Disclaimer: Everyone experiences grief differently. There’s no right or wrong way to navigate life after loss. 

I just want to start off by saying I’m sorry your going through or have gone through this pain. No parent should ever have to feel the pain of losing a child  I just want to start off by saying I’m sorry your going through or have gone through this pain. No parent should ever feel the pain of losing a child, watching your future just disappear isn’t anything any parent should have to experience. Going from my previous experiences and research I have found there are 6 stages of grief you might go through. Its completely normal to feel all the emotions from shock, anger, numbness, anger, and sadness. No matter what you feel it’s okay and normal and even if you don’t feel any of these thats okay too. Everyone is different and it’s your body and mind.

Heartbreak & Confusion.

The first feeling you get when the doctor says the words “I’m sorry…” is heartbreak and confusion. How can this be happening to you? Everything was normal earlier/yesterday? How is my baby gone? I did everything I was meant to. The doctor has got it wrong. Why us?

These are all normal questions and statements to think and ask. It normal to hold onto hope that the doctor was wrong and it’s not happening to you. Deep down you know you know it’s real and happening but you try your hardest to ignore that part of you and keep hope. You go into denial, heartbroken denial. It can be normal to ask for other people’s stories of them bleeding in pregnancy and everything is okay. Googling to see if there is any other reason for your symptoms.

Numbness & Isolation.

After being told every parents worst nightmare is happening you can start to feel numb and like you just want to curl up in a ball and bury your head in the sand sort of thing. I know for my losses this normally hits after I get home. I don’t want to talk or see anyone including Daddy bear and Baby bear. I just want to lay in bed, not even to cry but because it just feels like your in a bubble. I struggle to take on information or even realize I’m being spoken to. You can also find it easier not to talk to anyone because then no one is telling you how sorry they are or asking how your feeling. I know personally I hate them questions for the first few weeks, because I’m obviously not okay, I feel like utter crap and in crazy amounts of pain both physically and mentally. I know people only ask these questions because they don’t know what to say, we don’t know either so I understand why people ask it just sucks for us as lost parents. I’m going to do a whole post about what to say and do for a lost parent as it is hard to know what to say and do.

Anger & Looking For A Reason.

This can be one of the stages of grief that you feel for the longest. It’s completely normal to feel angry towards yourself, your partner and the medical professionals around you. I think it’s natural to look for someone to blame for this situation, but please remember 9 times out of 10 no one is to blame and no one could have prevented it happening. You can look through everything you have done during your pregnancy to try and find something you did wrong or something your partner did or didn’t do for you that caused this loss. These feelings can be felt by the lost mother and father but you have to try and not play the blame game with each other as losing a child is hard enough on a relationship without blaming each other and driving a bigger wedge between you both. Trust me I know how hard this can be myself and Daddy bear have been there with the blame game.

However, feeling anger and resentment towards the doctors, nurses and midwives are again completely normal but it is a lot harder to deal with this anger. Health professionals try to be very straight with you when telling you any information so it can feel as if they don’t care. I have also found when I’ve rung my team with worries of mine (light cramping, not feeling any symptoms, pregnancy tests not darkening) before a miscarriage and I’ve been told it was normal to then miscarry you can feel like if they had listened they could have stopped it. When in reality there’s nothing anyone can do to stop a miscarriage and 9 times out of 10 they are doing everything they can to help support your pregnancy. It can also be really hard when your care after your loss is inadequate or you feel like they aren’t giving you the support you need. After a loss, your body and hormones are going through a huge change which can make your feeling go all over the place and I’m not saying that’s wrong but please try and remember no one is trying to hurt you they are just trying to get you through one of the worst and hardest times of your life.

Depression.

This could be the hardest stage of grief to overcome in your grief journey. You can find yourself questioning if your time will ever come. If you will ever get to hold your baby in your arms. You can find yourself trying to convince yourself that you aren’t mean to be a mum or what your being punished for something you have done in the past. It can even affect you when you start to try for another baby as if it doesn’t happen as quickly as you wish. Then when you do fall pregnant you can become full of anxiety, dread, and fear that the past will repeat itself and you will lose another baby.

Pictures of pregnant women and babies on social media or tv can be a huge trigger for you as well as seeing them in person. It can make you want to isolate yourself completely from the outside world, family, and friends. It can become very hard to be around pregnant women and babies and attending events with them can feel impossible to attend. Hearing people announce their pregnancy or birth can also be extremely hard for you and even though you are so happy for them, it brings back all the heartache of your loss. It can just feel like the people around you have forgotten about your heartbreak when they haven’t they are just celebrating someone else good news. It’s also completely normal to feel torn when being around newborn babies, part of you want to have cuddles and be around them while the other half doesn’t want to be anywhere near them. It will get easier for you I promise, some days are harder than others but it will get slightly easier over time.

I’m still in this stage of my grief so I can completely understand, so please feel free to message me on any of my socials (growingclan) if you want a chat.

Acceptance.

The pain of a pregnancy loss will always be with you and there will always be a space in your heart for your sweet angel, it will get easier to navigate daily life. The overwhelming feelings from your loss will lessen and even though you will still look back with sadness but it will be easier to deal with your feelings. This stage of grief may not come till after the birth of another child but it will come just take each day as it comes.

stages of grief
Stages of Grief.