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a comfy chair with plants - Should I See a Therapist After My Pregnancy Loss?

Ask the Motherhood Therapist: Should I See a Therapist after my Pregnancy Loss?

Pregnant woman holding belly - what I want you to know about pregnancy after loss

What I Want You to Know about Pregnancy After Loss

Heartache - "I will not hide my grief, as I did not hide my love."

The Heartaches of Motherhood: I will not hide my grief, as I did not hide my love

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Hard Parts of Motherhood
Heartaches of Motherhood
Expecting After the Heartaches of Motherhood

The Motherhood Therapist

Your motherhood story matters.

There were no baby showers, preparing of the nurse

There were no baby showers, preparing of the nursery, or taking birthing classes.

We were too afraid to jinx this baby’s arrival with preparing for a future that wasn’t guaranteed. We already had all the items we needed from our previous baby. They were perfectly placed and untouched in this new baby’s bedroom, right where we left them just 15 months before. But, as the weeks drew closer to her birth, we hesitantly chose to take little leaps of a faith that this baby might live.

There was a gender reveal party and a coming home outfit all her own that we placed in a hospital bag. It was packed just two weeks before her arrival. We did some little things deliberately to let in the light of joy during days that were often still shrouded by darkness and fear.

We even made a birth plan, which now felt like an oxymoron, but we went ahead with creating one anyway. This time it was a birth plan with a clause in it for losing a baby that we hoped we wouldn’t have to use.

Lub dub. Lub dub.

I could hear my heart beating in my ears as my eyes stayed focused on the surgical lamp above. In it, I could see the reflection of my OB-GYN lacerating my abdomen.

Within seconds of the incision, I heard the most sacred sound, the wailing of my second daughter’s lungs gasping for her first breath.

“Is she OK?! Is she OK?!” I would repeat a hundred more times as my husband leaned down and kissed my forehead, his tears mixing with mine.

After the nurses tossed her back and forth like a football over the scale and wrapped her in a receiving blanket, they placed her on my chest. Her skin touched mine.

“She’s so warm. So warm,” I said in disbelief that this baby was not cool to the touch like my other.

I searched her face for a person who was not there, disoriented by grief and how the past can show up in the present. I hoped for a moment I was meeting my first daughter once again. The dissociation only lasted a second. Within a heartbeat, my soul filled with joy and connected to the new little bundle of life we had created. [Continued in comments]

I can be BOTH mad at my body for losing my baby A

I can be BOTH mad at my body for losing my baby AND still love my body and not see it as a failure.

I can be BOTH jealous that my friend is pregnant AND hope her baby is healthy.

I can be BOTH sad my baby died AND not feel guilty when I laugh while grieving.

I can be BOTH grieving my baby that died AND grateful I’m pregnant again.

I can be BOTH grateful for my children AND frustrated with parts of parenting.

The beauty of being human is we get to be both/and when it comes to how we feel, what actions we do, and who we are.

We are not one-dimensional characters in a children’s cartoon.

We are multidimensional beings who experience multilayers of emotions that happen in the world at the SAME TIME.

The both/and helps us hold all of these truths and emotions together.

It validates our experience.

It can validate our motherhood. Even as bereaved mothers. As we ARE mothers.
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#themotherhoodtherapist #griefandloss #grief #griefsupport #normalizegrief #familysupport #hardpartsofmotherhood #heartbreakingpartsofmotherhood #lifeafterloss #pregnancyloss #miscarriage #stillbirth #TFMR #infantloss #childloss #babyloss #bereavedmother #bereavedparents #lossmom #stillamother #thepowerofand #bothand #pregnancyafterloss #parentingafterloss

Emily Nagoski, PhD and her sister Amelia Nagoski,

Emily Nagoski, PhD and her sister Amelia Nagoski, DMA write about the need to complete the cycle of stress in their book Burnout. Teaching us that for optimal health we want to complete the stress cycle each day. Wounded and burned out moms need to do this more than most.

You see, our brains haven’t evolved to keep up with our technologically advanced lives. So our brains still respond to threats like they would have thousands of years ago when seeing a lion really was a life or death situation.

