The other day I was talking with a friend and she told me that someone close to her had recently experienced a miscarriage. My friend didn’t know what to say to them and turned to my website for insight. Here’s where I have fallen short. This is a topic that I have not written on. Seems a little odd that it hasn’t come out sooner and I apologize to all who have come to the site for help on this topic. For each person who has suffered a pregnancy or infant loss, what to say and not say can differ a little because of how each of handles situations. However, I feel like there are some common things that we either need to hear or don’t need to hear. Some of these have been said to me and some have been said to those who have walked a similar path as I have.
What to not say
- You can still have other children
- It’s better this way or This is God’s way of telling you
- So, when are you going to get back on the horse (the day you are discharged from the hospital)
- You baby has expired
- You need to just get over it or move on
- You shouldn’t dwell in the past or on it
- You should be done grieving by now
- Why don’t you put everything that you have out in honor of them away to help you move forward
- At least you weren’t that far along
- It wasn’t meant to be
- Maybe next time you can take extra vitamins
What to say
- If you need to talk, I am here to listen
- The child’s name, if there wasn’t a name given you can encourage the family to name their child
- Your baby is beautiful
- You are a mom/dad, no matter how many you have lost or even if you do not have other children yet
- We may not always know what we need ourselves, so instead of asking what can you do do something specific for the family. Like…bring meals, meet for coffee
- I’ve been thinking about you. This can still be done months & years down the road
- Remember their child in some way…especially on their child’s birthday
- Don’t forget about the father. A lot of times the men get forgotten about as the appear to be just fine. Where they are just trying to keep it together and be strong for their partner. Their grief may not surface until farther down the path.
- It wasn’t your fault
If you are still nervous about what to say or afraid something may not come out right, there are two important things that you can do. Be there to listen and remember their child. And don’t forget to still do this down the road. It’s been over two years for me and in some I am still grieving. The grieving has changed, but it is still something that is a part of me and I have learned different ways to help me move forward. This is a part of my life and forever will be.
This by no means is an extensive list for either topic. If you would like to share what has been helpful or not helpful to you after you experienced the loss of your child please share with us in the comment section below.
As I am bouncing my new little guy, I am thinking about Mother’s day. For those facing a loss, Mother’s Day can be hard to take in. And when it’s your first child, then what do you do. Is it still a celebration? It may seem weird to celebrate being a mom when your baby isn’t in your arms, but you should celebrate being a mom. Honestly, it will be tough, it was for me. Mother’s Day came just a few short months after we lost Samantha. It felt right to do a little something, but I also wanted the time to reflect a little as well. We spent that Mother’s Day enjoying the warmth of the sun (after a very long, snowy Winter), enjoying a coffee beverage & pastry from a local coffee shop, and sitting down by the Mississippi River.
From here on out, everything we encountered would be new to us. In just a few short weeks we went to the perinatal to have a complete scan and ultrasound. We also got to find out that we were having a boy. Throughout the early stages of our pregnancy I have been very lucky. I’ve gotten the chance to hear our little one’s heartbeat every couple of weeks. This has helped calmed my nerves greatly. I have to be honest though, there were times in between appointments that I would send an extra prayer or two through the day up to God, as well as nightly prayers that included our baby growing bigger and stronger each day, as well as continue to be healthy. I still had ups and downs of emotions as time went by. We began receiving items for Timothy, something that I hadn’t experienced with Samantha. We also got the nursery completed. Such a cute room for our little guy and I was excited to see it completed. However, I also felt guilty that we never got the chance to even begin to get a room ready for Samantha.
Nearly one year after experiencing our loss, I hit a point of near desperation. I wanted so much to be pregnant again. I wanted to grow our family. I would beg and plead with God to let it happen. When month after month went by, I broke down. I was beside myself. I wondered if we would ever be pregnant again. I wondered if I was only meant to be a mom of an angel baby. In the midst of this we make the decision to really try. Meaning, I tracked and I temped all in hopes of finding the right day. I thought by putting focus on it this way would make things come together. As more time went by, I think I got more frustrated. Then came Memorial weekend and we decided to go camping. I love to camp, but as this was like a mini vacation I didn’t want to put forth the effort of temping every morning. So, in a way I gave up or should I say gave in. I was putting more stress on myself than was necessary. It took me going camping and not willing to bring a thermometer with and wanting to wake up to the sun verses an alarm clock. After that weekend, I stopped temping and tracking. I realized that if I kept it all up our relationship would loose some spontaneity and I didn’t want things to be monotonous. Looking back now, I fully believe that by giving in to this and letting go rigidness of tracking allowed me to have less stress and eventually getting pregnant again. I began to realize that if I took the focus off of it, things would happen easily on their own. Just two months after giving up tracking and temping we got pregnant.
Over the past few months it has been hit or miss on whether or not I write. I haven’t felt a draw in one direction or another to go in for my blog posts. Plus, I have been focused on our current pregnancy. We only have a few more weeks before our little guy arrives into this world, so I have been writing a pregnancy journal to add to his baby book. Over the past few nights I haven’t been sleeping much and when I awake in the middle of the night I have been getting ideas of what to write about. So, I have decided to write a little bit about the journey we have been through over the past two years after losing Samantha in regards to trying to get pregnant again and being pregnant again. Over the next weeks I am going to write two mini series about my experiences. The first one will entail posts about trying to get pregnant after loss and the second one will entail posts about being pregnant after loss. I encourage you to join me on this journey as I share by sharing your own experiences and thoughts as I go along.
My doctor’s office is also connected to the hospital. On our way in to the clinic I saw a couple walking out into the hospital area with one of the nurses from my doctors office. If I had to guess, they were about to walk a similar path that Raun and I have been walking. I don’t know what I looked like on the day I walked out of the clinic after hearing the news that Samantha’s heart had stopped and we had to return to labor and delivery, but I would bet I had a similar look on my face as well.
