Lucy

Oh my, 1,000x yes to every one of these things 💜

In particular I can relate to the importance of being included in conversations as (and treated like) a mom and birth parent! We also kept our nursery as it was and all the baby items and I’m so glad we did. It gave us a place to grieve and be with our daughter when there weren’t really any other physical reminders of her available.

Yes to 1, 2, and 3 in particular for me! For the first suggestion— with a late term loss everyone in your social groups saw you visibly pregnant and knew you were pregnant so they will assume that if they don’t hear from you for a few weeks around your due date, it’s because you are spending time with your new baby. It was very helpful to have friends break the news to our gym community, work colleagues, and clubs. Plenty of people who didn’t get the sad news still asked us the next time they saw us “how’s the baby doing”, “they’re how old now?” and it was painful every time. I’m glad most people had been told by someone else because I can’t imagine if it had been more.

I second the Nora McInerny and “Terrible Thanks for Asking” recommendation

I will second “the things that helped most were the things that just appeared”. And yes, even what you might think is the simplest care package will be so meaningful!

Hi Heartbroken Sister. My daughter Maeve died on her due date a little over two years ago and we’ll never know why. All my love to you and your family. I’m sorry you all are now a part of this shitty club. (1) A really hard and unexpected part of grieving at that time was knowing that the loss affected my immediate family and close friends too, but my husband and I so desperately didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone for many weeks. We needed our people to understand that we loved them so much but we were so deeply hurting and devastated that we didn’t have strength or space to be with them. It’s such a unique type of loss, please don’t take it personally if your loved ones don’t use you as a primary source of processing and grieving outlet— we found joining a small, closed, local perinatal loss support group (that was for parents only) to be incredibly helpful to us. (2) I can still remember every single “thinking of you <3” text that people sent. Those meant the most— no pressure, *zero questions*, just acknowledgement and a love check in. Especially when we were getting past month two and a lot of people dropped off from sending messages— I promise we were still thinking about her every day well through the first year. You are not bringing up sad feelings or making us feel sad by saying their name in a text or sending a ‘thinking of you’ message at any time! (3) Don’t be afraid to get or do specific things for the grieving parents that feel meaningful to you, just leave space for them to say no. “Let me know how I can help” meant nothing to me at that time because I couldn’t even figure out which way was up let alone say what would help me. The only gift cards we used that people gave us were for food delivery (Door Dash, etc), everything else felt weird to receive like we were getting money for our loss. It did became almost comical how much soup people gave us, so if you want to cook maybe something else easy to reheat. (4) Send them recommendations of TV shows to watch. We liked mindless action movies and gentle comedies like BBC Ghosts. Use the website doesthedogdie.com to check for trigger warnings about infant and child loss!
xoxoxoxo Lucy and Sean