Back then our brains kept us safe by activating the stress response - so we could fight, flee, or freeze to protect us against the lion. But now, in the modern age we see everything as a lion - the toddler’s meltdown, being late for daycare drop off, that email from your boss, and that argument with your partner all register in our brains as a lion and we act accordingly and daily. These stressors happen almost once an hour for moms, and we can’t catch a break.

So we need to learn how to actively complete the stress response cycle every day, which may seem like a large task to only add to the mom’s to-do list. But the Nagoski sisters give us a few tips on how we can complete the stress-response cycle daily. The idea is to pick one of these tips that you can quickly fit into your day if it feels right to you. (👉 swipe to see)

⓵ Physical Activity - Move Your Body. Physical activity helps us discharge pent up emotions.

⓶ Breathing - Deep breaths. Exhaling longer than we inhale actives the parasympathetic nervous system (the calming part of our nervous system opposite of the sympathetic which is fight/flight/freeze)

⓷ Deep Affection - Make Out for 6 Second Kisses. If we kiss someone for this long our body knows we are safe to be this vulnerable with someone else.

⓸ Creative Expression: Creating art gives us the opportunity to move through big emotions.

⓹ Positive Social Interaction - 20 Second Hugs. They are good for the heart and mind. Long hugs release oxytocin and reduce anxiety. They also help lower blood pressure and reduce stress hormone production in your body and brain. [continued in comments]

The ultrasound tech asked, “Do you want to know

The ultrasound tech asked, “Do you want to know the gender?” I turned to my husband and could tell by the look in his eyes that our answer was yes. We both nodded an affirmative toward the technician.

In the moments before her announcement, my husband squeezed my hand tightly, as I repeated a silent wish to myself for our second child to be a boy. For the previous 19 weeks I had committed myself to the idea that if this child was a boy, then this pregnancy would surely have a different outcome than the previous one. It was a delusion I hoped to hold onto to help me get through the rest of this pregnancy.

“It’s a girl!”

As her exclamation echoed in my ears, my body became numb, and my mind began to quiver. Confusion and anger swirled throughout. I cursed the universe for not making this journey through pregnancy after loss easier for me by providing me with some saving grace, a different gendered child than the one I lost.

Why this girl and not my other one? I would ponder this question over and over in my mind. Sometimes I would mumble it throughout the days during the weeks that followed in hopes that the cosmos, Mother Nature, or a divine power would respond.

I wanted answers, but could find none.

As pregnancy progressed, so did my fears.
I no longer trusted my body to protect and produce life for my unborn child within. With each passing week I was blooming with baby, I grew more attached. Not purposefully. I made ardent efforts to not make the same mistake twice of expecting this baby to be a guarantee, like I so foolishly did with her sister. Even with my attempts to stay disengaged from this baby, a subconscious connection grew with the child inside of me.

“Please, baby, move. Let me know you’re there,” were the words I would whisper to my large third trimester belly each night upon waking anxiously from a deep sleep. Intuitively I knew two or three hours of slumber had passed where I was not aware of baby’s movements, so I would wake. [Continued in comments]

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross came up with the five stages

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross came up with the five stages of grief for the dying, not for the bereaved. Over time she applied them to the grieving as well, but she never meant for them to be linear. They are an outline of the common emotional experiences those who are grieving go through.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance - these are all emotions one might experience while grieving. Not in order, not just once, but over and over and sometimes all in one second.

Grieving also includes so many other emotions: anxiety, sadness, fear, rage, shock, envy, etc. Any feeling you can feel fits with healthy grieving.

I would like to name a new feeling that we can add to the stages - apathy. But I like to call it the Give No Fucks stage of grief.

This is when you no longer give two flying flocks about other people’s opinion of you. A side effect of loss - indifference. Not giving any fucks.

I give no fucks how you perceive my grief.

I give no fucks on your thoughts about the pictures of my dead baby.

I give no fucks if you think I should be done grieving by now.

I give no fucks about how you think my body should bounce back after not bringing a baby home.

I give no fucks about you seeing me cry six months later after my loss.

I give no fucks if you think I should be done grieving my baby a year or two after she died.

I give no fucks about what you think.

