult time. And ask what support your partner needs. Your partner may be finding it hard to ask for help.

The death of a baby is a crisis for any relationship. If you can accept that grief is felt and expressed in a wide variety of ways, you may find it easier to accept each other's ways of dealing with this experience. You are both hurting, and you are both fragile. Try to be gentle with each other. Ask for help and support from family, friends and counselors.

Your children's grief

It can be difficult to know what to tell your other children, especially if they are quite young. You may feel it is best to shield them from the facts, but chances are, they will overhear or sense the truth eventually. Try to be as honest and gentle with them as you can. If you don't have answers right away, it is fine to tell them that you don't know when things will feel happy at your house again but that you still love them very much.

One very important message you can tell your children over and over again is that it is not their fault that your baby died. Children imagine they can cause all kinds of events. Perhaps your child once thought, "I wish we weren't having a baby!" and thus might feel deeply ashamed and guilty. Find excuses and ways to repeat and repeat the same message: it was no one's fault, and I still love you.

When you tell your children what happened to your baby, don't say your baby is "sleeping" or was "lost." Children can misunderstand and develop fears at bedtime, or they can become especially clingy.

Family counseling can be quite helpful, especially for children who often can't identify or express their feelings easily.

Other people's grief

You may find that people seem to feel awkward when you talk about your baby and that they don't seem to know how to behave. This is because they know that this is extremely painful, but they don't know what to do to help. You may receive even more support if you can manage to tell people what you need: "Tom, it just means so much to me when you talk about our baby," or "Sarah, thank you for just crying with me. You don't have to say a thing."

Sometimes people say unintentionally hurtful things in their attempt to say something comforting: "You can have another baby" or "You lost the baby before you got to know it." You might say something like: "I know you're trying to help, but that hurts my feelings" or "This is very hard for me, and I'd like your understanding."