Understanding Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Pregnancy and infant loss can take many forms
Pregnancy and infant loss includes many different experiences, including miscarriage, ectopic and molar pregnancy, ending a wanted pregnancy, stillbirth, neonatal death, and infant death. Families may also experience infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, or the death of an older infant or young child.
While the circumstances surrounding each loss are different, every family deserves to have their loss recognized and their grief supported.
The loss impacts more than the birthing parent
Pregnancy and infant loss can have a profound and lasting impact—not only on the person who carried the pregnancy, but also on partners, siblings, grandparents, extended family, friends, caregivers, healthcare providers, and others within a family’s community.
You may likely be grieving this loss as well.
We live in a culture that is uncomfortable with grief
Pregnancy and infant loss is often misunderstood. When a loss is not fully acknowledged or viewed by others as significant, it is sometimes called disenfranchised grief. Bereaved parents may encounter responses from others in their life that minimize their loss, misunderstand the attachment with their baby, or suggest they should move forward before they are ready. This lack of recognition and invalidation can contribute to feelings of isolation and make an already difficult grieving process even harder.
Myths about grief
There is no set timeline or series of stages that someone must move through after a baby dies. Grief is not something a person simply “gets over,” and time alone does not heal every wound. Grief changes over time and can return or intensify around birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, subsequent pregnancies, family milestones, or unexpected moments throughout life.
The significance of a loss cannot be measured by the number of weeks a pregnancy lasted or the amount of time a baby lived. Parents may begin imagining, loving, planning for, and forming a relationship with their baby long before others can see it. When a baby dies, they may be grieving not only their baby, but an entire future they had already begun to imagine.
Grief is unique to the individual
Grief is deeply individual and can affect every part of a person’s life. It may be experienced emotionally, physically, cognitively, behaviorally, socially, spiritually, and developmentally. There is no single “right” way to grieve. Understanding this can help family and friends offer support without placing expectations on how someone should feel, behave, or heal. Just being present with a person—without judgement—is enough.
Secondary losses
Pregnancy and infant loss can also bring secondary losses—the many other losses that follow the death itself. Parents may grieve the future they imagined, their identity as a mother or father, relationships that change after the loss, a sense of safety or trust in their body, or the experiences and milestones they expected to share with their child.
Ways You Can Help
Now that you understand more about what they may be experiencing, explore practical ways to offer meaningful support.