A fellow loss mom shared with me her theory once that grieving moms seem to come to the stage of “give no fucks” before most other women do. This stage of life usually happens to many women sometime around their late thirties, early forties, as we finally stop letting movies, music, magazines, models, mothers, and male chauvinists define our lives and instead take on the job of doing so for ourselves. But for bereaved moms (and widowed women, I have also heard) this stage comes much earlier.

If this is you, welcome to the stage of “give no fucks” in grief and in womanhood.

There are plenty of us here to hold your hand and understand how you feel.
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#themotherhoodtherapist #stagesofgrief #grief #griefandloss #pregnancyloss #heartachesofmotherhood #stillbirth #childloss #babyloss #infantloss

Being pregnant after a loss is a blessing but can

Being pregnant after a loss is a blessing but can feel like a curse. You often feel like you are going crazy. I mean the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Which is what being pregnant after a loss is. Your brain during PAL can drive you insane. And that’s not just because of grief but also because of the trauma your previous loss has caused.

I like to compare it to a car accident. Say you are driving a car and a car accident happens, ending up killing your passenger. We would view this event as trauma for the driver. The accident wasn’t their fault. It just happened to them. Their life was in danger and the accident took the life of their loved one.

But, if you get in a car accident and need to drive in a car again you eventually will be able to leave the car. To take a break from having to live inside your trauma.

This is not true for when you become pregnant after a loss. PAL moms are stuck inside the same car that crashed, causing their baby to die and they never get to take a break from being inside the vehicle for nine whole months! That’s one long trip that can drive you insane. And so your PAL mind responds appropriately to this trauma. With so many fears flying through your brain that you feel overwhelmed.

You are not alone in feeling this way. Know this is a normal response to the abnormal experience of being pregnant after a loss.

Nothing will totally take away your worry and fear until your baby is safely breathing in your arms, but here are a couple coping skills to help you get through (👉 swipe to see):

⓵ Ground Yourself - 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, 1 you taste. Repeat.
⓶ Breathe In for the count of 4 through your nose. Hold for the count of 7. Release by breathing out through your mouth for the count of 8. Repeat.
⓷ Distract - with activities, opposite emotions, spending time helping others or with friends.
⓸ Progressive muscle relaxation - Squeeze your body tight for a count of 5. Fully release for a count of 10. Repeat.
⓹ Support - Find a therapist or support group who understands the unique emotional experience of a pregnancy that follows a loss.

“Congratulations!” said my primary provider du

“Congratulations!” said my primary provider during a routine annual exam I had scheduled for a few weeks after the positive pregnancy test result.

“It looks like you’re about six weeks pregnant,” she said with a cheerful smile.

I blankly stared back at her hoping that she wouldn’t notice how my face morphed into a confused, contorted expression in response to her words.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted my doctor to say at that moment, but a chirpy “congratulations” wasn’t the most comforting response for the mom who just found out she was pregnant again after her previous baby died in her womb just months before.

Over the next nine months, I would learn that most people wouldn’t know how to respond to me and my pregnancy that followed a loss, nor I to them.

Questions like, “Is this your first?” would catch me off guard during the most mundane moments and have me blushing and bumbling to respond in a way that felt honest and true to both my children, growing and deceased.

My second biggest fear after this baby dying too grew from these seemingly innocuous interactions. I worried that now that I was pregnant again people would forget my grief and my daughter and assume that this new pregnancy and baby would replace her.

Early pregnancy passed with apathy and detachment from my body and life. I didn’t let my husband touch my belly or talk to the “baby” that was supposedly growing there. Morning sickness was a cursed blessing. It reminded me that I was once again pregnant with a child I believed was destined to die, while at that same time the waves of nausea comforted me in knowing that the “baby” inside of me was still living.

We waited longer than the time before to share the news — well past the 12-week “safe zone,” which now seemed naive and absurd. There is no safe zone in a pregnancy. Our daughter was a sure thing, or so we thought, and then she died on the day she was to be born. The “safe zone” no longer held meaning for us, but we still waited.

Other things waited as well. Even when my blooming belly began bulging out of my jeans, I would refuse to buy maternity attire, as it was a commitment to hope I was not ready to make. [Continued in comments]

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