Grieving a pregnancy loss is deeply personal, and finding the right words to express your emotions can be challenging. It’s important to honour your feelings and communicate in a way that feels right for you.
Although early pregnancy loss is common, the impact it has on parents as well as the wider family is often underestimated. People often assume miscarriage is a minor event, easily replaced with another pregnancy, leading parents to feel that even those closest to them do not understand their pain. Letting people know what your baby meant to you, telling them what you need and letting them know if you want to talk about your experience can help others offer the support you need.
Many parents continue to wait until the second trimester before announcing their pregnancy, so there can be times when no one in your support network is aware that you are pregnant. This can lead to us feeling like our grief is not publicly recognised. This grief is known as disenfranchised grief, and can lead to us feeling isolated from our friends and family and not feeling like we can access the support that we need from allied health services. It is helpful to talk to a few special people in your life about your miscarriage, so that they are able to support you in the way that you need.
Telling family and friends about the death of your baby is very hard
Although it might seem too difficult to contemplate, inviting your close family and friends in to see you and your baby is often a good idea. It can make it easier for family and friends to understand your grief and pain as it makes the baby real to them, too. It can also help to have people to remember your baby in the coming years. For some families, though, this is an intensely private time. You do not have to have visitors and speak to others if you don’t want to. If you have other children, it is strongly encouraged that you let them meet their baby brother or sister too. They need to be able to see and ask questions and it will help them understand what has happened so they can begin to grieve.
Telling Your Other Children
Children from a very young age understand when something has changed in their home and with their parents. Even if your child did not know about the pregnancy, they will still know that you are sad and that their lives have changed. When talking to your children, it is important to be honest with them about what has happened, communicating your loss in a way that they can understand. They may have lots of questions, or none at all, and both are very normal. Children tend to grieve differently to adults, so they may experience their grief in a way that can be confronting for adults to understand. Being open and available to them in these moments, and reassuring them that how they feel is ok, allows them to process their grief in a healthy way. For more information around children and grief, please go to the Raising Children Network.
RETURNING to work
It’s unlikely you’ll feel well enough to go back to work straight after the loss of your baby. Give yourself time to recuperate. Even when you feel physically OK, you will still need time to recover emotionally. Your doctor should be able to provide you with a medical certificate that gives you enough time but if you feel you need longer don’t be afraid to ask. If you feel concerned about returning to work, speak to your employer. Open communication can help them understand what you’re going through and how to accommodate your needs. You should also consider how they can help you communicate to others in the workplace what has happened. Do you want them to make an announcement on your behalf? Would you like them to ask people not to discuss it with you in the first week? Would you prefer to tell people yourself?
Sharing on Social Media
There are always questions around social media, and how to best re-engage in this space after you have experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth. Many parents find content on social media to be very triggering and have a significant negative impact upon their mental health and wellbeing; whereas other parents find it helpful to re-engage back into their life through this option and use it as a space to gain support and guidance when trying to navigate their grief. This is a very personal decision, and it would be good to consider both the pros and cons around engaging in social media and identify potential triggers and topics you would want to avoid when logging back on.
Developed by Bare Mum in collaboration with Red Nose Australia.
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