jessica

I relate to your comment so much. I lost a child late in pregnancy. When I first told a friend I was pregnant again after this, she asked me how I felt, and without thinking, I said guilty. She couldn’t fathom this reaction at all, but at the time it’s truly what I felt, like I felt like I was betraying my lost child by allowing space to live another one. I remember the early postpartum period, filled with both joy for my new living baby and grief for the one I had lost. At night alone with just the two of us, I would sob and sob, even though the joy of having her filled me so much. Not many people understand that feeling of simultaneous joy and grief that breaded parents experience. It’s a dichotomy you carry forever. And it is so isolating.

I lost a baby at 27 weeks. I feel like a lot of people didn’t know how to address it around me, and so chose to never bring it up, which is fine. However, when I was pregnant again, people would make comments through out my pregnancy as though it were my first time. I had already gone thru labour and postpartum when I lost my baby. Yet people (who knew what I had experienced)would make comments as if it were my first pregnancy. That was really hurtful, it felt like the erasure of my beloved first born. I would remind anyone supporting someone in this situation to try hard to remember that list child was very much real and loved by the mother even if no one else had a chance to develop a relationship with them. Choose your words respectfully around that frame work.