Pregnancy Loss
The grief and other emotions that can accompany pregnancy loss tend to be largely silenced. Even in cultures where death isn’t a taboo subject and where grief is shared and supported, the experience of pregnancy loss can still be silenced. There is also too much personal silencing-so many people make their own stories really small. We don’t want to be a bother to people, we may feel that our story isn’t worth hearing, or we don’t perceive our situation to be as bad as someone else’s for example. We may feel deep shame, or be fearful of judgement. We may feel confused and bewildered.
Although pregnancy loss, particularly through miscarriage, is common, women’s stories shouldn’t be minimised. Their grief, your grief, is valid and unique. All feelings and experiences are valid and important, whatever kind of loss you are experiencing. They all deserve to be heard and honoured. You deserve to be seen and held.
How was your experience? Were you supported? Did you feel seen and held? Did you do anything to honour your body and your choices?
A diverse and increasing body of evidence tells us that we can do much better at supporting women during all stages of a pregnancy loss journey and through all kinds of pregnancy loss, for example abortion, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and stillbirth. As friends, partners, neighbours, community members, paramedics, emergency room staff, midwives and nurses, obstetricians, GPs, receptionists, yoga teachers, playgroup leaders, massage therapists and doulas, as a society, we can all do better.
We need to be better at sitting with people’s pain, walking alongside them in their grief, and entering into their wilderness with them, rather than trying to fix them out of our own fear of being vulnerable. So many people aren’t afforded the space and time to reckon with these traumas and these losses.
In order to be better at supporting others in threshold spaces such as birth and death, we also need to understand ourselves better. We need to understand our triggers, our fears and our shadows because they will undoubtedly rise up in these deep threshold spaces. We need to learn how to breathe into uncomfortable feelings and not let them take the driver’s seat in our interactions with others; we need to learn how to get curious about them and how to delve more deeply into these spaces within ourselves. Working in threshold spaces requires us to lay the ego, or projected self aside, and show more of our authentic selves.
Those who have never experienced pregnancy loss need to know what happens physically, emotionally and spiritually when a woman experiences a pregnancy loss. People need to hear about what comes out of women’s vaginas, about the blood, and the pain, and the desperation. They need to hear about the guilt, the shame and the relief.
We also need to better understand that a woman is postpartum after any pregnancy carry, and that support through grief and loss needs to include proper postpartum care.
Partners need more support. They too have their own experience of the loss to contend with while supporting their loved ones. They may need to hear other partner’s stories within a safe container in order to validate their own experiences. They may need to hold their own ceremony or ritual to reckon with their unique experience of the loss.
We need to better understand all the layers and nuances of pregnancy loss. Ask yourself: ‘how do I want others to show up for me?’ And then, ‘how should I show up for others?’
Birth or Loss Story Listening
Closing of the Bones
Postnatal rebozo massage and closing ceremony
Crafting Rituals to Honour Pregnancy Loss
