Today, I’ve decided to address a taboo subject: perinatal bereavement. This tragedy, which many parents experience, is often misunderstood by those around them. All too often, parents hear comments like, “You’re still young; you have time to have another one,” or “You’re just unlucky,” or worse yet, “Stop thinking about it, and the next one will stick.” Sometimes there’s also an awkwardness that makes certain people hesitant to approach grieving parents. These parents represent an experience of motherhood—and of life itself—that no one wishes to go through.
There’s also a deep silence and a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding this topic among a large portion of the population. It’s as if losing a baby before full term or just a few days after birth isn’t considered real grief, but simply a minor hiccup that the parents will quickly forget. As if it were impossible to feel deep grief following a miscarriage or the loss of a baby you never brought home. People seem to believe that the parents hadn’t formed an attachment yet and that they didn’t already have a heart full of love for this child who held so many dreams and hopes.
Friends, family, and those close to parents who have lost a baby too often assume that in a few days the parents will have moved on—but that’s not the case. It can take weeks, months, or even years to recover from this trauma. In the weeks following this loss, they may even find it difficult to leave the house to avoid the stares of others. They will think about this child they never held in their arms or brought home for the rest of their lives. They will think about this child even if they have other children. Sometimes, they’ll imagine what the lost child would have looked like.
There are no magic words or gestures that can erase these parents’ pain. They simply need you. They need to be heard and to feel that you’re there for them. Let them grieve, but stay by their side. They need to take their time.
Avoid dismissing their grief or brushing it aside. Avoid offering them clichés. Avoid putting pressure on them by asking, “When’s the next one?” or “When will the right one come along?” Avoid telling them there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to have a child or that there’s no history of such issues in the family, because you don’t know what caused this loss. Above all, you don’t know if they’ll have the chance to start a family with a biological child in the future.
From a mom of 5 little angels