Recognizing and Recovering from Perinatal Loss

Loss, Memory and Hope

Reprinted from The Parent Review

Pregnancy loss is a difficult topic, too often hidden from view. Recent research, however, has shed light on the importance of helping families to remember, recover and cope with the impact of the loss on future pregnancies.

Finding Support for Perinatal Loss

Bereavement experts stress the importance of recognizing the loss and supporting parents as they process their grief. Physicians and other care providers urge these families to join support groups to share their experience with other grieving and healing families, as these groups have been shown to reduce the risk of lasting depression and anxiety.

One recent study collected data from pregnancy-after-loss support groups and found conflicts between common cultural expectations of how parents should feel after perinatal loss and how the parents actually felt (including whether loss of a pregnancy is the same as the loss of a baby). Group members felt the other participants validated their own perspectives, even when society at large did not. Accepting their own responses to loss led members to learn coping skills.

The Gift of Time

Another study suggests that there is some benefit to waiting 12 months after a loss, if possible, before becoming pregnant again. While most women in this study who became pregnant again within a year did not suffer depression, investigators report increased depression and anxiety among those who did become pregnant in this first year, compared with those who waited. The women who gave birth sooner were also more likely to be suffering one year after giving birth to healthy babies than the other group.

The researchers commented that the difference may be due to the need to mourn for at least a year before beginning another pregnancy, or because women who chose to conceive sooner may be intrinsically more vulnerable to depression and anxiety. They also noted that, for some parents, other personal considerations, including maternal age, may outweigh the higher risk of psychological symptoms.