Pregnancy After Loss
I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor staring at a positive pregnancy test in April and all I could think about was when I found out I was pregnant with Beau. I don’t think it registered for quite a while that this was a different pregnancy, a different baby.
I think pregnancies after the loss of a child can be misunderstood. Of course people know that a new pregnancy doesn’t discount the life of your other child, but it seems like the new pregnancy can be all that people will focus on now. That was one of my main concerns about trying to conceive so quickly after Beau passed away. I feared people might think that I was “over it” and that I was finished grieving and remembering Beau, which was the farthest thing from the truth. While on the topic of conceiving after a loss, that can be such an individual decision that you and your partner have to come to together. Mario and I knew we wanted to continue to grow our family and give our love and attention to another child. Speaking to my OB really helped us determine how soon we could start to try for Beau’s sibling. She explained to us that because I had a C-section with Beau we had to have a scheduled C-section with our next baby because it wouldn’t have been 18-24 months between births. She also told us that it was absolutely normal to want to try for another baby sooner than later. She said in her experience with perinatal and infant loss many couples will want to get back to the place they were in their lives, and some couples cannot imagine trying for a child at that point in their grief.
Mario and I got pregnant on our forth try. We often described it as the bright shining light we needed in such a deep darkness. But it didn’t solve everything. It didn’t replace Beau or bring him back. We still had this hole in our heart but we were trying to grow around it.
Once we settled into the reality that we were going to be parents of two, I think the comparisons started for me. Did I do something wrong during my last pregnancy? What if this baby doesn’t look like Beau? What if it’s a girl? What if I don’t love this baby as much as I love Beau? With all those questions running through my mind and on my heart the one that scared me the most was, what if I love this baby more than I love Beau because we will have them longer? A fellow loss mama brought me back down and told me that, you don’t love your next baby more or less, you will love them harder because you know the pain of losing a child and how precious this baby is. I think a lot of second time parents have this concern. Wondering how you’ll love your next little one as much as your first, but now I believe your heart just expands and you have different love for each child, not more just different.
One thing we couldn’t have survived this pregnancy without was the extra care and support we received throughout. We not only continued grief counselling but I also joined a pregnancy after loss group. The group helped me connect with woman that had similar fears and concerns that I did. It provided a space for me to not feel so alone in the feelings I was having. It normalized my emotions and connected me with thoughts I didn’t know I had. We also connected with a few parents that had lost a child in the same way that we had. We put in the work to try and be as prepared as possible for the anxieties and distress we might experience after birth and throughout the first year. My OB also offered to provide extra care. Although we had no serious pregnancy complications last time that didn’t mean we weren’t fearful of suffering a subsequent loss. My OB provided me with longer appointments, flexibility on our C-section date, open-ended ultrasounds and special birth accommodations. Having a team of support around our care has been something I couldn’t imagine going without.
This wouldn’t be a pregnancy after loss post without talking about attachment. I’ve done a lot of work on this one in therapy, groups and readings. In the first half of my pregnancy I felt like I had no attachment to this baby. Many people say detachment is a way of coping incase you suffer another loss, it’s a way to protect yourself. For me, I’m sure that played a part, but it felt like I couldn’t attach to this baby because she wasn’t Beau. It felt like I was looking to fill that void, find a replacement to lessen my pain and when I realized it doesn’t work that way I really began to see this baby as her own person. Mario always told me that it was normal to not feel like you can love one child on the inside more than another that’s been on the outside, because you can picture what they look like, you have more memories with them, you have a relationship and it is hard to compare that to a baby in utero. Like anything I think time heals. My heart needed time to heal and grow for this new baby. I had to stop thinking of her as Beau and start thinking about her as her own person. This all sounds pretty logical and straight forward but when you mix in loss and grief sometimes these epiphanies don’t come to us as easily. I think whether you attach to your baby right away during pregnancy, or at birth, or even months after birth, it’s all normal. You are not a monster for not feeling that love and connection right away. You are a human who has been through trauma and are trying to process complex feelings. That love is there whether you know it or not and you will feel it sooner than you think.
Pregnancy after loss is complicated, there are books and groups on it, which are great but at the end of the day we need to do what’s best for ourselves. We are creating human life after losing it and that is terrifying, but we are doing it because we know what it’s like to hold that little life in our hands and we’d do anything to get that feeling back.
You got this mama!
“Without the storm there would be no rainbow”
- Unknown
PALS Resource - Trying Again: A Guide to Pregnancy After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss by Ann Douglas and John R. Sussman