In 1988, President Reagan designed October as Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month, a specific time to remember little ones lost during pregnancy and infancy. It is also a time to recognize the grief of their parents and to walk with them in the journey of grieving, no matter how long it’s been. This month, Selah’s blog posts will share the stories of three women who experienced pregnancy loss. We know that their stories will mirror the stories of many others, and we hope that you will either find someone whose story resonates with yours and helps you heal or someone who helps you understand what others have experienced:
- One in four pregnancies ends in the loss of a baby
- The loss of a child is recognized as the most intense cause of grief
- Parents never “get over” the loss of a child – no matter the age
- Parents experiencing grief without supportive care can have debilitating consequences such as PTSD, depression and anxiety that could further result in job loss, divorce, difficulties in daily living, or impediments with parenting of living children
With honesty, courage, grief, and tenderness for the grief of others, Jonalyn shares her own story about grieving through a miscarriage.
please read it as the raw feelings and observations from the days before my miscarriage, she writes. During the night I couldn’t shake the feeling that my body had changed from a place of life, a little micro-climate of nourishment and provision for our baby into a coffin. My body was holding death inside and I was bleeding with the pain of it. I had experienced the whole cycle of the life and death within a month.
Start here, and read her entire series. The grace with which she writes will resonate with you if you’ve experienced this grief before. And if you haven’t, you’ll find in her writing tender ways to care for friends who have. In this interview with Josh Brahm, founder of Equal Rights Institute, we especially love her suggestions for how to honor a friend who has experienced pregnancy loss:
A few things that helped me when I miscarried were personal notes and flowers. There was something so life-giving in receiving a bundle of tulips in honor of the baby’s life I had lost. It was as if their life mattered, even though no one but me and my husband got to meet this little one. You don’t have to wait to send flowers.
If you personally know the woman who miscarried, sending gifts like flowers or a small tree is rarely inappropriate. This opens up them up to your awareness that this life matters.
One thing that I would recommend is using another term than “miscarry”. There’s an unfortunate accusation buried in that word against the mother, as if she poorly carried the child and that’s why the baby is gone. I’ve unpacked that a little bit here. You can say, “How have you been since you lost your baby?” instead.
Pregnancy is precarious, perhaps one of the times when a woman feels most vulnerable–aware that pregnancy brings with it no guarantees and that her baby faces so many risks. For the women whose pregnancies have not ended as they anticipated, we grieve your loss. This month and always.
How can we love women who have experienced pregnancy loss? What are meaningful ways to grieve with them? Leave us a comment…
Read the next post in our pregnancy loss series here, where Lauren shares her experience of stillbirth.